Progress Ho!

Those of you who have been following this series of posts know that I am currently working on a plan to improve some aspects of my personal and professional technology life. Specifically I have set down some goals to improve in various areas including my proficiency with APA formatting as well as social and collaborative networking competencies. I've also committed to creating some kind of professional learning environment wherein other educators can hopefully glean some insight or find some useful information from my endless wanderings.

Fortunately, I have found several excellent resources that can help me toward my goals in a general sense. A simply search of Amazon for good APA reference guides along with some review of the contents of those books has lead me to a purchase that I feel will help me greatly in finally using APA format consistently and correctly. I have also researched several social networking tools and I've found two that greatly interest me. I don't know quite enough about them yet to give them a full recommendation but I intend to play with both of them over the next few weeks and see if they pass muster.

Elgg (http://community.elgg.org/) is a social networking open-source software toolset that essentially allows a user to create a social networking portal. The Elgg manager can create a site that contains a broad number of widgets and plugin tools that will allow him to add features and richness for his visitors and members. At the heart of Elgg is the ability to create and moderate blogs, chat boards, V-logs and collaborative file-sharing complete with source and version management. I haven't played with Elgg enough to know if it's a perfect fit, but certainly it may turn out to be an excellent tool for creating a social, collaborative network that other professionals can access and contribute to. This could be an excellent tool for both my current software position needs as well as my future teaching requirements.

Another tool Mahara, (http://mahara.org/) is a social networking tool geared toward learning and e-portfolio presentation. Mahara also allows a user to create online-learning communities. One of my goals is to create a source of information for other teachers to access and Mahara may be an excellent choice. There is some significant similarity between Mahara and Elgg, but clearly Mahara is more closely geared toward e-portfolio presentation and career learning. As I play with it more, I'll be better able to determine it's strengths compared to Elgg.