January 31, 2010

PLN: Understanding through Experiencing

Posted in PLN tagged PLN, technology, wikis at 4:01 PM by Brianna Rafferty

Wikispaces

For my LL ED 420 class, we were asked to form a list of questions we were interested in with regards to reading.  We then were told to break into groups, create a wiki for those groups, and find answers to those questions.  After watching a short video in class, I began to get a better understanding of what a wiki was – like a lesser version of wikipedia, a wiki allows its users to come in and edit content about a given subject.  I’m still trying to think about what the benefit for an individual could be, but for a group the ability to come in and edit one online page together while working toward a collaborative goal seems to really simplify things.  Instead of e-mailing drafts etc, group members have the ability to save changes that can immediately be seen by anyone else with access to that wiki.  I wish I had known about wikis for many of the group projects I had to work on throughout my career as a student – they could have simplified the process so much.

The English Companion Ning

In researching the questions, I spent some times on the nings – seeing what professionals in the field had to say about the questions I had.  In dealing with these reading questions, the English Companion Ning seemed to be most aligned with what I was trying to find out.  The more time I spend on there the more I realize how valuable it can be to have a widespread community of educators with their own experiences right at my fingertips.  I think the nings can be a great tool when I’m in the classroom myself and I don’t know why any educator who knows about them wouldn’t use them.  Essentially, the nings are like discussion boards.

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