Technology Blog #3: Tools For Connected Learning Regarding Law Enforcement

            Chapter five of The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age focuses on how technological tools can be used to improve learning, and the process of setting these tools up for success. The first and obvious improvement tip is to use the same (or at least similar) usernames and passwords whenever possible for all of these different tools and sites. These tools are used for purposes of documentation, collaboration, and extending one's knowledge. Documenting websites effectively is difficult, as there are a near endless amount of sites to visit! For documentation, a website called delicious.com is helpful, as it can help keep links and websites you have visited or wish to visit for the future. Delicious can also help find websites and information that may interest you through other users and their saved links, allowing for even further information gathering! Diigo is another documentation option, and a likely better option as well, as it is a more updated and modernized version of Delicious. 

            Tools for collaboration are tools that allow people to reach out to others with similar interests for collective and shared learning. Social media, blogs, podcats and wikipedias are all forms of collaboration options to choose from. The most successful collaborative tools in the current day are definitely social media, as most people who use technology have access to at least one social media throughout their daily lives. Tools for extended learning are tools that enhance an individuals education directly outside of a classroom. Tools like this can include websites or application with directly educational goals or that have real-time updates, maps, or trackers. Tools such as teachertube or netvibes are great examples. Teachertube allows direct learning outside a classroom through video education, and netvibes is a site that tracks or collects everything surrounding your interests or communities. Both of these apps aid in learning about wanted topics to an immense level.

            In my future career within law enforcement, finding tools for educational and informative purposes is key to success. A likely documentation source I would use is actually Diigo, as there are a myriad of different sites where laws and cases and information needed for my future career may be found when needed. Government websites are the major informative system, but there are many more where information can be found when a government website is lacking in direct application to a situation. Collaboration tools do not get much better than modern social media, despite how toxic most platforms have become. If one limits themselves to purely educational and informative followings, there is far less trouble to come from social media platforms. To follow other law enforcement officers as well as the local, state, and national agencies will help with information gathering greatly. For extensive learning tools, sites such as copstrainingportal.org or leknowledgelab.org are specifically made for enhanced learning for law enforcement, even for agency use in some scenarios. These tools and others like them - when used alongside required training applications - make for a very successful basis of a learning community.