Feedly

I love the functions of Feedly. Having one place to see all of the blogs that I am following in one place is wonderful. I am learning so much! I am still working on trying to figure everything out. I have been searching blogs that interest me and adding them to Feedly. I have not been using Blogger or Twitter at all and I am happy that I get to learn about how they can be a great PLN. I still feel like I am being forced out of my comfort zone by having to blog and Tweet, but I hope that this will help me gain skills and knowledge that will help me in my professional life.

Twitter

I am enjoying learning about Twitter! My kids can't believe that my homework is learning about how to tweet and how to follow people on Twitter. I signed up for a Twitter several years ago, but I never used it or even really wanted to. I felt like it was like Facebook which I really have a hard time with. Sometimes I take weeks off from Facebook because I feel like it is a waste of time.
I was really excited to hear from Julie Smith about Twitter. She made me look at it from a different perspective. I love how she said "lurk," which is something I am very good at doing. I have a really hard time posting to Facebook and Instagram, but I like to look or "lurk." Most of the time, like I said, it feels like such a waste of time. I really like that Julie said that "if Twitter is boring, you are following the wrong people." This got me really interested in finding people that I would like to follow and getting in on conversations that are important to me. I still feel a bit intimidated by Twitter but I can say that I am excited about what I have learned so far.

In reading Web 2.0 Applications and Practices for Learning Through Collaboration, I became very interested in learning more about how to use these applications. I have blogged before in one other class at ISU. This will be my second time using a blog. I am particularly interested in the potential of collaborative learning. As mentioned in the article, a blog can become a place where groups can "build on each other's work and progress." I know that a blog has the potential to be a great place where I can increase my learning and in turn, help others learn and progress. I think that may have been the intent of my professor in a previous class I had. However, at the time, I did not find it very rewarding to me. I think there was the same type of issues as mentioned in the article, where my classmates and I found it hard to give feedback. We were asked to post our papers to our blogs and give feedback to each other. Each students paper was about a different subject they had researched. I don't think we were familiar with the subjects of each other's papers and did not feel like we should be editing it. I did enjoy the experience working with blogger but didn't feel that I was learning through collaboration. Most of us in the class worked very independently. It will be very important to have a common goals and issues to discuss in order for the web applications to be effective in the classroom.
I am hoping that this class will give me the opportunity to learn more about web 2.0 applications. I am very interested in learning about those that I have never heard of before until I read the article. I have never heard of Pixorial, Stroome, and Kaltura. I have also never used Twitter but am really excited about learning how to use it.