me.edu.au FAQs

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What is me.edu.au?

me.edu.au Professional Network for Educators

me.edu.au provides Australian education and training professionals with an online networking and profile space.

Use me.edu.au to

  • create an online professional profile
  • connect with educators who have similar interests
  • share links, news, photos, ideas, opinions

me.edu.au incorporates features of social networking sites to build professional communities, without the limitation of distance, cross borders, sectors, jurisdictions and institutions.

What is social networking?
Social networking builds communities of people who share interests, activities and information online and can connect with colleagues. Online social networking ignores distance, allows searching for people of similar interests and helps people build a distinct personal profile. It supports the development of a personal learning environment.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_networking

What is a personal learning environment?
A personal learning environment (PLE) is web space that allows people to have a personal space where they find and store resources, link to information, find colleagues and engage in learning.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Learning_Environment

What are the benefits I will get out of this new educational focus social networking service?
Identity
The name me.edu.au represents the key element of the service - that it provides a space to identify oneself through professional interests and activities.

Collaboration
After identifying own interests, individuals will naturally cluster into networks of people with similar interests.

Resources
Individuals bring digital resources and links to store and to share.

Career
The establishment of a personal professional presence will lead many educators to develop substantial Curriculum Vitae.

Efficiency
me.edu.au provides a single location, independent of one's current workplace, where [from early 2008] much of one's professional contacts, records and resources can be stored managed and extended.

Well-being
The establishment of a substantial personal professional presence online provide educators with significant professional reward, both from building one's skills, resources and reputation, but also through working in cooperation with others.

Why use this new service rather than other Web 2.0 sites/services?
It is for educators and trainers in Australia and provides a large pool of potential colleagues. It consolidates into one service a range of tools and facilities. It is managed by education.au, a respected not-for-profit national organisation and is free, safe and has no advertising.

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Getting started

How do I get a space?  What do I need to input in order to register?
Once you register with edna you automatically get your me.edu.au space.  Information that you entered when you register will filter to your profile page. So before you have even entered your space there will be information for others to see if you have agreed for it to be public.

I want to look around for a while and not get too involved until I am ready - can I?
Yes - you can register and come in and not make your profile public until you are ready to be involved. You can build-up your profile and gather information as well as browse other people's information before you seek out colleagues. 

How much information do I need to provide to get started?
We suggest that you put as much information as you feel comfortable entering.  It is important that you do add your Interests immediately so that the networking can begin. You can return to your Profile as often as you like to update.

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Functions

What is so important about my profile?
Your profile is how people find out about you and your interests. It is the heart of the system - if you don't fill in your profile no one can find out about what you are doing and who you are. You can set different permissions within your profile to share information to:

  • everyone (public),
  • only registered users,
  • only your colleagues or
  • no one.

You can add a photo or image of your self and details about you - general, contact, education and work.

Can I use this service for my Curriculum Vitae?
Yes. Within my profile there are many fields that you would use for a curriculum vitae and it is secure, safe and advertisement free. You can make it visible to specific people. By engaging with me.edu.au you are building evidence of your professional activity and development.

What are Interests?
Interests are the educational issues that you are concerned or care about and follow in order to learn about and contribute. Within your profile you can add as many interests as you like eg. ICT, Mathematics teaching, Sport, Web2.  As people add Interests, each Interest will form a page called a Community.  You can discover quickly other educators and trainers with the same interest as you.

What is a Community?
A Community is the people with a particular Interest - a Community of Interest. Each Community has a page where its members can discuss and share information around a particular interest. Each Community has a whiteboard and a links portlet so users can share links that within the community. Additional features will be added in future releases.

How do I add colleagues?
Once you have identified a colleague that you are interested keeping track of or in sharing information with, click the 'Add a Colleague' below their image.

Where do I find my colleagues?
Your Colleagues are listed in the right hand panel of My View.  Thirty colleagues appear and there is a more link to show others. You can click on your colleague's name to go to their profile and find out what they have been doing or more information about them.

