Monday, April 22, 2013

Journal #7: PLN



  
The 21st century has brought so much change in technology, communication, and education. People all over the world have learned to use this to their advantage by creating a PLN, Personal Learning Network.  PLN consist of different individuals who share and gather information with tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Storify, Diigo, and blogs. With the help of Twitter, Diigo, and Storify I was able to create my own PLN. These tools have helped me gather and share information about education. I joined Educator's PLN. This is a discussion forum where I am able to learn and share different education topics. This is a great way to share ideas with different teachers all over the world who want to increase their own PLN by sharing information on what we can do as teachers to make education better. This PLN has different chat rooms, blogs, videos everything you need to start your own PLN or if your new to PLN like myself. Not to mention it is also a great way to meet people who have the same aspiration and dream of becoming a teacher or who already are teachers.



   
Twitter is a social network place where people can share information and connect with one another based on a common interest. When I first started to use Twitter a was a little nervous because it was very new to me. My first tweet was a test drive, it was simply answering my professor's question on what was my favorite food. This is where I learned to reply to someone's tweet, join in on a conversation and the importance on hash tags. Hash tags are important because it is a way to share your information to anyone who shares a common interest. For example if I tweet a about a website that has tips on classroom management, then I would have to use #classroom #management and anyone who is interested in classroom management will be able to look at my tweet and share it with their friends, and their friends can share it with their friends = creating a social network! My use with twitter has been good! I love how easy it is to simply join in on a conversation. On March 27th I joined my first chat room on twitter. By simply using #ntchat (New Teacher Chat) I was able to partake in an interesting conversation with teachers all over the world. That evening the topic on #ntchat was Earth Day. Should we teach our students about the importance of recycling and going green? How can we create fun and exciting lesson plans? I was very amazed and taken back on all the information I was able to absorb with #ntchat and look forward to being part of this incredible #nt network community.

  Diigo is a social bookmarking website that allows you  to bookmark, tag, highlight and add notes to any webpage. The fun and easy thing about Diigo is that it can be accessed from any computer. The only thing you can to do is create a account for free. I have used Diigo to look at very interesting websites and have bookmarked them as some of my favorites, by simply tagging them as education, bullying, teaching tolerance. Tagging websites allows me to share the information I have gathered with my PLN. Not only am I expanding my PLN by following people, but I am able to learn from their interest and see what they are bookmarking.

   
In the beginning of the class, I was a bit worried because I'm not the best with technology. Looking back I am very surprised with all the work I have done.  After creating my very own blog, Twitter, and Diigo account I was able to create my own PLN. My PLN has helped me gather so much information from other teachers and people who are interested in education. For example on Twitter I follow  Lisa Dabbs and Larry Ferlazzo who are successful teachers and have amazing resources. Through them I was able to follow topics like, Reading Rockets, which gives me ideas on how to teach students to read, especially those who are struggle with reading. Edutopia is another great PLN that gives teachers ideas on what works and what doesn't work on education. These are just two out of many of my PLN where I have shared and gathered very useful information. All this has all taught me to not be afraid of technology. Technology is actually very useful and there are a lot of different resources (FREE resources) that I can use in my classroom or even in my everyday life. 

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