A great way for teachers to stay connected and interact with
other educators throughout the world is through the development of a PLN. A PLN, or Personal Learning Network, is
a way educators can share ideas and information through direct contact, such as
Twitter, or indirect ways like blogs and websites. Some examples of PLNs consist of Twitter, Diigo, Facebook,
and digital discussion forums.
Some of the best direct ways to communicate within a PLN are through
Twitter and Face book. These two
networks allow you to interact simultaneously within a chat room or through
instant messaging. Digital
discussion forums also allow you to type ideas and information to one another
instantaneously. Diigo, however,
allows a person to follow blogs and learn from posts through contributors. An educator can then “tag” that person
if they want to continue to follow that contributor. The networks I use the most in my PLN are Twitter, Diigo, and
digital discussion forums like “The Educator’s PLN.” As an educator, a PLN will help me in so many ways. Up until recently, educators were
restricted by the lack of technology in having the ability to share ideas with
people throughout the world. I
will communicate with and contribute to my PLN on a regular basis to hone my skills
to become a better educator.
By obtaining a Twitter account, I am able to follow other
educator’s tweets as well as being able to keep up with the latest trends,
news, and happenings in education.
Some of the people who I am following using my Twitter are:
- · Abby Robles, a teacher and friend who teaches in the Poway Unified School District.
- · Ryan Archer, a chemistry and biochemistry teacher at Mission Hills. I chose to follow Mr. Archer because my goal is to teach Chemistry, Earth Science, or Biology and the high school level and I think I can learn a lot from him.
- Lisa Dabbs, who is the founder of #ntchat as well as an ISTE presenter. I am following her to learn more about technology in the classroom as well as participating in her discussions on #ntchat.
- · Natasha Dunn, the founder of TheRookieTeacher.ca and a monitor on #ntchat had many good ideas in the chat I participated in. I chose to follow her because she can teach me a lot in my new journey in becoming a teacher.
On July 25, 2012 I participated in a discussion on #ntchat
at 5:00 p.m. The topic of the
discussion was long-term planning in regards to the curriculum. I really enjoyed this discussion and
learned a lot. Part of what I
learned from the other participants is a problem with long-term planning is
that some people get stuck on the original plan. When a problem arises, it is hard for that teacher to veer
away from the original plan. One
of the pros to long-term planning is that it is essential to have one, but a
teacher must be ready to adapt.
One of the participants in chat came up with a great quote, “failure to
plan is planning to fail.”
By obtaining my Diigo account, I am able to join groups as
well as follow individual people.
I am currently part of a Science Teachers group on Diigo where fellow
science teachers can collaborate with one another in order to come up with
better ideas for the classroom. I
have also tagged Educational Partnership, Teacher Preparation, and Technology
Integration from the connectedprincipals.com website in order to implement some
of the ideas I learn from these blogs into my curriculum. Having the ability to learn from these
blogs will benefit both my students and myself in the classroom. Some of the people I have chosen to
follow include sharris, Joe Mazza, George Couros, David Truss, and Chris
Wejr. I chose to follow sharris
because I think social justice in the classroom is the biggest concern for me
and I can learn a lot from his blogs.
Joe Mazza writes blogs about educational partnership in which I will be
able to learn how to partner things with education. I decided to follow George Couros because he writes blogs
about technology in the classroom and how to utilize if efficiently. David Truss blogs about teacher
preparation and I think being a new teacher I will be able to take many of his
ideas to my classroom. Finally, I
chose to follow Chris Wejr because he blogs about different ways to grade and
assess students. It is always a
good idea to view other ways on how to assess students because every student
has different strengths and weaknesses.
I chose to join The Educator’s PLN because this forum has
many different blogs, forums, links to other education sites, and
pictures/profiles of the members so I can get a feel of who I am interacting
with. I decided to read the blog
“Creating e-portfolios using Weebly for Education,” by Lynda Hall. The reason I chose to write about this
blog is because I recently signed up for Weebly to begin using it to simplify
websites students can make. One of
the pros Lynda talked about is how easy it is to add images, videos, audio, and
maps to the site. She also
explains that teachers can create up to 40 free accounts for the students and
that the accounts can be managed by the teacher. I think this is a great tool. Parents and teachers can be confident that the on-line
activity is closely monitored.
This is just one helpful blog on The Educator’s PLN. The sky is the limit in the amount of
information a teacher can obtain from using a website like The Educator’s PLN.
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