Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network.
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, Face book, 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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