How do I interact and leave a message?
There is a message board on each person's profile page and community pages where you can leave short messages. Note that messages are public. If they have made their email address public you can also email them.

What does the search do?
me.edu.au has a simple search that will help find colleagues, communities of interest, blog tags and whiteboard messages. You can filter by what you are looking for. For example I can do a search on 'internet safety' and then filter by clicking on 'communities of interest' as this is the type of information I am looking for. This will then refine the search.

What is a feed and how do I add one? 
The activity mini-feed is a summary of your internet products. It is an RSS feed from your blog, bookmarks, website etc and appears in the centre panel of My public profile. When you add people as colleagues, their feeds appear in My view. The activity feed is an important element of me.edu.au, making members' activity visible.
A feed is added in Edit my profile - Feeds. The member goes to the page they want to generate the feed, and copies the RSS address.
 
Why would I use the me.edu.au blog?
me.edu.au is a professional networking service and provides a simple and easy to use service to connect people of similar interests. The blog allows users to go into more detail about their views and interests and it includes a range of blog features including images and embedded video. Why use the me.edu.au blog? Members of me.edu.au who already have a blog may ask: why start a new blog here? One answer is that there is an option to link one's me.edu.au blog to an external blog. Another is that there are some impressive functions that come from working within a blog + environment like me.edu.au. Chief among these is the search capacity. A search in me.edu.au for 'internet, safety', for example, brings up a comprehensive search result for the whole site that reveals blog posts, Communities, personal profiles and whiteboard messages.
 
Are there more functions coming to me.edu.au?
Yes what you see now is the first two releases - there is more functionality planned to help educators and training staff to collate their online activity and information.
 
Future ideas?
Possible areas of development may be: Social bookmarking and resources/content.
Search edna - within space and resources, saved searches / add to resource watchlist
Feed stitcher
Mobile technologies.

Prior to each release the project team, edna business team, stakeholders and interested users will have input in shaping the release.

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Collaboration

How do I join and add communities of interest?
Once you have registered you can start to browse communities of interest. Either:

1.  go to the menu link - Communities
- browse through the most popular communities
- click on the name of the community you are interested in
- click 'Add this to your interests' or
2.  go to your profile
- click on edit profile
- add community name to your interest tag.

Can I start my own community?
Any new interest that is added to a profile will automatically have a community page built. If an interest has already been added your name will appear on that particular community page.

I want to collaborate with others with similar interests.
That is easy. Once you have put your own Interests in your profile a Community is created. If you join a Community that already exists you can view and contribute whiteboard comments and links. You can view the Public profile of members of a community and add them as Colleagues if you wish.

What is the difference between edna Groups and me.edu.au?
edna Groups is a free service for members of the Australian education and training community to use forums to communicate and collaboration within separate groups of common interest. me.edu.au, as its name suggest, is for you to build your professional identity, to find colleagues of similar interests and to share information. It is very likely that some communities of interest formed in me.edu.au will create an edna Group http://groups.edna.edu.au to build on their cooperation.

How do I collaborate with others?
By leaving messages, sharing feeds of information and posting links in the community area that develops knowledge and understanding.  If you want to collaborate more than this it would be a good idea to apply for an edna Group http://groups.edna.edu.au.

How do I find others with similar interests to me?
You can search for an interest and all the relevant users with that interest will appear. You can then browse the different users and add them as colleagues.  Also you can click on your interest tag to take you to the communities of interest page where all the registered users within the system will be listed with that particular interest.

How many communities can I be a part of?
This is up to you. The system will allow up to 200 communities so therefore 200 interests can be applied.

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Privacy

Should I make my personal information public?
We suggest that you do.  For social networking to work the information must be public to start networking. There may be something you may want to keep private such as your email address - this is as default - private.

Can I make some material public and other sections private?
Yes you can actually make different information available to different levels of users.  You have the option to make particular fields or the whole profile available to:
  • everyone,
  • only those registered with edna,
  • only your colleagues or
  • no one.

However we do suggest that you have as much information available as you feel comfortable so social networking, collaboration and knowledge building can begin.

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