Week 5 PLNs and PLEs Misael J. Talon

Week 5: PLNs and PLEs
A summary of what a PLN & PLE are:
           The use of PLEs may herald a greater emphasis on the role that metacognition plays in learning, enabling students to actively consider and reflect upon the specific tools and resources that lead to a deeper engagement with content to facilitate their learning. PLN- Whether you’re a full-time mom, a full-time teacher, or a full-time student, your PLN can be extremely interesting and helpful. The beauty of people communicating online is the ease of finding and sharing information and – if you ask for it – the group feedback that you get on ideas and projects.

 A metaphor to explain a PLN & PLE
            Since I have been teaching in a classroom for eight years, I want to stay abreast of all the current research and make connections by connecting to the world by using the internet.

Examples of content in a PLN & PLE (try to name digital and non-digital examples)
           Category Value Examples and Guides RSS Reader RSS means “Real Simple Syndication” – an RSS reader is a tool that allows you to keep up with many of your favorite blogs, all in once place (see this video ‘RSS in Plain English’) Netvibes, (My Netvibes),PageFlakes, Google Reader Nings Communities of people interested in similar topics, with forums and messaging Classroom 2.0, Future of Education, Ning Social Bookmarking Share bookmarks with others, see what others are bookmarking; you can join groups and get email updates on new bookmarks Diigo, Diigo Groups,Delicious Webinars Live, on-line presentations or conferences, with real-time chat, hosted by experts on specific topics; Great way to learn about new things and to meet new people Classroom 2.0 Live!,EdTechTalk Live,Elluminate – host your own!, Dim Dim

Your feelings on the idea of a PLN/PLE and how it might be useful to teachers and students                 PLN/PLE contains some great ideas. I’ve recently discovered the joys if twitter and the blogs
 as a way to gather lesson ideas and other innovative ideas to improve my own practice and have found links here which I hope will enable me to get further involved in web 2.0.

Blog # 2 Part 1: Web 2.0 Reflection What are your feelings on using Web 2.0 applications in your classroom or in your own teaching? Good tools to create, collaborate, edit categorize, exchange, and promote information Web-based applications can be accessed from anywhere Simple applications, solve specific problems Value lies in content, not the software used to display content Data can be easily shared Network effects are encouraged The more people who contribute, the better the content Are there pitfalls to relying on Web 2.0? The hype surrounding Web 2.0 can be off-putting- and confusing. Do you trust Web 2.0 applications? Yes, Web 2.0 is all about simplicity. These apps tend to be free so should we look to these kinds of solutions before looking to purchase a product? For example, schools might spend $80 to get Microsoft on each computer, but Google Docs is free. Practically, it decouples computing from stand-alone computers- a shift that dramatically reduces software deployment and administrative costs. Part 2: The Power and Peril of Web 3.0 Which “leap” towards a semantic web do you think is the most simple? Most difficult? The semantic web is giving users the ability to manipulate, connect and associate Web resources in new and powerful ways. It’s a capability similar to that of the corporate workhorse, the relational database. (computerworld.com.au) The more difficult aspect of building the Semantic Web is the creation of ontologies. This process requires efforts by diverse communities, such as medical, insurance and finance industries, to develop common vocabularies that systems will use to recognize what’s in a Web document. (computer world.com.au) What causes of concern does this bring up for you? (Be more specific than “privacy”) With the increase of knowledge in computer usage, we don’t have privacy anymore. For example, if somebody will type my name in the search engine, they will give to anybody the details of my life in the last few years. For example, if someone will pay for a fee, the search engine will give more details about my life in the past. The internet will give my work experiences and work places that I have been, the marriage record, debt and liabilities, credit history, and some more information as requested. Something interesting I felt when reading the section on Education 3.0 and knowledge construction is what I’ve heard called the “library fallacy” that to earn your grades you must go to a library and do the research – do you think anything is lost here if all the information is aggregated for a student instead of compiling all the resources themselves? Before the researcher was going to the library to do the research. Today, internet services are bringing the library to your home or office to do the research. Nothing is lost if all the information is aggregated by a student instead of compiling all the resources themselves. Part 3: Web 2.0 Tool Overview Web 2.0 represents an important shift in the way digital information is created, shared, stored, distributed, and manipulated. In the years ahead, it will have a significant impact in the way business use both the Internet and enterprise-level IT applications. (CBS news.com)

FCC Broadband Initiative Tackles School Needs from edweek.org There are many US companies that are interested to increase the internet capacity of the broadband business. Microsoft, Discovery Channel, and Best Buy are bringing strong experiments to this effect. Some companies are opposed to the usage of $2.3 B budget from the Federal Communications Commission to give fund to this project. Universal Service Fund is one of the examples to be used for this project. The group is trying their best to close the digital gap and help school / libraries to be the source of the promoting the public to use internet in the United States. Best Buy from Minnesota will share their 20,000 Greek Square Technology to 20 different cities to test the project. The National Standard for Digital Literacy will be the training ground for this testing. Microsoft has not just been looking at this philanthropic excellence but thinking it as an earning in market share. There are about 100 million people that haven’t adapted the broadband, and there will be the ground market can come from. Questions: 1. What judgment would Federal Communications Commission make to allow private businesses to use the $2.3 B for the program so that most people can avail a cheaper broadband? 2. How would you compare the ideas of Microsoft in helping the development of the market to have a larger share of the business? 3. Can you assess the value of importance of a cheaper broadband to the school/libraries?

What is a blog?

What is a blog? There are plenty sources that have different meanings of a blog. Basically, the word blog came from the compound word of web log, and later, some bloggers make it shorter to a blog. Eliminating the prefix, the two letters were eliminated and then to be read as b-l-o-g. In short, the word weblog became blog for a shorter name. From Wikipedia, “A blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consisting of discrete entries (“post”) typically in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). What is the purpose of a blog? As I mentioned on my answer to question 1, blog is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web (WWW) and consisting of discrete entries. How can you use this in your official capacity? (teacher, admin, central office, etc.) We can use the blog as a part of communicating or discussing some important issues in our work related issues as a teacher such as discussing the lesson planning of the week for an example. On the other hand, we can join to a PSS discussion on a certain issues by using the blog. Some schools in CNMI have a blog’s site in the internet. Give at least two explicitly examples of uses (not just “reflection”) The blog can be used by the students in school’s club such as music club, language arts clubs or any school sanction club to teach the students to practice their language communications skills. It can be used also for the distribution of live news as reported by the news reporter. What are the benefits and drawbacks of a blog? BENEFITS: We can express our freedom of speech and press by using the blog. DRAWBACKS: On the other hand, freedom of speech is limited due to some restrictions of the company’s policy. Cite at least 1 resource from our readings on blogs or an outside source you found: WIKIPEDIA