I’ve been fascinated by the ideas of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for ages now, pretty much ever since I first heard about it.

Perhaps this is why Steve Wheeler’s (is that @timbuckteeth or @stevewheeler? But that’s another story) latest blog post made me think long and hard about it again. The images/slides below are from Joyce Seitzinger’s (@catspyjamasnz) “Professional Learning Environment (PLN) model” presented recently in Melbourne, Australia.

Click the images above to read Steve’s original post on the sildes, as presented by Joyce.

It is important to note that the tools listed in the ‘deisgn’ slide are not the recommended tools but rather an indication of what ‘could’ be used, and that you insert your own personal preferences for each segment.

So, what do you think … does it strike a chord for you like it did for me.

PS. here is my PLN that I ‘devised’ back in December 2009:

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We are here again, that lovely time of year when we get to say something nice about each other and help us get the recognition that money can’t buy (?).

Nominations for the 2011 Edublog Awards are open, and here are mine.

• Best individual blog: Steve Wheeler – Learning with ‘e’s.
• Best individual tweeter: There are so many to choose from, but I’m going for Steve Wheeler / @timbuckteeth
• Best ed tech/resource sharing blog: James Clay – e-Learning Stuff
• Best twitter hashtag: #edtech
• Best free web tool: Twitter
• Best educational use of podcast: @Documentally
• Lifetime achievement: Prof. Stephen Heppell

OK folks, let’s see what & who you like this year … click here for the Edublog 2011 nomination hashtag: #eddies11 and make you own nominations here: http://edublogawards.com/nominations/

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A recent study by the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth found that almost every Higher Education Institution in the US is on Facebook and 84% of them are also on Twitter, and are using them to connect with the students to tell them “about events and meetings and resource centers with Facebook or Twitter. With Foursquare, they can actually get students to go to them.”

• Source: Social Networking Nudge

I signed up to Foursquare just under a year ago and am enjoying it (even if I don’t get out much!). But what I have seen is that friends, colleagues, peers, etc are interested in locations and (when linked in with other geo-location based services like the photo manipulation and sharing app Instagr.am Foursquare can come alive very very quickly.

One of the things I have been trying to work out is how we can utilise the current fashion for this type of geo-caching activity and badge/mayor-hunting passion for the students, to get them outside and engaged in something – like Induction week?

“Foursquare uses the geo-locator technology built into smartphones to turn exploring physical places — like, say, a college campus and the surrounding town — into a virtual game by encouraging users to ‘check in’ virtually at places they visit in real life. They can leave virtual notes, or ‘tips’, about a place for future visitors.”

By checking in to venues you score points, and if you check in more often than others over a time period (2 months I think?) you could become the ‘Mayor’ and ‘own’ the place (until someone checks in more times than you). Some places (mostly restaurants) offer special deals to the current Mayor, which gives an incentive to return and check in again to see if you can steal the mayorship. Foursquare confirms someone’s presence through the phone’s geo-locator – if you are not deemed to be close enough then the check-in doesn’t count.

So what does this report (link above) suggest as ways to encourage students to use Foursquare?

• Texas Agricultural and Mechanical College held a Foursquare scavenger hunt, giving students a sequence of clues for places on campus to check in. The reward? A 30-percent discount at the campus bookstore.
• At Waukesha they have entertained the idea of using Foursquare to encourage student involvement in extracurricular activities, while at the same time strengthening ties with local businesses. “Maybe if a student checks in at the association for student activities office, then they could be eligible for a discount or coupon for a local store/restaurant]. Studies have shown the positive effects of engagement with campus life on student retention and success, she says. “At its core Foursquare allows you to tap in to student engagement.”

The report also highlights the downside of this kind of activity – the time taken to set it up and to monitor it:

“A staff member usually spends three to four hours a week monitoring and updating Foursquare. Other events such as the scavenger hunt, required several full days of effort from the social media team, the business development team, and students.”

The report also send s a cautious note to anyone thinking of utilising Foursquare: “If students are not already active on Foursquare, it will be challenging for student affairs staff to generate buy-in for a new social media tool.”

