Applied Web 2.0!

I was talking with a colleague yesterday, and they were sharing how they often feel like they don't have time or opportunity to engage in dialogue with others that share expertise with them... that they wished they had more time to focus on the topic (education/activism of a particular group) because it is changing so often, but in the daily run of the mill activities and work expectations, they aren't able to keep up.  They talked about knowing that there was so much information out there, and some people doing things really well, but that often instead of staying ahead of things or having one place to go, they feel forced to wait until someone has a question and then they go on a search to see if they can answer it...

Enter Web 2.0 class!  I was like, "perhaps you need to think about a PLN," (what on earth am I talking about, really).  I don't think I totally butchered the content (although, one can never be sure), but I was like, you could put "some blogs and websites and smart people that talk about things regarding these topics and basically have them there so that once a day or every couple days you could take a look and have all the information in one place and you can highlight and make sticky notes and..."  I didn't talk about the sharing out pieces too because I thought that had been overwhelming, but even as I type I'm thinking about the opportunities to share with the other folks doing this work on and off campus, and that as people leave some of the tools from the PLN could continue, because you could share those resources!

So, look at that!  I've sent them some information and links from class and now they are super excited and had no idea before (I also sent the direct links and gave total credit to this class because I had just watched that intellectual property VoiceThread and was thinking about all the things in the field that are shared and what that looks like).  PLNs still kind of stress me out, but this was a practical thing that came in handy, and totally makes sense.

Yay!