PLN Challenge #2 - How a PLN Works

Image on Flickr by Jef Safi

In the PLN Challenge #2 we were asked two questions:

1. What do you hope to learn more about with respect to your PLN in the coming weeks?

I have to be honest with you. I have joined the challenge because I want to meet new people and add them to my PLN. I am looking forward to new projects, new ways to collaborate. And I am hoping to join a couple of new online spaces.

As for my existing PLN, I would like to learn how to communicate more effectively within the time I am already spending online, since I know it is unrealistic for me to plan on spending more time online than I already do. I have great people in my PLN and they are very supportive, but sometimes I am not there when I should be. Or at least I feel so. The internet is a messy thing and, no matter how much you spend online reading what other people have posted, you will still miss a lot. Right now I am missing a bunch of great posts and tweets posted by members of my PLN. I suppose that can't be helped. Still, it is a pity.

Photo on Flickr by Samyra Serin

2. What have you learned with creating your PLN that you wish that someone had told you before and what tips do you have to share?

I know this is going to sound contradictory to what I have just said, but I wish someone had told me to relax and take it easy, to do only as much as I can. As I have said, the internet is messy, the information overload threatens to crush you and the key is not to do more, but to focus and prioritize. I wish someone had told me to choose my battles carefully and not to click the"join" button every time I see it. It is very important to treat online learning as a hobby (which it is) and never to treat it as an obligation. Not only will it kill the fun, but you are in danger of burning out and that might put you off online learning for a long time.

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PLN Challenge #1 - How My PLN Came to Be

Photo on Flickr by Paul Falardeu

Back in 2008 I believed that everyone who had a website was a demi-god. I read a lot of blogs, but it never crossed my mind that I, a mere mortal, should leave a comment. I was a member of a couple of forums, but I lurked. I didn't know I was lurking, I thought keeping silent was the right thing to do since I didn't 'know' anyone and no one had invited me there anyway.

Then in one of the forums where I lurked I saw an ad for Electronic Village Online. There were about a dozen workshops, but the one that caught my eye was called Becoming a Webhead. It read:

"Webheads in Action is a five-year-old community of practice of language teachers worldwide, coordinated by Vance Stevens. We explore Web communication tools and share the best ways of using them in our teaching practices, engage with students in virtual classes, collaborate on projects, and participate in conferences as audience and presenters. This collaboration takes place online, as we are all geographically apart. Would you like to become one of us?"

That last sentence sounded promising. Me becoming a part of an online community! I wanted that. I also wanted my own website, a place where I could share resources and links with my students. Maybe these Webheads could teach me how to create one.

In the introduction to the course they used a lot of words that were unknown to me: synchronous, asynchronous, wiki, podcast... As I was filling in the form to join the workshop, they asked me about the Web 2.0 tools that I had used. Now, what was Web 2.0? It was obviously something I was supposed to know about, so how could I ask? I would just show how ignorant I was. Googling "Web 2.0" never crossed my mind. My mind didn't work like that back then. So, I thought I would just join the group and keep quiet.

If you have ever had any contact with the Webheads, then you'll know that keeping quiet is not an option. I was greeted warmly and pulled into the conversation immediately. The forum was bustling with activity. There were quite a few people who were as ignorant as I was. I decided to learn or perish. I ended up sitting in front of my computer for six hours and loving every moment of it. By the end of the workshop I had my own wiki, my own blog (this one) and I had even created a podcast. After the workshop was finished, I joined the Webheads in Action forum. I belonged.

For at least a year all members of my PLN (Personal Learning Network) came from the Webhead forum. Things changed very gradually. The Webheads had me join Twitter and I met more people there. In January 2009 I read about Sue Waters' 31 Day Blogging Challenge on Twitter. I joined and I met some great new people. In April the same year I joined Problogger's 31DBBB challenge. By that time I knew for sure that my main online activity was going to be blogging so I joined every blogging challenge I could find. I still do that. Challenges give me something to write about and I always meet new people during the challenge. During the 31DBBB I met Karenne Sylvester who soon started BELTFree, a community of TEFL bloggers. Together with the Webheads, BELTFree bloggers became a very important part of my PLN. Although the BELTFree Ning is no longer bustling with activity, the ties have remained. We tweet together and read each other's blogs.

Photo on Flickr by Domiriel

How big is my PLN? I honestly have no idea. There are times when I feel I am all alone online. Then there are times I feel almost overwhelmed. But one thing I do know - they are out there all the time. They can help me find that killer warmer I need, they can teach me how to use that new application everyone is talking about, they can show me a thousand new ways to tell a story or teach some grammar. And if I have a problem or a question to ask, there will always be someone out there to help me.

Technorati Tags: #ebshare, PLN, Webheads, BELTFree

Free Tools Challenge #15 - Livebinders

Photo on Flickr by Ingo Bernhardt

Today in the Free Tools Challenge we are exploring Livebinders, a tool I never heard about until two days ago. It is one of the tools that, once you explore them, you can't stop wondering how you ever lived without them. It takes minutes to learn how to use Livebinders, they are practical and adaptable and it takes just one link to share your binders with the world.

OK, I need to calm down. First of all, I suggest you read this excellent tutorial on Livebinders in the Teacher Challenge blog. It will answer all your questions on how to get started with Livebinders. Then, make sure you come back here because we are going to talk about Livebinders in a TEFL classroom.

Let's say you want to share a bunch of links with your students. For the sake of the argument, let's suppose that you are trying to share with them all the links for online dictionaries that come to your mind. The final result might end up looking like this:

Photo on Flickr by Jerome Collins

And what if I told you that the final result could look like this:

Online Dictionaries

If you click on the icon or on the link underneath a window will open. It will look like this:



And I can keep adding the dictionaries to the binder as I come across them. In fact, I don't even have to visit the site to add the link. All I need to do is install the 'Livebinder It' bookmarklet to my browser and I can add any page I want to my Livebinders.

This is great because students often complain that they can't find the links they need. With Livebinders I can share online resources with them more easily. For my advanced students I created this binder with some short stories for them to read over the summer:

Advanced Reading

This way, instead of hunting for the links all over the pages of our wiki, they can focus on their reading.

What students often complain about in a blended learning course is that they don't know where exactly the course is. The teacher could create a binder with all the links used in the course (the forum, the wikis, the blogs, Twitter accounts...) and tell the students to bookmark the link and use it as their startup page in the course. The students could then add their own resources to this binder. The best thing about Livebinders is that everyone can learn how to use them. They even offer you to type your search term in their Google window and they populate the binder with the relevant pages from Google for you. This is what they came up with for Mother Theresa:

Mother Theresa

Students could create their own binders on different topics (the person I admire, the music I listen to, my country...). Or they could Google their name and share what they find in a binder.

Finally, you can use Livebinders to keep all your personal links in one place so that you can easily share them with others. The following binder contains links to my Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts, this blog, my eportfolio and my wikis. And a bunch of other places where you can find me, including my school website. It is my business card:

Natasa Bozic Grojic

Technorati Tags: #ebshare, TEFL, Livebinders