Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network

Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network

1. My personal learning network is a communication and resource network that allows me to interact with like-minded individuals. It allows for information to come to me without me having going looking for it. Using my PLN I gain access to a plethora of resources to further my learning. If I’m looking to use more technology in the classroom or am having problems with my lesson plan my PLN can assist me by giving me access to other educators and research that can help me resolve my problems.

2. I use Twitter to find resources to better implement technology in the classroom and follow teachers who may have interesting tweets on education in general. Two interesting people that are in my network are hidefteacher and teachofhistory. Hidefteacher is a website that shares the best and low-cost resources for teachers on the web. This can help me gain access to resources on the web that I can use in my classroom. Teachofhistory is the twitter account for a website that is designed to help history teachers with lesson plans and worksheet based resources. Since I want to be a history teacher this Twitter account can give me help with what I use in the classroom. I joined the sschat, which is a chat for social studies teachers. I participated in it on March 28th at 3:00 P.M. There were many topics discussed during the chat. One of the topics that stuck out to me was how to facilitate discussion in the classroom. Some people suggested discussion questions and some talked about student presentation. During the student presentation discussion it was interesting to see what teachers thought about what a student presentation should be like. I can see that using these chats would enable me to gain invaluable information from other individuals experiencing some of the same issues as me.

3. Diigo is a great networking tool. With Diigo I can follow individuals who are researching the same topic as me and see what sites they have bookmarked. These bookmarked sites usually have resources that I can use for my own research. It allows teachers to collaborate on their research and share useful sites. The sites that I tagged PLN are all blogs that have to deal with education. The first site I tagged is a blog that gives me updates on news and politics that are going on in education that week. The second is a blogging site where teachers can go to share ideas and educational resources. The last site that I book marked is a blog where teachers can go to get information about teaching the subject of history. Since this is my strongest field I found this site both interesting and helpful. Now anyone in my PLN has access to these blogs as well. The Diigo tag roll on my blog allows people to see how often I use tags and allows them to access these sites I have tagged using specific labels.

4. I joined Classroom 2.0. The article that I explored addressed the topic of whether or not teachers and students should be “online friends” using sites such as Facebook. I found this article while looking around on one of the many forums Classroom 2.0 has to offer. There were arguments for both sides. Some said that this it was creepy that a teacher and student would have online access to one another. Mainly though the article seemed to be leaning that as long as the teachers keep their “educator hat” on, to use the author’s phrase, teachers and students being friends can be helpful. This creates a stronger relationship between students and teacher and also allows a student to seek advice or ask questions directly to the teacher via the web. As long as it is used in a professional manner I feel that I fall in with the category that says it’s ok for teachers to be students “friends” on the web.