"The Big Sort" and "Organizing Your Digital Self"

[Maria Droujkova]

At the meeting yesterday, Al brought up the topic of drinking from the firehose, that is, dealing with the incredible stream of content that is coming by, and through, our Personal Learning Networks once we start building them. Several people wrote about this effect in their blogs as well. Here is the latest example from Grace:
"I am amazed and overwhelmed at the same time with the amount of information that is out in cyberspace for educators.  I have requested so many memberships that I am beginning to forget all the places I’ve been." http://gk1as.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/pln-4-8/

Seth Godin writes about online "Big Sort" - tagging, categorizing, linking, rating, aggregating - as the third big humanity breakthrough on the axis of inventing language and inventing writing:
"We're sorting everything. Not just which videos are imitations of other videos, but identifying local breakthroughs and spreading them around the world, highlighting problems or insights and leveraging them and connecting resources to each other in ways that create massive amounts of leverage." http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/07/the-big-sort.html

Many tasks in this class invited you to participate in The Big Sort by selecting and critiquing articles, lessons, videos, and live presentations. Because there is a url (web link, bookmark) corresponding to every item, you can use bookmark tools to sort that bounty. The tool I brought into this class is Diigo. You can organize all your stuff by saving links to Diigo. Tag links as you save them, using a naming system that makes sense to you personally.

I use FriendFeed to save every comment I make everywhere online, rather than just saving links to them. I don't want to lose comments when pages go down or moderators freeze threads or other issues happen, which several of you experienced in the first weeks. You can see my FriendFeed here: http://friendfeed.com/mariadroujkova

As you have subscribed at different sites, you are probably receiving email from them. I recommend two steps to cope. Go into your account settings on each site and select what email, if any, you want to receive. For example, you can set email groups, such as AP-Calc, on "weekly digest." Second, figure out how to set email filters in your email client. I filter most group mail into archives I can skim when there's time, while personal and client mail stays visible in my inbox.

Maria Andersen, one of my favorite teacher educators, has a talk she gives on "Organizing your digital self." She uses this MindMap for the talk: http://www.mindomo.com/view.htm?m=8423d4adcc56d262e6a058163334a92a There is about 100 hours of content in this mindmap :-) However, looking at the categories is helpful. Also, you can find the recording of the presentation and other media following links from Maria's blog post: http://teachingcollegemath.com/2009/06/organize-your-digital-self/

I hope you can build your own sustainable systems of dealing with the sea of content, and help your students learn exciting and productive ways of participating in The Big Sort.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.