Category Archives: PLN Project

NLS5 Presentation – Slides Available!

Posted on by acrystelle
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A little research project undertaken in the first half of this year, looking into a new information professional’s (my) experiences in developing a personal learning network, turned into a well-received presentation, from which I’m very appreciative of the positive feedback and encouragement.
Some background on the research project and details of the purpose and focus for the presentation can be read from a previous post – Preparing the Mindset.

So before I delve into my NLS5 reflections, I just thought I’d share my presentation slides.

Connecting to the LIS Online Community: Developing a PLN

NLS5 – Preparing the Mindset

Posted on by acrystelle
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What started out as a fragmented idea, fueled by curiosity and encouraged by a certain lecturer, has now evolved into a research project and paper, the presentation to be made at the New Librarians’ Symposium, held in Perth next weekend.

Here, with this post, I’m reflecting on the inception of this project, trying to articulate my thoughts and clarify the purpose of my presentation. So don’t mind me. :)

When the call for papers for NLS5 was announced last year, as quickly as ideas emerged, I had initially dismissed the opportunity. I didn’t think my ideas would be good enough for a serious discussion with somebody, let alone presenting them.

This little research project inspired the start of ‘Flight Path’, and the beginning of an increased presence in the online LIS community. My research looked at the adoption and development of a new information professional’s, my own, personal learning network. I have attempted to capture what it’s like to establish connections and build relationships with others in the community by sharing my thoughts and experiences here, conversing in the Twitter-sphere, and measuring elements of PLN participation and building with quantitative data. The focus was not so much on the tools I used, but how I used them – the strategies and lessons – demonstrating the immersion into the online community “in action”. It’s all very well to set up tools – Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, a blog, etc – but to support PLN growth and the approach to continual professional development, the way the tools are used ultimately determines PLN effectiveness.

Outcomes of my research is by no means complete, nor was it a perfect methodology. What I believe I’ve achieved (and wish to contribute and share) is the establishment of a benchmark for measuring effective and engaging personal learning networks, identification of strategies for PLN adoption and possibly an enhanced understanding of the concept by learning about and applying network theory and connectivism.

The purpose of my presentation is to reflect and share my experiences of PLN development. The aim is to inspire, guide and encourage other new information professionals who may be uncertain about starting out in the online LIS community. I admitted long ago that the mere thought of using technologies and tools was very daunting and difficult to comprehend. There is no doubt in my mind others feel the same way. What I’ll be trying to achieve with my presentation is to put these thoughts at ease, assure there’s plenty of people to assist (and are very happy to!), and show that successful immersion into the online LIS community and the establishment of a personal learning network can happen with small steps.

So the end is near, a chapter comes to a close for this piece of research. Following NLS5, I think I’ll sit down to consider what the next steps will be. What aspect of the PLN concept can I clarify or expand on next?

If interested in some background reading, here’s some key posts I’ve written on PLNs.

10 Must Reads for PLNs
Principles of Connectivism and the PLN
Personal Learning Networks and Environments – Same thing?
PLN Adoption: Which stage are you at?
Focusing on Network Theory

Your Personal Brand & PLN

Posted on by acrystelle
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CPD23 Thing 3 considered personal branding. Prior to my LIS studies I was ignorant of this idea of creating and building my professional self as a brand. And it does make sense, especially in a working climate where people are not likely to stay with one organisation their entire career. We’re entities in ourselves. A thoughtful and strategic approach to building a personal brand is required to market ourselves appropriately to the opportunities we wish to seize and the goals we wish to achieve.

I have a degree in business (marketing), so I tend to think about and apply the term ‘brand’ in this sense. Let’s dust off the old marketing textbooks….here’s some definitions.

Brand – “a perception resulting from experiences with, and information about, a company or a line of products” (Duncan, 2005, p. 6).

An alternative….

Brand – “a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these, intended to identify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” (Kotler et al, 2004, p. 407)

A related concept…..

Brand identity – “the design of the public face or distinctive visual appearance of an organisation or brand” (Duncan, 2005, p. 329).

Okay, so these definitions are heavy on marketing from an organisational and/or consumer-driven perspective but we can see some key elements.

  • Perception – your personal brand is how others see you. How others experience your contributions to discussions, projects, etc form your reputation.
  • Public face – your presence (online and offline) and the professional you display publicly. A blog name, blog design, domain, twitter username, avatar, logo, all make up your online ‘public face’.
  • Differentiation – your character traits, skills, knowledge, experience and interests identify you as a professional and make you different from others.

