The Internet and Learning

This is part four of Steve Hargadon's Teacher 2.0: Using the Web for Your Personal and Professional Growth.

"How has the internet impacted your own personal learning?"

Walsall Library Presentation Key by Black Country Museums available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

This sounds trite, but the internet has changed my teaching life. When I first started teaching (2002, my first teaching rounds, 2006 my first class), sure I used the internet. I would look up teaching resources, images, animations, lesson ideas... the usual. I was pretty "techy", and I knew how to find what I needed. In the last couple of years, I started using a lot of web 2.0 and social media, but not for my teaching. For some reason, the blatantly obvious connection between my personal and professional usage had escaped me.

2011 was the year it all changed.

It began simply enough, as many things do. I signed up for a new twitter account. As you would know from my previous post, in addition to being a teacher, I am also a photographer. I had signed up for Twitter not long after starting my business, but I only followed a couple of people, and never saw the benefits. This time though, I started following people. I spent a couple of days building up my network, starting by following people who were using the #ultranet hashtag, following the people they followed, and so on (I now follow 196). The information that I had pulled toward me was relevant, interesting, and on so many occasions, exactly what I needed at that very moment.

I am, however, not the first or only person to think that getting information from Twitter is like trying to drink from a fire hydrant. I needed some way of filtering out the junk, and more importantly, saving the gems. I downloaded Tweetdeck, which helped immensely. I created a few columns - #edchat, #vicpln, #Ultranet, which were filled with people sharing great resources. However I needed a way to file it all. I created a Diigo account, a readitlater account and set up my Google Reader account (which, like many tools, I had used for years but never for teaching) properly with folders. I have blogged in more detail about how I use these here.

Now that I manage the information effectively, I can honestly say that Twitter is the source of the best professional learning I have ever done (and at present I am including my M.Ed in that - the quality of info shared via Twitter is THAT high!).

Without the internet, this year alone, I would have missed out on:

• The Age Digital Literacy Seminar
• Stever Hargardon's Teacher 2.0 Professional Learning Day
• A video conference with a NASA astronaut
• A massive number of great blogs
• Enrolling in the Master of Education
• Countless teaching ideas & resources
• Many more things!

Managing Information Overload

I think most of us have trouble with information overload at some point - and I was having the problem regularly! My biggest issue was organsing the information I found.

I am fairly new to the world of Twitter, but have found it a sensational way to stay at the cutting edge of education. I think I've learnt more from Twitter in the last few months than in all the PD I have done since starting teaching! I love that it allows me to jump in and jump out whenever I have a few free minutes.

One problem I have found however, is that the information comes thick and fast, and sometimes it can be very hard to keep up over the course of a busy day. Tools, articles, blog posts, new ideas and strategies - I may spot something that looks fantastic, but if I only have a couple of minutes, whatever amazing tidbit someone had shared would likely disappear. I have made use of a few tools that make my Twitter life much easier.

1. I connect all my devices to my Twitter account. Simple! iPhone, iPad, Laptop, Desktop. No matter where I am, if I have a couple of minutes, I can jump on and see what's happening. Twitter is PD on demand.

2. Read It Later This is an amazing little tool! I have the free read it later app on my iDevices, and have installed the plugin for Firefox. Basically this allows you, with one or two clicks, to save those websites that you come across, that you don't have time to process immediately, to a 'reading list' for a later time. I have a button in my links bar that goes straight to my reading list (http://readitlaterlist.com/unread). Twitter for iOS is fully integrated with Read It Later and has a two-tap saving process. The firefox plugin is even better, and has a small arrow embedded into the URL bar that will save any link for later with a single click. The free iOS app seems to be limited to around 4 pages of links, but that is a good cue that it's time to set aside 30 minutes to process it all. (I just open each link in a new tab and go from there).

3. Diigo I could just bookmark my links, but then I would end up with a massive list of bookmarks, with no organisation at all. Enter Diigo. I've only been using this for a couple of weeks, and there are people who are more expert than I, but it is easy to use, and means your organised list is available anywhere. My main advice for those starting out is to tag everything! A toolbar is also available, which has incredible functionality. I now have a small, but growing list of educational resources that I have reviewed (this is important) and can go back to at any time. There is a whole other side to Diigo, which is the social bookmarking aspect, but I will go into that more at a later date. For now, any static websites or web 2.0 tools that I come across get saved in my Diigo list. Blogs that I discover go to Google Reader.

4. Google Reader and oldie but a goody. Although I've been using Google Reader for years, I hadn't subscribed to any educational blogs until very recently. I had subscribed to numerous personal and humour blogs, and didn't really want to be faced with 'work' every time I wanted to do some recreational reading (or... ahem... laugh at photos of cats). Then I discovered folders! If you scroll right to the bottom of your subscription list you will see a tiny blue link to 'manage subscriptions'

 

This takes you to a new screen, on which you can sort out all of your subscriptions.  Now I have folders for Teaching, Interest, Photography and Humour. Depending on what I feel like reading, I can click on the relevant folder and have only the posts from those blogs show up. Of course I also have a reader app on my iDevices. Another nifty Reader tool that not many know about is the bookmarklet (IE & Firefox - and probably Chrome). This is a little button that sits in my links bar that I can click on any time I find a blog I want to follow. It will redirect you to Reader, where you can click once more to subscribe. Get it here.

These four simple tools make it much easier to stay in control of the constant flow of information!