What Are Your “Top Sites”?

Learning is social. Learning is connected. Learning is often informal.

The speaker this week in EC&I 831, Dr. Richard Schwier, discussed learning environments and encouraged us to reflect how we learn. He shared, with the class, how he consumes online content, and reflected that most of his online activity was social. In reviewing my own “Top Sites” in Safari I discovered that I too like to be social and connected online:

Here’s my quick list:

• http://www.facebook.com/
• http://twitter.com/
• http://www.kayak.com/
• http://us.lastminute.com/
• http://www.astd.org/
• http://www.flickr.com/
• https://techknowtools.wordpress.com/
• https://www.gmail.com/
• http://eci831.wikispaces.com/
• http://delicious.com/pasquats
• http://blip.fm/all

There is a lot of learning in my online life, and I definitely rely on my social connections and tools for support. While organization and structure help construct “formal” education, there is great value in spontaneous, chaos for informal learning. The key for learning is to engage and connect your students in the educational process.

A quote that resonated with me both as a learner and educator:

“We as educators need to reconsider our roles in students’ lives, to think of ourselves as connectors first and content experts second.” William Richardson