John Ward, RIP

This post discusses how to build your own Personal (or Professional) Learning Network. Instead of starting by telling you which tools to use, I want to talk about why you would do this in the first place….

This is a photo of my high school math teacher, Coach John Ward, who recently passed away after a long career of distinguished service at Bishop Diego High School in Santa Barbara. He took me from being a hopelessly poor math student to a very capable one in three years of instruction, despite my deep and abiding dislike of the subject. He did this by consistently providing me with high quality materials, challenging problems to solve, and then expecting me to put in the work– or “plug and chug” as he would say.

Think of your favorite teachers over the years– they presented you with challenging, thought-provoking material and then asked you to think about it, question it, master the skills, and respond in a thoughtful way. By the time we’re in college, we get used to writing thoughtful essays about challenging ideas several times a week. When we leave formal education, many of us get out of this familiar rhythm, and instead focus on “getting things done”. When we’re in this frenzied state, we are not taking the time to reflect on new information and experiences we get from our work.

The process of taking information in, meshing it with what you know, and breathing it out again forms something of a “learning loop” that fits with a Constructivist idea (ed theory, sorry laypeople) of what high quality learning looks like.

You can think of building your own Personal Learning Network as an attempt to create this “learning loop” for yourself using the tools at your disposal. Instead of a bunch of teachers selecting challenging information for you, the Internet gives you access to a world of bloggers, tweeters, speakers, photographers, videographers, and colleagues who will teach you anything you want for nothing more than the price of your time and attention. All they ask of you is to think about it, question it, master the skills, and respond in a thoughtful way. You can participate in this conversation by writing your own blog, tweeting, organizing sources, speaking, and teaching others in the way that works best for you. This is all part of what we educators call “Life-Wide Learning”, where you are continuously gaining knowledge and building skills that help you stay professionally competitive, personally empowered, and connected with a community of people who share your interests– even after you leave formal education.

A Game of Inputs and Outputs

You can think of building your PLN as a game of Inputs and Outputs. You need to find and organize information that will teach you, challenge your ideas, and help you stay on top of interesting new developments in your areas of interest. You also need to get in the habit of “adding value” to the information that comes in to you in whatever way works for you. That could mean writing your reactions to an interesting article you read, making lists of bookmarks you find to make it easier for others to find relevant information, video yourself demonstrating a skill you learned, or sharing resources with people you think could benefit from them. What you do is as unique as your skills and interests are, but the focus should be on sharing your learning with others who could benefit from it. Though this practice can benefit you and your business, think of it as doing well by doing good first. Most people don’t like being marketed to, but everybody likes getting free, relevant information about things they care about.

My Inputs and Outputs

To give you an idea of what my PLN looks like, I included an incomplete list of my inputs and outputs. Take a look. Next, I’ll show you how information flows from my inputs, through my brain, and out my outputs.

Inputs

• Social Media
  • Google Reader
  • Podcasts
  • Blogs
  • Google Alerts
  • Twitter
  • Recommendation Engines
    • GReader Recommendations
    • Twitter Recommendations
• IRL (“in real life”)
  • Meetups
  • In-Person Connections
  • Conferences & Trade Shows
  • Professional Organizations
  • Events/Parties

• Outputs
  • Your Blog
  • Tumblelog/ Buzz
  • Status Updates
  • Bookmark!
  • Videoblogging
  • SlideShare
  • Present in Conferences or Trade Shows
  • Podcasts

Inputs and Outputs: A Workflow

Inputs

A first step towards forming a PLN is to start getting good quality information flowing in to you in an organized way so you can easily consume it at your convenience. My favorite tool for this job is Google’s free RSS reader, titled simple “Google Reader“. Reader allows me to collect RSS feeds (think of them as real-time updates from several different news sites, blogs, and other continuously updated websites) in a simple digest format. It enables me to quickly scan over headlines about anything I’m interested in, read what I feel like reading, and skip the rest. It takes the place of a newspaper for me– in fact, it’s a paperless newspaper where I’m the managing editor who decides what I’ll see! You can choose to include a mixture of “established” news sites (like the New York Times or the BBC) alongside updates from less established sites like your neighborhood activities committee, an industry-insider blog, or vegandad.blogspot.com. You can also organize them into folders like I have so you can switch between your many interests quickly.

Over the years I have collected RSS feeds from major thought leaders, news blogs, and even wiki site updates about information in my field, and this makes sure that if it’s happening in education technology, I’ll see an update in my Reader. I can honestly say that the time I have spent building my Reader into a well-rounded reflection of my interests has made me a more marketable and able worker, and a more empowered individual.

Enough sales pitch– let’s get started!

1. Get a Google Account.
2. Go to Google Reader.
3. follow the steps in the video “Welcome to Google Reader“.

After those steps, you should have a Google Reader with at least a few feeds in it. You might also want to check out these celebrity GReader reading lists by popular bloggers and intelligentsia types that you can simply add to your Reader.

