Weekly Report & Reflection Post #5

Hey everyone!

This week’s lesson taught us about Personal Learning Networks (very similar to Personal Learning Environment, I know).  A Personal Learning Network (or PLN for short) is a learning network that is informal and consists of people within your Personal Learning Environment. I found an interesting article called How Do I Get a PLN? that explains it much better than I can. We have unconsciously been developing a PLN through our blogs, Feedly, Pinterest, and this week, Twitter!

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking and media tools of this generation. The best way to describe it is it is a miniature blog that you share thoughts or feelings with your followers in 140 characters or less, which are called tweets. You can attach pictures, links, videos, hashtags, and now you can even run polls!  This tool allows you to interact with millions of people worldwide. Follow me, @emmamccann_ADED, for tweets on my digital learning or search the hashtag #ADED1P32 to see others tweeting about their journey through this course.

Retrieved from: https://twitter.com/twitter

I have been an avid twitter user for years, but purely for social purposes. This activity has opened my eyes to an entirely new side of twitter: education. It allows me to communicate with fellow ADED 1P32 classmates, as well as other educators on twitter.  It was very eye-opening to see the information and articles I read just from following different accounts than I usually would.

Although twitter is an excellent tool, it can also be very dangerous depending on how one uses it. I discussed digital footprints in my first Weekly Report & Reflection, but it becomes all so real when on twitter. It is so easy to forget that you are interacting with actual human beings on twitter, and it is way too easy to make a tweet. This can be dangerous because a friendly debate on an opinion, can quickly turn mean. This is not the kind of digital footprint you want to cultivate for yourself. Remember to keep your twitter positive and appropriate. Remember, everyone can look at it!

It feels each week I am adding more and more to my PLE that I created. This week I am not adding, but merely expanding my use of twitter, from a social tool, to both an educational and career tool.

Article of the Week

Retrieved from: http://eruditiollc.com/2015/05/why-elearning-is-your-best-choice/

This week on my Feedly, one article really stuck with me. It is called 7 Ways That eLearning Can Improve Your Learning. The 7 things were higher retention of the learnt material, easy storage and multiple access to collect material, any time flexibility, more of student

collaboration and teacher interaction, self-paced learning, enhanced technological support, and suitable for different types of learners. I don’t know about you guys, but I have begun to take technology for granted in my life and this article really showed me how valuable it is for my education, and this class is only showing me even more ways to utilize the web.

Until Next Week!