To me, a personal brand is determined by three things: -

  1. Identity
  2. Reputation
  3. Professional relationships.

Thanks to social media knowing no boundaries, personal learning networks are often formed with members having not met each other in real life. When building a personal learning network – establishing and strengthening relationships – you’d obviously like other people to feel comfortable to form a connection with you. First encounters are often with personal brands. People who you follow, who follow you, people you converse, share and collaborate with form a connection with your brand. You’d like people to be confident with you and respective of your contributions to the personal learning network.

Developing a personal brand is an ongoing process of aligning how others see you with what you’d like to convey. So far, for my online presence, I’ve paid thorough attention to: -

  • Choosing my domain and blog names
  • Twitter username
  • Twitter and Linkedin avatars
  • Look of my blog and choice of photo in the header
  • Look of personal business cards
  • Biographies – for blog and speaking events
  • Content discussed and posted on Twitter and blog.

With the decisions I’ve made about my online presence, I’ve aimed to achieve, to some degree: -

  • an accurate reflection of who I am
  • consistency across ‘profiles’ – LinkedIn, Twitter, Blog
  • flexibility (for my different career stages)
  • purpose and meaning

Given I’m still a LIS student and not sure exactly where I’d like to go in my career (though I have an idea and know what skills I’d like to develop), my ‘offline’ professional presence is about aiming to do my best in everything I undertake, take up opportunities to receive advice as well as to provide it, expand my skillset and knowledge base, and applying what I learn to my work. While the decisions I make impacts the kind of ‘presence’ I convey at this stage of my career, I do not make them lightly. It shouldn’t matter whether you know where you want to head or not, how you conduct yourself among your peers contribute to the development of your personal brand.

My ‘two cents worth’ of advice to others is to start small and pay attention to the smallest of details. This is how I’ve approached establishing a personal brand and I think it’s worked well. It all adds up to being your ‘public face’. Make yourself easy to find and connect with by helping others ‘join the dots’ of your online presence and maintain a consistent identity. Keeping an accurate, and by ‘accurate’ I mean ‘honest’ personal brand will enable you and others to identify people with similar (or varied) interests, values and expertise to connect, share and collaborate with. A personal brand is an important consideration in building a personal learning network.

References

Duncan, T (2005) Principles of Advertising and IMC, 2nd ed. McGraw-Hill; USA.

Kotler et al (2004) Marketing, 6th ed. Pearson Education; China.

Audit Your Personal Learning Environment

Posted on by acrystelle
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No doubt there are others like me who have signed up for, downloaded or acquired tools, applications and devices which make up our Personal Learning Environment. There is every intention to integrate these into our daily or weekly routines. Perhaps we just wanted to try them out, used them for a specific task or project or have used them only on an ad-hoc basis at most. It’s time to clean up!

In an earlier post, where I distinguished a PLN from a PLE, I hinted at my own definition of a Personal Learning Environment. There appears to be variations of a definition, yet two components stick out – tools and learning. Here’s my definition: -

A PLE consists of an individual, learner-oriented collection of tools, resources, services, and connections organised and used to gather and engage with information, reflect, and communicate and collaborate with others, in pursuit of continual learning and achievement of goals and objectives. 

The goal of a PLE audit (or mine) is to re-organise and co ordinate components to increase efficiency by minimising effort required to access and use each component. The outcome of this process is a more effective PLE, better suited to the achievement of learning goals and objectives.

I’ve taken three steps to audit and tidy up my Personal Learning Environment – stocktake, assess and organise.

Stocktake

  1. Gather all log in details for each tool, resource or service. I found this was the easiest way to identify what I’ve signed up to, tried, or use.
  2. Create a list of email subscriptions, web applications, wikis, software of your computer and devices. My list consisted of over 20 tools (!) including Gmail, Mindnode Pro (on my Mac), Dropbox, Twitter, Slideshare, Evernote and Skype.
  3. Divide a page into three columns – Tools/Devices/Resources, Use it?, What for?.
  4. Fill in the table as much as possible.

Assess

Go through each component and assess its role and contribution to your PLE. I created the diagram below to provide consistency and assist with the process.