From this point, you can be on the lookout for RSS feeds on your favorite websites, blogs and wikis. The RSS symbol

will appear in your browser’s address bar whenever you are on a website that features RSS feeds. Just click it and it will help you add updates from that page to your Google Reader!

Podcasts

Podcasts are basically RSS-powered blogs which contain audio and video files and are usually consumed on an iPod or smartphone. They are another very important part of my information intake every week. Just like my blogs, I line them up in a podcast player for when I’m ready to hear them (driving, walking the dog, etc.) and I don’t worry about it if I miss them. It’s like a DVR for interesting audio and video shows on a whole range of topics.

Most people subscribe to podcasts in iTunes, and then let iTunes sync the media to their player. I recently discovered that my Android phone’s Google Listen podcast player can actually use a Google Reader folder as its podcast subscriptions folder and download podcasts over the air! Here’s my list of favorite podcasts– all organized by Google Reader. If you prefer listening to news rather than reading it (or a mix of both), check into the top 50 podcasts on PodCast Alley.

Twitter

Twitter is another very valuable place where I can queue up challenging and entertaining ideas from the world’s best and brightest until I’m ready to read them. Some people dismiss Twitter as a frivolous medium– saying “it’s only people talking about what they had for lunch”. I’ve found it to be a vibrant community of smart people in my field giving real-time updates and discussions about newsworthy links, reactions to the news, and thoughtful quotes.

If you’re interested in Twitter, don’t concern yourself with what you’ll write first. Unfortunately, people do tend to write about lunch before they’ve had a chance to see what can be done in Twitter. The best thing to do with Twitter (at first) is to search it. Ask Twitter what’s going on with a topic you care about, and I think you’ll be surprised to find a compelling mix of formal and informal perspectives that you can’t find anywhere else. I watched Obama’s 2008 election on Twitter, and I saw a mix of people from all over the world giving their reactions to that historic event.

As you start to find people whose perspectives and voices you get some benefit from, follow them. It’s a great way to form relationships with people you can learn a lot from. (It might also inspire you to contribute your own voice to the conversation!)

Twitter organizes conversations around topic tags called #hashtags. You can make any word into a hashtag by adding a pound sign to the beginning. Twitter turns these into links to all of the postings on that topic. Website Whatthetrend.com can help you find conversation topics that are relevant to your interests.

To learn more about Twitter, check out the great Twitter Guide Book from Mashable.

It’s worth noting that Google Buzz, the Twitter-like thingy from Google, can subscribe you to updates from your friends in Twitter and/or Google Reader so you can see both in one stream. After you get to this point, take a look in Google Buzz and see if it shows a good mix of news for you.

Next Step: Outputs

In Part II of this post, I will discuss the “Outputs” stage, where you can show off your learning and use it to connect with other like-minded individuals.

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Amazon.com‘s AStore Affiliate program pays charities if you search Amazon via a referrer link. In the spirit of giving, here’s how you can replace your Amazon Firefox Search Bar button with the AStore search link of your favorite cause. Amazon will donate to them every time you buy something!

What you’ll need:
1) Firefox
2) The Add to Search Bar extension
3) A favorite charity that has already set up an AStore. I wasn’t able to find many online, but my two favorites that I know of are Heifer.org (an organization that gives helps people in developing nations find sustainable food sources) or  DanCarlin.com (producer of the incredibly excellent podcast HardCore History).

Procedure:
1) Install the Add to Search Bar extension and restart Firefox. This extension allows you to put your cursor in any search bar on your favorite web pages and add that search functionality to your Firefox search bar.
2) Go to your favorite charity’s AStore. Find their AStore search bar, right click in it, and select “Add to Search Bar”.

3) Use this search bar every time you search Amazon, and they will donate to your worthy cause each time you shop!

Image by John and Keturah via Flickr

When you’re looking for work, keeping up with the online job listings is a job in itself. This tutorial will teach you how to automate your job search so you can quickly scan through lots of fresh, relevant job ads every day.

The Big Picture

We are going to put in a series of 5-10 different job search queries into our favorite job boards. The search results they return will have an RSS feed, enabling us to “subscribe” to the search results in a feed reader. After that, all we have to do is open the feed reader, and it will “re-search” all those sites and line up the freshest results in one list for us. From that point, you can just scan quickly down headlines, picking out your dream job. If this sounds too complicated, stay tuned– it’s easy.

You will need:
1) Your favorite RSS reader (I recommend Google Reader)
2) A few RSS-enabled job search websites (I used CraigsList and SimplyHired.com)

Step 1: Creating Good Search Queries

Let’s go to SimplyHired.com and type in a search for the perfect job we’re looking for.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

SimplyHired will return a list of search results fitting our query. This list is “RSS-enabled”, meaning you can subscribe to it in any feed reader (like Google Reader). Just right click ( or Ctrl+click for Mac) on “View RSS Feed” and select “Copy Link Location”.

