A PLN, also known as a Professional Learning Network, is where
individuals around the world can build a online community through the sharing ideas and resources on websites and blogs. My
PLN is a work in progress at the moment. It is extraordinarily simple to connect myself with other educators on the web. My PLN currently consists of my blog on Blogger, Diigo, and Twitter.Through the connections I have made on my PLN, I am able to share my resources and thoughts with people all over the world. I use my PLN to find reliable resources and lesson plans that will help me make my classroom curriculum more interesting. The connections I have made on my PLN will help give me information and answers to any questions that I may have about being an educator.
I had never thought of using twitter as an educational tool before ED422. I used Hashtags with key words in order to find educational chats. After entering #EDCHAT, I found many educators chatting about many questions, conserns, and information about things going on at their school and around the world. It is easy to watch the stream of 'Tweets' coming in of helpful information and comments. I participated in two chats on Tues Aug 2nd. One on #EDCHAT about how administrators can show support for their teachers. And the other on #SCICHAT about school labs and if they are effective. #EDCHAT moved so very quickly it was hard to keep up at times. Many people were tweeting about how they need support from their community, not only their fellow staff members. That they need to be allowed to be creative in their curriculum. One teacher referenced himself as Superman. I found that interesting and informative. On #SCICHAT, many teachers shared the same feeling that there is a lack of funding for labs in the younger grade levels. One person tweeted that 'there are no bad results', meaning that the most important part of the lab is that the student gets results. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong. Another person suggested to use Google Docs to publish the students data and findings. I thought that was a great idea. There were at times disagreements while the discussion was going on but most just posted their opinion anyway. That was my favorite part. There is no need to be nervous about participating because thousands of other people are at the same time. I also added people to follow after the chats on Twitter. A select few were the creator of #EDCHAT and edutopia (inspiration and information provider for educators) to my list of people I am following along with a few of my peers from my ED 422 class.
Diigo is a website that keeps an online database of your bookmarks. It is a good idea to get into a habit of bookmarking so you can easily find the website at a later date. Bookmarking on Diigo allows you to access any bookmarks you have made on any computer, not just your own. When a bookmark is created, keywords are assigned. This helps with organization and makes searching though your library easier. You can also share the bookmarks that you have made with your network or anyone who is searching for keywords that you have used. These bookmarks on Diigo are connected to your PLN that you have created. People can follow you or you can follow them on Diigo. I chose to select a few people to follow that shared the same interests as I do. I first searched for people that had some of the same bookmarks as I did. I chose a few teachers from other states and educators. They had many interesting websites bookmarked on their network. Diigo users can search your library with specific key words or subject area in order to find information you have marked interesting or useful. Most of the people that I chose to follow are long time educators.
I joined both Educators PLN and Classroom 2.0. Both digital discussion forums were bursting with information. On Educators PLN, I searched the topic cyberbullying. I thought this would be an interesting subject since we as a class must create a website about how to protect students against cyberbullying. There was an interesting video staring Karen Cator from the US Department of Education. She said that young people must become more aware of proper online behavior on social networks. That things said and posted online can be just as damaging if not more than it would be 'on the playground' or in person. That not only is everything amplified, but is permanent. I fell as though this is very true. Most people believe that information can be deleted once it has been posted. That is simply not true. That parents, teachers, and students need to be more educated on the dangers of being online and especially the effects of cyberbullying. I also watched a video on Classroom 2.0 about the use of computer games in the classroom. One teacher only uses computer games to teach his high school students about history. The video example was about WWII and how his students retained more facts and information about the lesson from the video game than from the text book. That in the future, video games may replace text books almost entirely in social science. Being a future social science high school teacher, I was thrilled to see that there is a modern educational history game. Cause lets be honest, as much as I loved playing the Oregon Trail, it was not the most historically accurate or educational. I dont believe that video games will ever entirely replace text books, but it is nice to see different types of learning tools in the classroom. I hope I can get my hands on this game for my future classroom.
Visit The Educator's PLN
Visit Classroom 2.0
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