PLN Cultivation

Teacher Suggested Topic: In the second week of cultivating your PLN, what are some things you’ve already learned? Are you seeing possibilities in Twitter?




New learning for me since the first minute of this class mostly centers around Diigo, the social bookmarking site. Having crashed my computer just a few times in the course of my professional career, this site sounds lifesaving. I confess I haven't mastered the site or become a daily user yet, but I'm confident I will in a month or so.
Although I've had a Twitter account for a year or so, I learned how to do some new things including using hash tags for groups and shortening addresses using bitly. The URL shortener makes me feel more like a pro and less like an amateur because now instead of being a parasite living off of what everyone else posts, I now can be a contributing member of the network by sharing awesome articles I find or my own blog posts. It was great to see Cybraryman's list of hash tags and chats. I saw at least a few I'd like to sit in on at some point in the future.
Mostly, I'm seeing how all the social learning things are connected. I can use Facebook and Twitter to advertise my blog. I can use my blog to find more Twitter followers,etc.
Also, Twitter helps me find things to read online I wouldn't normally know. For example, one of my favorite articles in the past week was on Justin Tarte's blog about Daniel Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind." He described the movement from farmers workers to factory workers to knowledge workers and on up to our current concept workers. He also summarized six main aptitudes teachers might adopt to be educators of the 21st Century including Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning.
Overall, I'm enjoying having at least three hours a week dedicated to sitting, browsing, thinking and dreaming about how to incorporate social learning, 21st Century learning, and technology into my life and teaching.

If you're not learning, you're dead, so keep going.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Social Learning Class

     Last night was my first night of my new class called Social Learning.  Our teacher let us know the main purpose of the class is to learn how to share.  Throughout the class, my goal is to "share" on this blog at least one time per week.  The main topics will relate to schools, learning, technology, creativity, and fun.
     My first topic is actually a question I have pondered for some time and would love to hear some discussion about to get a better idea of how I should proceed.  When creating my online presence or digital footprint, what rhyme or reason should I apply to how I name myself when I am creating various accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, a blog, a Ning, etc.?  My mom has always reminded me of a phrase her father used, which is "Fools names and fools faces show up in public places."  When I think about that, I often think I'd like to remain anonymous, not too mention it would give me a little more freedom in what I write especially when it comes to controversial subjects.
     On the other hand, using my real name would keep it real and force me to display integrity in my writing.  I should be able to stand behind my thoughts, feelings, and views.  One downside to this is a security factor.  When a person has a last name as unique as mine and names his or her location, it is just so very simple for anyone to find out exactly where I live and lots of other information about me.  However, they can do that anyway, so maybe I don't need to stress about it.
      What do you think?  How did you decide how to name your different social networking items?  Did you take into consideration personal branding, your own mission statement, security?  Did you think it through or just choose something and your brand grew out of that?
       For now, for this blog at least, I will be me, Sarah Kroenke.  The views posted here are mine and not those of my family, my friends, or my employer.