Sorry I couldn’t be at the LEARN-CEFRIO meeting last week but
I was surfing the web yesterday and found a great wiki put up by Sue Waters.  Click on her name and it will take you to her wiki. She does the Edublog blog.  I have an Edublog blog – http://teacher102.edublogs.org/ and am very happy with it.  Sue has given me a lot of support.

The wiki gives ideas and suggestions on how to develop a pln (personal learning network).  She says that it is all about using web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, twitter, and facebook to connect to others which extends our learning and helps us learn together as part of a global network.  She suggests 5 top tools to start using to start building your own pln.

* Set up a twitter account

*Start your own blog

*Subscribe to blogs and read them

*Start using a Social Bookmarking tool

*Join a Ning community

Go to her wiki and check it out. On the left sidebar you can click on how to open a twitter account, How to start a blog, how to subscribe to a blog, Social bookmarking tools and how to join a Ning community.

I joined Ning last Spring. I am a member of Classroom 2.0 and have made some connections there. At the end of last year we were learning about butterflies and I connected with a classroom in Portland, Oregon. We did a skype call with them that was very exciting. I recently set up a twitter account and am learning about that. I love having a blog and sharing what we do in my classroom with the global community. It is fun to get comments from all over the place. Reading other peoples blogs is great. I have learned so much. I have asked people for help on how to do things and I’ve helped people, too. I am excited about the global connections that I am beginning to make.

Another wiki that Sue has it about blogging. Check this one out , too.

Here are her sites:
The Edublogger
PLN wiki
her personal blog

She also has a podcast blog called Mobile Technology in TAFE

If you need any support or help let me know.
by Mary Ellen Lynch

This is the third year that the K12 Online Conference has taken place. These are a series of presentations (video and/or audio) that are posted in a two week period. I have only had a chance to watch a few but have been inspired. As part of the conference there is a 24 hour Elluminate session (like Live Classroom) where people can drop in for conversation about the conference. Each hour has a moderator so there is little blank time. For me, this was a wonderful opportunity to learn from others and to expand my own personal learning network.

What is a personal learning network? It’s the people and places you go to, to expand your knowledge and understanding. For me it starts with my colleagues. There is nothing like face to face. However, when you are in a small school, or the only art teacher, cycle one teacher or whatever, you can not always get your questions answered or bounce ideas off your colleagues. Where do you go next?

I have developed my virtual Personal Learning Network. There are places I go online where I can get answers to my questions about technology, pedagogy and more. I get ideas for projects and develop relationships with my online friends. I also share my expertise with others. You can do this with the people in this group.

Forum

As part of this blog there is a forum. This is a place you can go to share ideas, ask questions and learn from each other. Just click on Forum at the top of the blog. You can respond to a topic by just clicking on the topic name or add a new topic by clicking on New. Expand your Personal Learning Network – share with your colleagues from afar.

As for the K12 Online Conference….

Here are a couple of sessions you may want to share and discuss as a staff Never Too Young for those of you teaching Kindergarten or Cycle 1. We Like our Blogging Buddies by Kathy Cassidy, a grade 1 teacher. Her ideas are great for any age class. Another is Videoconferencing: It’s Easy, Free and Powerful by Brian Crosby. I’ll be recommending others as I watch them. I would love to hear your reactions. Is this a topic we should be adding to the forum?

Susan

I’m going to be travelling soon to countries I have never been to before. I’m going to try to keep a blog, even if no one reads it. Why? It makes me commit to writing. It is an authentic “assignment” – there is an audience out there who may be interested in what I have to say. I’m not much of a risk taker and both the travel and writing for other people is a risk I feel I have to take to make my life fuller. So on two levels, I am embarking on personal and professional development.

Too often we ask students to write, yet we do not write ourselves. We ask students to read and so many teachers don’t read. I feel it is essential to model to our students what we expect from them. So this is my personal writing assignment.

This week’s Live Classroom event is about blogs and simple ways to use them. I hope we will get a good turnout. Each of us is on a voyage as lifelong learners. Even if you don’t put the learning into place immediately, this may be a ticket for future travels.

At the beginning of the year we showed you a video of Kathy Cassidy and her grade one class. You can see it on the wiki – Telling the New Story She has also embarked on a journey. She started with a blog for her class and is now writing a reflective blog. You can find it here. It’s a great place to start reading blogs and reading inspires thinking which may inspire writing which may lead to you starting your own blog. No hurry – Kathy took a few years before she felt comfortable enough to do it. If you visit her blog, write a comment here and share what you discovered.

I’ll let you know where to follow my travels. It’s scary – but I’d love to share the trip. Your comments here and on my travel blog will help to make this a more meaningful experience for us all.

Susan

I had the pleasure of interviewing Jennifer Wagner this week. She is a technology integration teacher in California. In addition to her teaching, she runs Technospud which sponsors several online projects each year. You can hear the interview (podcast) at http://www.learnquebec.ca/en/content/pedagogy/cil/teach/Collaborations.html I will be doing a series of interviews with teachers who are involved in online projects with other classes.

Do you have questions you would like me to ask them? Are there issues you want discussed? Add your questions to the comments and they will be asked.

I hope you will be able to draw inspiration from these practitioners. They, too, have struggled with some of the issues you have in your classes.

Susan

If you want to learn about technology integration – go to the K12 online conference
This is an asynchronous (you don’t have to go at a particular time) online conference. It would be great to use this space to discuss some of the sessions. The conference “begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. ” There are also some live sessions which use some of the collaborative tools available for education. It is well worth taking some time to participate.

Susan