However, Foursquare is aiming itself at the student market with the availability of four specific badges only open to ‘branded pages‘ created by education establishments (US only at this stage I think). “Several campus officials talked about the possibility of allowing students to redeem badges for campus bucks — just like a café might offer free coffee to its virtual mayor.” This sounds good, but in order to make it work there has to be the incentive, whether it is financial or other. I have heard of someone using Foursquare as a virtual register for their classes (you can create your own unique check-in point if it doesn’t already exist like a specific room), but this is heavily dependent on each and every students having a mobile device capable of using the system.

Are you using Foursquare for anything other than the morning coffee fix? Do you think you have a good idea for how we can use Foursquare in and out of the classroom? Please leave your thoughts and ideas below.

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A while ago I posted about a guide to Moodle that Joyce Seitzinger had created – “Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers“, and I am pleased to say it was well received and gained quite a lot of re-tweets and hits, both on my website and even more importantly on Joyce’s. At the time I said I was working on a version (copy?) for Blackboard and I am pleased to say I have completed the first draft.

I am not as comfortable with Bloom’s Taxonomy as Joyce so therefore have not included the information in the version below, but I hope that with continued time and effort to become familiar with it I can incorporate it into version 2, and any new/updates. This version is intended to be included in a Conference I am hoping to attend later this year so is set at A1 size for printing, but still looks good printed on A3 (hint: A4 is a little too small).

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As we’ve all said before … Twitter is the biggest, best staffroom you can find, and share! Watch this and share with anyone who doesn’t believe you …

Well, nice and simple, eh? Love it!

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I signed up to Foursquare a while ago, and then did nothing with it. I couldn’t see the point, and am still struggling to see it even now. I like it, I sign-in to various places as I go about my travels, I’m even the Mayor of a couple too. But why?

Firstly, let’s look at Foursquare and what it is. According to Business Insider Foursquare is ;

“… primarily for letting your friends know where you are and figuring out where they are. Secondarily, it’s for collecting points, prize ‘badges’, and eventually, coupons, for going about your everyday business.”

This is really designed for people who are mobile and have, or have access to, a smart phone that enables them to install the Foursquare application on. But hang on, is that it … just let your friends now where you are and find out where they are? Do we really need this level of intimacy? The Public Relations Blogger writes;

“Unlike other social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare is focused primarily on sharing places we’ve been and that we would maybe recommend to others.”

And there is the crux of the system … “sharing places” and “recommend to others”. This is where a business is going to use it; get your visitors to sign-in when they come, leave a tip about services, product, etc and share with their friends and anyone else who is in range. Businesses can now invite visitors by putting a ‘special’ offer on their place for visitors or the ‘Mayor’ of the place, thus enticing people back and back to get that elusive badge.

The above link to the Public Relations Blogger has details on the different aspects of Foursquare; these are;

• Check-ins
• Mayors
• Points
• Badges
• Friends
• Tips & To-Dos

Here are some images from the iPhone Foursquare app:

[View as Slideshow]

Another great way to explain the system is in video form … so here’s a great one from the folks at HowCast.com:

So, that’s covered the “what is …”, now what about the “why” question? There are obvious benefits for using it for field trips as it can integrate with Google Earth, so students can remember where they’ve been, take notes of the different elements of the field trip you set them, etc. You could create a location-based tour where you and the students check in to different venues you’ve mapped out, ahead of time, with a view to increase their awareness of where the library is, where the student services or counsellors can be found, etc.

I have yet to see a real purpose to using Foursquare in the classroom, as that is too limiting geographically, but for a wider application the Institution could use it to xxx - Harvard University have special badges you can acquire by checking into so many locations around campus and they ”announced in January that it would become the first university to use Foursquare to help students explore its campus” (source Chronicle.com).

Further examples of Foursquare and how it could be used in the classroom and education can be found on this link: 30+ Ways to Use Foursquare In Education. While it’s great to read other people’s blog posts on what they’re doing, or intend to do with the service, let’s not forget the owners of the system; here’s what they Foursquare saying on thir blog;

“Foursquare is making a concerted effort to lure more college students to the service this fall. At least 10 schools have launched branded pages in the past few weeks and foursquare has begun a search for campus representatives to help evangelize the service. Now they’ve launched a series of five college-themed badges that can be unlocked at select schools across the country.”
Foursquare: Celebrate Back to School season with five new foursquare badges

It seems Foursquare is going to be better for marketers and students to ‘play’ with than for teachers and educators to use effectively, although there are some good uses starting to come out of the woodwork. How the system develops will determine how well it ‘fits’ with the needs of geo-locating places and people, but I think it is something to watch for the future, after all one million users can’t all be wrong?

