Chapter 5: Review

Chapter 5

    We must also understand connected learning when developing our Personal Learning Network or PLN. It's a type of learning that integrates our interests, relationships, and access to opportunities. By having connected learning and a PLN, we need tools to help us educate ourselves or others with documentation, archiving, connecting, collaboration, and social networking. The textbook "The Connected Educator" explains all these concepts and will be referred back to. 

    Instead of having a constant overload of information on finding a website you had seen before and now need help finding, documenting, and archiving come into play. 

Social bookmarking allows you to categorize content you can share while connecting with others and even discover other articles and links. An example provided by The Connected Educator is Tagging: "Tagging, also known as social booking marking or folksonomy, is a way to organize the content (such as websites, photos, videos, and other blog posts) you can access online by grouping similar items under labels" (Nussbaum-Beach, p. 75). 

    Next are the tools for connecting and collaborating to help grow and help your PLN, like blogs, podcasts, RSS readers, microblogs, wikis, and Google documents. 

• Blogs: can help you connect with educators' organizations, exchange ideas, and promote critical thinking. 
• Podcasts are helpful as they promote motivation, collaboration, and self-reflection. Offering wisdom and advice or even educational purposes
• RSS Readers are used to aggregate the news; it helps scan headlines and read articles from various sources.
• Microblogs: allow anyone to share information with just a click of a button, such as social media (X, Instagram, Facebook, etc.). 
• Wikis: allows for work groups, a webpage enabling collaboration to compile information in one place, with links, videos, and photos. An example of this would be Wikipedia. 
• Google Documents/Microsoft Office: a website that allows you to save documents, files, and projects on a 'cloud,' making it easily accessible. 

    By having these options on hand to help with learning and growing in building a network, we also need to know how to manage it. Our online reputation is an important skill to harbor, as a simple search on the internet and anyone can access your information, schools, friends, employers, or even random people. 

    All this information can relate to my career as a future healthcare provider, going specifically for Physician Assistant; blogs and podcasts can help throughout my journey as an undergraduate student before stepping foot into the career. They can help with providing motivation, advice, and skills needed to advance and work as a team in the field. Microblogging can provide the public with valuable and factual information about the latest diseases, discuss healthcare system issues, inspire future students, and paint a reputation online for prospective employees, graduate programs, and patients. All my actions, word choices, and things I post online are available, and knowing how to manage them will make me look more considerate and distinguish myself.

 Works Cited

Nussbaum-Beach, Sheryl, and Lani Ritter Hall. The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age, Solution Tree Press, Bloomington, IN, 2012, pp. 73–89.