PLN Conference Reflections

Over several days last week I completed a series of small group conferences with the kids in my class about their personal learning networks. This is our first try at formal conferencing this year (something I do quite a lot as the year rolls through) and (therefore obviously) our first attempt at speaking together about our PLN's.

I had given the kids the questions ahead of time and had given them several days to prepare. I told them that they did not need to have written answers to read, but they needed to spend some time reflecting on their progress and that they were allowed to bring their notes if they wanted to.

Most of the conferences were groups of 2 students and me and lasted about 10 minutes or so. Several things I learned and key points that the kids brought up:

• They often did not know where the kids were located who they were subscribing to. They didn't care. Geography was irrelevant. They were interested in the voice and the ideas, not the location of the student.
• Most of the kids were reading their Bloglines accounts 2 - 3 times each week which I thought was a fine beginning point for trying to change habits and introduce a new tool.
• Kids mentioned repeatedly that one thing they were doing to strengthen their network was to delete blogs they were not reading or did not find interesting. When I questioned them about how this was strengthening their networks, they told me that deleting voices they were not interested in was focusing their reading, thus strengthening them.
• Few of the kids were able to tell me something that they were challenged by or did not agree with. As they have been free to choose any school appropriate blogs for their network (besides the required reading I have given them) they wondered why they were supposed to have blogs they didn't agree with. Why would they subscribe to things they did not agree with?
• When asked to set a goal for next conferences (a month to six weeks from now) most of the kids said they needed to spend more time reading the works of others and writing comments.

As a teacher interested in using aggregated information as a source of material in my classroom, there are several things that I need to do based on what I've learned over the last week:

• I need to ensure that kids have enough time in the classroom to read what is in their aggregators and to respond to it. We emphasize our priorities to our students through how we budget our classroom time.
• I need to be ready to move quickly to adjust time and bring things to kids' attention when it shows up in their aggregators. Working this way you never know when "content jewels" will show up that need to be brought out and discussed.
• The need to geographically contextualize posts. While I definitely understand that the net makes us all neighbours, I still think it is important that kids think about where their subscriptions are coming from. I believe this is especially true when they are dealing with blogs filled with personal voices and experiences.
  

Overall, I am pleased with these first conferences and with the understanding of 2.0 tools that the kids are beginning to develop. They are learning about their voice on an international stage, they are learning to develop networks and community. They are spending time reflecting on their learning and on the experiences of other. Their technical understanding of our small pieces (flickr, WordPress, pbwiki, and Bloglines) is developing and they are learning to fit these pieces together, understanding the role of each tool for their benefit. The emphasis that each kid places on each piece is different as they find that one tool fits their needs better then others, and this is completely fine. A custom fit solution for each student.

technorati tags:web2.0, classrooms, reflection, pln, ple