(I understand the diagram can be hard to read. Click on the image to view a larger version)

Organise

Once you have identified the next steps required to re-organise your PLE components, ensure that you action them! If it will help, create a diagram or edit your list (created during ‘stocktake’) to show your newly designed PLE.  A visual reminds and assists me to see the ‘big picture’. I’m that sort of person, I guess.

Other Tips

  • Take stock of your PLE on a regular basis.
  • Include your online presence in this process. Which ‘presence’ (eg. LinkedIn, blog) is lagging, not being properly maintained that it’s potentially damaging your brand and identity?
  • Identify the role of each component by their function. For example, my Google Reader performs a collecting function and my blog is a thinking and contributing space.
  • Create (and stick with) consistent use of tags, vocabulary and folder structures across similar applications. For example, a project folder on my mac will resemble an arrangement of notebooks in Evernote.
  • If you use Instapaper, create an RSS feed for your “Unread” folder and add it to Google Reader. You’ll only need to look in one place for reading material and resources, not two.

The aim here was to prompt thinking about the effectiveness of a PLE and its components’ efficiency of use. The suggested audit process is intended to be a guide and is by no means exhaustive or absolute. I’m sure there are other ways to evaluate tools and ‘tweaking’ a PLE. This was just my approach. I hope it can be of use to others.

Resources for PLE definition: -

Attwell, G 2010, ‘Supporting Personal Learning in the Workplace’, The PLE Conference, ISSN 2077-9119.

McElvaney, J & Berge, Z 2009, ‘Weaving a Personal Web: Using online technologies to create customised, connected and dynamic learning environments‘, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 35(2).

Educause 2009, ‘7 Things you should know about Personal Learning Environments‘.

(Recent) Noteworthy Reads

Posted on by acrystelle
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In anticipation of the upcoming ‘blog every day of June’ challenge, I thought I’d keep aside some post ideas for now. Goodness knows I’ll need them! So for this PLN project update, I’ll share some recent reads which have prompted thought and (quite) a bit of pondering.

1. iLibrarian – 18 Usability Resources for Librarians

This could not have arrived at a better time. I’ve just started a project at work, re-designing the library’s intranet site – properly cataloguing items in the CMS (for improved control and transparency of content and to increase flexibility for discovery and retrieval), implementing (much needed) functionality to assist efficiency at both library and user ends, and creating a virtual ‘space’ for library users who I may not come into contact face-to-face. I’ve bookmarked a few of these resources already and no doubt I’ll need to refer to them often.

Usability is in a librarian’s or information professional’s ‘DNA’, however I think we tend to rely too much on our judgement or instinct and sometimes forget about involving and asking the users what they think their needs are and what tasks the library needs to support.

2. David Lee King – Skyping from my Car (and other Wow moments)

Hopefully I’ll get a chance to share some of my ‘wow’ moments during ‘blog every day of June’. There’s been a few, especially throughout my ‘PLN’ development and learning about a new world – library and information science. ‘Wow’ moments also exist in the smaller and simpler things in life…..have you had a ‘wow’ moment recently?

3. Alexandra Samuel – Who would you be without the internet?

Now this one really got the brain ticking over. Alexandra shares his reflection with this thoughtful post and an exercise I also hope to do next month. On a serious note though, who would you be without the internet? What profession would you have chosen? What would your work day be like without it?

4. elearnspace – The Problem with Literature Reviews

A somewhat strong view by George Siemens on the value (and problem) with a standard research practice. I have to say, I tend to agree with a response by Jenny Connected. Siemens brings up valid points, and probably some everyone has thought of but hasn’t raised, afraid of the backlash they may bring. A risky post by Siemens, yet no doubt has me thinking about how I may approach literature reviews in my future research.

5. Gigaom (Dawn Foster) via iLibrarian – 5 Tips for Better Performance Reviews

Again, this post is timely. My annual review is coming up next month. I don’t know whether I’d like to ‘brag to my manager’, but perhaps some circumstances requires it (to a reasonable extent). I have the view of ‘actions speak louder than words’. One tip I’ll definitely take on is making sure I keep a record of my achievements. I’ve also implemented reflective practice into my project work as a way of justifying and demonstrating my thought processes for decisions I make and to show continual development of my expertise.

PLN Participation Update

# of Tweets for fortnight 124

# of Followers gained 4

# of Mentions 105

# of People I started following  2

# of Blogs/Feeds added 1