Blog #3: The Connected Educator Chapter 5
In chapter 5 of The Connected Educator, authors Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Lani Ritter Hall review the many tools and technologies that are available to support connected learning.
First, there are online tools for documenting and archiving learning. Basically these tools would be used for keeping track of things you find online. Three of this type of tools mentioned by Nussbaum-Beach and Hall are Social Bookmarking (tagging), Delicious, and Diigo and they are used for categorizing, archiving, and bookmarking content. College students often need to save websites to refer back to or categorize content searches. In my future profession as an accountant, I may need to bookmark websites like accounting/ business magazines, financial literacy, economic news articles, etc.
Secondly, there are various resources online for connecting and collaborating to build your personal learning network. According to Nussbaum-Beach and Hall, some of the most useful include blogs, RSS readers, Podcasts, Microblogs, and Wikis. I think that blogs are a great way to collaborate and learn from peers. As an accountant, writing frequent blogs would boost my credibility and help to educate others in my profession. Accountants may have som great takeaways from reading blogs. Informative accounting and finance blogs can help accountants stay up to date on the latest news and opinions in the accounting industry. They may also help them to manage their firm. RSS readers are blog readers used to aggregate news. They allow you to subscribe to blogs' RSS feeds that brings new content to you instead of having to always check various websites (Nussbaum-Beach and Hall). This could be useful for accountants, and any other profession to be subscribed to blogs and automatically be notified when there are new posts. Ultimately, this would allow for an accountant to regularly stay up to date with financial news. In addition, podcasts may be a great educational tool for accountants to listen to in order to stay up to date with news as well.
Next, there are tools for social networking that allow you to build and nurture your personal learning network (Nussbaum-Beach and Hall). Facebook is one of the thousands of social networks for people with shared interests. However, Nussbaum-Beach and Hall review Ning as a great tool. This tool offers a way to be part of a special interest group and connect with others online by creating your own social network. For an accountant, social networking can be a great way to connect with clients and bring in new clients. It is also a great way to build a brand and and become established as an expert in the accounting industry.
Lastly, there are tools for extending learning such as Netvibes. This tool is basically a place to collect everything thats currently happening on your social web. You would have the ability to easily access current information in one place. This would be especially nice for an accountant considering they always need to know the most current news about the accounting industry and financial market. To conclude, there are endless online tools to enable connected learning.
Hi Haley
ReplyDeleteIsn't it fascinating that in digital age, we are able to share and keep all the documents in a safe place from where we can retrieve them later. I was thinking about the old age, probably my parents, how documents were kept in files and folders and had to keep them in a safe environment. All these tools are so wonderful and make us more organize in our professional careers.
Hi Haley,
ReplyDeleteThe amount of tools that are available on the internet is crazy. This includes the blog that I'm currently typing on. I also really liked how organized your blog is and how clearly grouped it is as well.
Hi Haley. I can definitely see how a lot of these tools would be useful in your future career as an accountant. Being able to save and bookmark certain websites and tools could probably cut down on a decent amount of your work time. I love how you connected blogs, podcasts, wikis, etc. to the idea of boosting your personal learning network. Keeping in touch with other accountants through social media and blog posts will definitely be a fun way to stay up to date on all things finances and accounting. Although it’s much easier to be the reader, would you ever consider being the blogger/the one that shares all the information? If so, I definitely think it could help you build necessary connections in the accounting world.
ReplyDeleteHi Haley,
ReplyDeleteThere is so much information out there on the web that is just waiting to be discovered! In this generation we should definitely take advantage and learn all we can for our futures. For your future career in finances there is definitely a lot of information out there waiting for you. I personally do not know of any that would be of use to you. You could definitely connect with others in the finance industry on FaceBook or through LinkedIn that we have to make for this class. Which tool do you think will be the most helpful for you during your career?
This was actually really interesting to me because I did not know actually how involved accounting firms are into social media. As far utilizing social bookmarking, I can definitely see how that would beneficial in the accounting world, especially if you have to look at so many numbers. To top it off I like the images you include to make your blog look good. As far as the tools that you mentioned which do you feel is most important I guess for your profession?
ReplyDelete