To help develop my Personal Learning Network (PLN) I am experimenting with new tools. The first three tools I am trialing are Hootsuite, Powtoon and Feedly:
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a tool to help you aggregate your social media accounts. From the dashboard you can view your normal social media feeds but also
What problem is it solving in my PLN?
Twitter is a great resource for sharing and collaborating but I find it tricky to keep up to date with the main hashtags of interest. Hootsuite allows you to break out your home feed as well as follow hashtags so that you can take everything in from one screen.
Powtoon
Powtoon is a tool that allows you to create animated videos without needing coding experience. It uses a PowerPoint style interface.
What problem is it solving in my PLN?
I find videos an incredibly useful learning tool. There is not always a video for the conept that I am learning about about and so I feel that Powtoon may enable me to create useful content that I can share to help contribute to my network, the process of making a video will also hopefully help solidify my understanding of the topic.
Feedly
Feedly is a news aggregator that allows you to quickly and easily create “feeds” on topics of interest, drawing from a range of sources.
What problem is it solving in my PLN?
My main sources of news do not normally have a lot of Education related news. To stay up with the latest trends I wanted to create a list of education sites to follow. Feedly enabled me to do that and will mean that I only need to visit one site to view education news that interests me. It also has options to share stories I find of interest to my social media so I can share content even when I don’t have a lot of time.
I really want to use Hootsuite but am put off by the price, so glad that you did the trial. Now I need something that does the same consolidation of social media into one place but without the cost. The search continues!!