Are you using Foursquare, have you found a way to utilise it in your teaching, or are you (like me) tagging the world around you to see how many badges you can uncover? Please share your Foursquare experience by leaving a comment.

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Note: In this series I’ll delve into some of the better plugins available for WordPress that I am already using, or about to start using. I’m aiming to highlight 30 of the better plugins.

Can WordPress get any better, whether it’s for a simple blog of a full corporate platform for the website and much more … yup, it can!

Just announced is the new Blackbird Pie pluginfor WordPress, which will automatically display the tweet, it’s author, and appropriate links in your WordPress page or post. They say it …

“… is a method of displaying tweets as rich full content rather than as just simple URLs or images. With Blackbird Pie Twitter, hashtags link to search pages and usernames link to twitter profiles. An individual tweet, or pie, includes all the details, design, and information that a single tweet page would include. As a blogger, Blackbird Pie offers a great way to engage Twitter on your site and bring discussion to your blog.”

What do you need to do … other than install the plugin? Easy, just like the YouTube plugin to embed YouTube videos by simply pasting the URL, all you do it paste the URL of the tweet and the plugin does the rest (don’t forget to remove the link on the text!). Here it is in action (I thought I’d use one of my old tweets as an example);

Blogged: What is a Learning Technologist (part 2)? http://is.gd/gcwCs

October 22, 2010 10:32 am via WordTwit PluginReplyRetweetFavorite

@hopkinsdavid

David Hopkins

Great, isn’t it!

Since the upgrade I downloaded this morning (November 16th) there’s now a lovely little blackbird button that’s been added to the toolbar, and from here you can insert a tweet based on full URL, the ID of the tweet, or search for a username and select the tweet from the list;

The options are …

[View as Slideshow]

Which gives you the tweet like this;

This Robin Hood Airport thing is being blown up out of all proportion #twitterjoketrial

November 12, 2010 11:29 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@GeneHunt

Gene Hunt

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We’re here again (wow, was that a year already?) and below are my nominations for the Edublog Awards, 2010. I’ll not be making a nomination for every category, but I hope the names below are capable of being worthy winners.

Here goes:

Best individual blog - Jane’s eLearning Pick of the Day
Best individual tweeter – Steve Wheeler @timbuckteeth
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion – #edtech
Best educational podcast – @Documentally
Best use of a PLN – The Educator’s PLN http://edupln.ning.com
Lifetime achievement – Sir Ken Robinson

Good luck peoples, let’s see how we go.

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Thank you to Gabriela Grosseck for bring this presentation to my attention, “Creating a Personal Learning Network”.

Creating a Personal Learning Network by Corinne Weisgerber.

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I am seeing and reading so many blog posts and tweets with someone trying to explain what is a Social Network, or what is a PLN/PLE.

Which is why I couldn’t resist showing you these Educational Social Media Diagrams from the HubSpot Blog;

This first one highlights, for those slightly confused about what exactly is Web 2.0, that we’re no longer in a broadcast medium where the big corporations tell us what is going on but rather that each of us is capable of finding out from our network (be they people or tools like Twitter or Facebook) about the world around us.

“Social Media Participation Chart” by Oversocialized

This next one is another really good and simple way of showing the uninitiated  about, in my mind, how Generation Y or the Millennials think about the digital world they inhabit. If, like me, you are not from the Gen-Y era (but either want to be or work with them) then this could help you understand their world – this is especially important for those of us who work in education, as this is what they want and expect from us, so we have to deliver on it .. yes?

Digital Mindsets by David Armano

Again, this is another very good and graphic way to produce the same information – in-roads and barriers to the network and information, nicely laid out like a city plan.

Welcome to Social Town by E Factor Media

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