Initiating and maintaining a Personal Learning Network (PLN) can be an incredibly exciting, rewarding and very effective way to engage with professional learning. However, learning mediated by social networks is not without its challenges. This post is all about how to manage perhaps the most obvious challenge that connected professionals encounter when they engage through […]
Challenges for Connected Professionals: The shadow-side of the PLN
When you speak with teachers who maintain a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for professional learning, most of them wonder how they ever lived without it. Being able to tap into the global ‘hive mind’ to seek inspiration, new pedagogical approaches, feedback and collegial support is pretty awesome. Prior to the development of digital social networks, […]
Don’t believe what you see – digging deeper for the truth
Feature image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay We live in a world that is mediated by technology. Every morning we wake up and check our phone for the latest news and updates from friends. We make a cup of coffee and sit down in front of a screen to catch up on our emails. We chill […]
Linking, Stretching and Amplifying at the National Education Summit in Brisbane
In this post, you will find an overview of my presentation which I gave at the National Education Summit in Brisbane, where I presented in the Capacity Building, School Libraries Strand. To give you a summary of my presentation, here is the abstract describing what I shared: PROFESSIONAL LEARNING FOR CONNECTED TEACHER LIBRARIANS: LINKING, STRETCHING […]
Connected Learning in the Classroom
Connected Learning is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity. Connected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success […]
What next? Looking for a new grand adventure!
Although I’ve blogged for many years, I created this space at the beginning of my PhD journey, over 3 years ago. As I re-read my first post to this blog, I am amazed at how quickly the time has passed, and I honestly can’t quite believe that I have successfully completed my PhD and am […]
Another exciting online learning experience – the Twitter Conference
Experimenting with different online learning opportunities which take advantage of the affordances of openly networked online social technologies underpins my approach to learning and teaching. Just as I encourage participants in the subjects that I teach as part of the Master of Education at QUT to take a leap into unknown online spaces, I try […]
Out with the old: Using a Twitterchat as a formal learning strategy
This semester I am teaching LCN600 Connected Learning, as part of the Master of Education course at Queensland University of Technology. This course explores online connected and networked learning. Students are first challenged to map and analyse a connected learning environment through the lens of the Connected Learning Framework by Ito et.al, (2013). They are […]
Copyright, Creativity and Change
Markus Spiske Setting the scene A number of recent events have led to this post. The first was the publication of a terrific blog post by Elizabeth Hutchinson who wrote about Why copyright ‘For educational purposes’ is becoming a real problem. The second was my participation as co-leader of Topic 2, Sharing and Openness for […]
Clickbait, consternation and that elusive silver bullet: Falling down the rabbit hole
Feature image: Image by Computerizer from Pixabay Growing up, my parents demanded that my sister and I were quiet from 6pm until around 6.15pm every evening. This 15 minutes was when ‘the news’ – specifically ‘the headlines’ were on the television, and if Mum or Dad missed hearing the bulletin because we were playing noisily, […]