Exploring Your Digital Portfolio

  Get Connected  In my last few blog posts I talked about the importance of networking within your community. However, I did not go into depth on how to do this. In chapter 4 of the connected educator, proper etiquette regarding networking and relationships within a professional career is introduced. According to the authors the first step in properly networking is establishing a relationship. The author goes on to say, “ fostering, nurturing, and maintaining positive, congenial relationships is the first step towards building collaborative cultures”. (Hall 99). Having a relationship with people within your career field is helpful in the long run. So it is important to put effort into those relationships. One way of nurturing a new relationship is establishing trust. Megan Tschannen-Moran’s definition of trust is, “One party’s willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open” (Hall 101). Buildin...

  Online Collaboration   An important aspect of connected learning is collaborating with individuals you meet through websites. Chapter 5 outlines different ways of social bookmarking as well as providing resources to help readers. According to the book it is important to categorize and archive the content you come in contact with, to help avoid information overload. Social bookmarking is a way people can collect useful information as well as collaborate and network with other learners. There were three websites in particular that stuck out to me. As a political science major, new philosophies and ideas are constantly being introduced within my field. The website RSS readers is a perfect tool to help organize these new ideas being introduced. Having the ability to subscribe to blogs that introduce these new philosophies without having to search them myself is very convenient. It also can help with future networking. Many blogs offer a comment section for communities to debate ...

  Building Your Connected Learning Community  Chapter 6 In this chapter the author teaches readers how to start, nurture and design their own Personal Learning Network. According to Lani Hall a Personal Learning Network should involve, “ an individual's topic oriented goal, a set of practices or techniques aimed at attracting or organizing a variety of relevant content sources, which are selected for their value to help the owner accomplish a professional goal or personal interest“ (Hall 149). It is important for individuals to understand the value of personalizing their goal and planning steps to achieve it. Anyone can have a goal in mind but most people lack definitive steps to achieve that goal. By having smaller steps and breaking down your itinerary achieving a goal can be much easier. I appreciate how Hall acknowledges that the audience are learners. She validates the idea that establishing a personal learning Network can be difficult and confusing for people without pri...

  App Smackdown- Microsoft Excel As a future Policy analyst I understand the importance of keeping data organized. Especially when working with a large number of variables. Microsoft excel is generally used for data organization or general statistical work. It is an excellent tool for research projects, but that is not its only use. People overlook many of the features presented by this app, but Excel is for students as well as researchers.It is functional accessible and intuitive on all platforms it is on. For intuitiveness, excel has a very simple and easy to follow layout. It has clearly marked times to help organize current projects. It also provides templates to help users with future projects. These templates can be used for both personal and career use. Another great aspect of Microsoft excel is the functionality of its programming. While it is true this platform can be used by non-researchers, many of its features are geared towards that audience. For example, the f(x) butt...

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