Evaluating Technological Tools

Before I go on to evaluate some tools that can enhance teaching, learning, and collaboration. This post describes the power of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) and how you can start your own.

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 This post will focus on the best ways to use three tools to create a local and global network

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Feedly
     Feedly is an amazing replacement for the Google Reader, and is a very simple RSS tool. If you are unfamiliar with these tools, the main goal is to gather relevant news, blogs, social media, and other digital content that interests you. For example, my own Feedly has a variety of breaking news feeds from sources like NBC, CNN, BBC, Huffington Post, and New York Times. It is a nice way to condense all the newspaper headlines into one place. Some of my other feeds are organized into categories for my own preference. I also have a variety of other categories that I use for professional development reasons. Here is a quick video of my Feedly page.

     This tool offers a great independent way to gather relevant information, and increase your own awareness. It provides an opportunity to increase your learning, which can ultimately enhance your own teaching. The news feeds you subscribe too, could be geared toward your own professional goals, interests, and content area. In the video I shared, you'll see there is a section all for science. I make a habit to check this every morning before school to be able to share any interesting recent stories that pertain to astronomy or earth science. There are a variety of ways to use this tool, depending on your comfort level, the easiest is to use it for personal learning goals.

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Google Plus
     This tool is similar to other social media tools, however, it is very easy to join a "community" and collaborate globally, or create a "hangout" to collaborate locally. The tool is very versatile. It has the potential to allow for the typical social networking needs, such as sharing photos, status updates, sharing videos..etc. However, underneath that social piece there are powerful collaboration tools. Any user can quickly join a "community" of their interest and start gathering relevant information about that topic. Similarly, you can add your own information to that community and trigger your own conversation. Here is a quick video of my communities page (the video was cropped to protect much of my own identity) {here is that social media article I clicked on in the video http://goo.gl/6BmYYk}
    Google Plus also offers "hangouts." This acts as a virtual conference room. A hangout can be scheduled and collaborators will join either virtually via webcam, or participate without video and be able to communicate through typing. This is real-time collaboration and allows for immediate feedback. This could be a great place for students to interact virtually with other peers on a global scale. A Google hangout might be organized by teachers to host a debate, scientific conference, discussion, or even an interview. The potentials are limited to the creativity of the teacher and the technology integration specialist. This tool also has the potential to act like an RSS reader and allow the user to subscribe to news headlines to gather current information based on interests. The great thing about this feature is that a discussion on a current event could take place instantaneously. A student may discover a headline, and organize a hangout to have a real-time discussion about the topic.

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Twitter
    It took me a while to come around to this one. I was one of those people hung up on the 140 character limit, and not understanding how anyone could effectively collaborate through texting language. But, I have to admit, there is a ton of information available with this tool. It takes a bit of understanding the lingo to become comfortable, but it has huge potential for collaboration. Using hashtags allows you to quickly contribute, and follow the discussions relevant to that topic. Each user has the potential to create lists. These are groups that can be created to include specific people, with private collaboration. They can have private members with public collaboration, or can be completely public. Lists offer the potential for a wide range of collaboration. This could be an extension of at PLN to share and gather information, or could be more in depth as far as posting discussion questions, and answers.
    The tool can act like a powerful search engine to quickly find information form people discussing a particular topic. The potential with this tool for students is again, limited by the creativity of the teacher and technology integration specialist. Student could create their own lists for discussion forums, they could add content via tweets with hashtags, they could simply follow relevant people related to the topics.There is a range of collaboration options. 

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Final Thoughts
   The three tools described have the potential to enhance learning for the educator and the student. There are great opportunities to create local collaboration groups, global groups, and incorporate these groups into a classroom. Students have the opportunity to expand their cultural horizons, and increase learning opportunities through collaboration. A student could use these tools to start their own learning network based off their interests. The important thing to remember is to be safe and collaborate appropriately.