Copy Link Location

Then you can paste that RSS feed URL into Google Reader’s “Add Subscription” button, and it will “subscribe” you to those search results.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

This means that you will have a long list of headlines for all the relevant job ads.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Step 2: REPEAT with different search results!

If I go back and repeat the process, typing similar search queries, such as “Computer Educator” or “Multimedia Teacher”, I can get several different feeds of good job results all aggregated in a list in my Google Reader.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Step 3: Easily Scan through as Many Job Listings as You Can  Handle– Even via iPhone!

Now, I have a folder of job searches I’ve subscribed to, so all I have to do is open the “Job Search” folder and I can scan through an aggregated, multi-threaded list of fresh job search results on my smartphonewhile I’m walking my dog in the morning.

Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

My method for keeping on top of them is to “Star” the ones that look promising while I’m scanning through, then follow up on the “Starred” ones later. That list of starred entries becomes my “application to-do” list.

Do you have a better way of scanning job ads? Discuss it in the comments!

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As you may have gathered from my defense of desktop email clients, I prefer desktop apps to webapps any day of the week. Even if the app is powered by a web data service (like Gmail), desktop applications can take advantage of the massive computing power of your machine and optimize the user experience in a way that HTML-based webapps simply can’t.

One of my favorite web apps is Google Reader, Google‘s fantastic RSS news feed aggregation service. It makes it possible to subscribe to all your favorite feeds, share, star, and comment on them socially. Now, GRUML optimizes that experience for your desktop, creating the perfect RSS reader.

Don’t take my word for it. Try it out for yourself!

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As the blogosphere debates the death of the desktop email client, I am anxiously awaiting the stable release of Mozilla Thunderbird 3.0. Like devotees of Apple Mail.app or Microsoft Outlook, I have come to depend on the desktop app for speed, stability, and extensibility.

I am a longtime user of Thunderbird and I can’t wait until the 3.0 release. I am prejudiced to prefer desktop apps rather than webapps or AIR apps– especially for tasks that I spend so much time doing (like email).  The reason?
A dedicated app can have keyboard shortcuts and buttons that are ALL designed to speed up your workflow. Using email in a browser means that your keystrokes are optimized for any kindof website, not just email.
If I press [Ctrl+R] in GMail/Firefox, the screen reloads! In a real mail app, [Ctrl+R] means “Reply” as it should IMHO. IN TBird, pressing [down arrow] goes to the next message instead of scrolling down the page. Having intuitive keystrokes lets me FLY through my email in a way I just can’t do in Firefox.

A desktop app can respond to your actions faster and more fluidly than a website can because it doesn’t have to query the server every time you do something.

The killer feature of Thunderbird that sets it apart from all others is the tagging feature. I can assign GTD-influenced Tags (like @Archive, @FollowUp, @ActionItem) simply by pressing number keys 1-9. With one hand on the down arrow and one on the numbers 1-4 keys, I can quickly sort all my mail so I know what to do with it next (in proper GTD form).

I grudgingly admit that Gmail is quickly adding features that make the web interface more awesome. That does not, however, mean that using a general purpose browser for a site-specific task is a good thing. I would love to see Google develop apps that combine the power of their online apps with a true desktop experience.

Imagine it: a Google Docs desktop app that works like a word processor but syncs to the cloud? That would be awesome! A Gmail app (or a plugin for Chrome?) that allows you to customize keyboard shortcuts when you’re on a specific website so your app is completely optimized for the task at hand.

Until that day, I’m going to be rockin’ the Desktop app.

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Opera Unite is an amazing service that allows you to run a web server right out of your own browser! What does that mean? It means that you can share photos, music, and files without uploading them to some external service. You can even set up a private chat room for your friends at a moment’s notice.

This has obvious awesome implications for people who have something to hide– or who just don’t want to share their information with a big corporation. However, I’ve found it to be very useful as a designer– when I finish a large graphic design job for someone I can just put the (huge) image files up on my new webserver, send the URL as an IM or an email, and let my client download it directly. Security-minded companies find this much more desirable than sending sensitive files out over the open intertubes.

You can even stream your iTunes music folder by adding it to the “Media Player” window in Opera Unite. Then you can log into your iTunes from anywhere in the world and listen to your favorite songs off your own computer. Of course, like any good server, your computer has to be ON with Opera Unite running for this to work. That’s what makes it a great option for your old computer that’s just sitting around collecting dust. Turn it into a media server, add Opera Unite, and leave it on, connected to your network.

As anyone who has ever operated their own home server will tell you, it’s sort of a hassle to keep it on and running (especially when you need it most). At least with this, there is no messy configuring.

What do you think? Do you use it? Is there a way you can see it being more practical than using Web 2.0 tools? Talk about it in the comments!

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Zemanta is a Firefox plugin that scans your blog posts for keywords, then suggests links, images, and tags to complement your blog. It’s super easy and free. Check it out!

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