Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network (NETS-T 3,4,5)

A PLN is a Personal Learning Network. It is how people connect with others in order to continue to learn new things throughout their life. PLNs can help people get questions answered, is a good way to find new resources, and can give support. My Personal Learning Network consists of Twitter, Diigo, my blog and other web based tools.

Twitter can play an important role in a Personal Learning Network. It is a good tool for educators to connect and chat to gain resources, links, and tools to help them be effective teachers. I participated in an educational chat on Tuesday August 2nd 2011 at 12 pm with #edchat. I noticed how throughout this particular chat, many people were providing links to helpful sites and tools. A couple people would ask questions, but I found that not many of them were answered. I did look up many of the links that were suggested and found some really helpful ones. A couple were on how to be a good teacher, how to respond to difficult behaviors in the classroom, and icebreakers for the first day. I can see how these websites and ideas could help me in the future. This chat also gave me more ideas of who I should follow on Twitter.  The people I follow on Twitter are tedtalks, MissAPatterson, web20classroom, hootsuit, and vh1savethemusic.  I am following these people and groups because they all have given good resource links and are interested in education.  I found a couple from the #edchat I did.   

Diigo has been a good networking tool because I have been able to bookmark or save helpful websites. By bookmarking websites or articles, I am able to look at them in the future on any computer, which can be very helpful in the future. I bookmarked a twitter4teachers site that contained helpful links. I also bookmarked math games because I am interested in making math fun and exciting. I also bookmarked using music in the science classroom. I feel that music is really important and with it being cut in many schools it is important to find ways to incorporate it into other subjects.  Another site I bookmarked was personal learning networks 101.  This site gave helpful information for starting a PLN and expanding it.

I joined the digital discussion forum, Classroom 2.0. This site provides resource for educators and is a great way to gain support digitally. I watch a couple videos, but one that stood out for me was called “Let’s Digitize!” It was made by a middle school. It was a song/rap about how students are going to be more excited about learning something new if you use what they are interested in, like technology. Students are going to be more innovative if you give them more ways to explore and learn rather than having them read or write on paper.