What Are Your “Top Sites”?

Learning is social. Learning is connected. Learning is often informal.

The speaker this week in EC&I 831, Dr. Richard Schwier, discussed learning environments and encouraged us to reflect how we learn. He shared, with the class, how he consumes online content, and reflected that most of his online activity was social. In reviewing my own “Top Sites” in Safari I discovered that I too like to be social and connected online:

Here’s my quick list:

• http://www.facebook.com/
• http://twitter.com/
• http://www.kayak.com/
• http://us.lastminute.com/
• http://www.astd.org/
• http://www.flickr.com/
• http://techknowtools.wordpress.com/
• https://www.gmail.com/
• http://eci831.wikispaces.com/
• http://delicious.com/pasquats
• http://blip.fm/all

There is a lot of learning in my online life, and I definitely rely on my social connections and tools for support. While organization and structure help construct “formal” education, there is great value in spontaneous, chaos for informal learning. The key for learning is to engage and connect your students in the educational process.

A quote that resonated with me both as a learner and educator:

“We as educators need to reconsider our roles in students’ lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second.” William Richardson

Social Networks Are for the Kids.

Silly adults. Social networks are for kids (too)!

Although my interests lie in technology use in higher education, I stumbled upon an interesting article, Child-friendly social networking tools, in the eSchool News.

Many child-friendly applications have been created for students in the K-12 realm, which include various security and privacy features to keep educators at ease.  These arenas allow schools to develop online learning communities within their classroom, schools and/or school districts.

The article describes more specifics about the following tools:

• ConnectYard
• eChalk
• ePals
• SayWire

I think an introduction to these types of technologies in school at an early age is excellent. This provides  a great classroom model and hands-on experience for the instruction with various tools, i.e. wikis, blogs, and more! Students learn to design, create, share and interact with their peers online for learning.

Most students in higher education are VERY aware of social networking tools.  The only issue is that many college students would not think to utilize these online technologies to support learning and academic success (unless their current faculty is ‘hip’ to the technology jive).   To best support academic learning in the later years, instructors need to use these online resources during formative, educational years.

Projects & Ideas from Laura’s Learning Community

Great first meeting with the Learning Community (LC)! It sounds like many of you have different ideas, goals & reasons to attend. I hope that you are able to connect with others in our LC to brainstorm & share ideas on what sort of technologies you might take back to your home campuses. Here are a few that were mentioned from our first LC Session:

• Contact & connect with more students
• Retention & recruitment
• Orientation & First Year students
• First Generation students & limited web value
• Grants (Title 3) & deciding how to best utilize resources/plans
• Student Readiness Inventory
• Online Advising Booking System & Database
• Optimize limited resources due to fiscal cut backs
• Adult online education programs
• Online university models & online advising
• Web-based surveys
• Geography & isolation – need to connect
• Degree audit programs
• Technical support & talking to IT
• Limited internet connection & experience (the students)
• Costs of implementation

PHEW! Those are just a few, and I am sure that more will arise from our LC discussions. Please post any questions or discussion topics that you would like to address below. See you at 4:30 pm!