Saturday, July 30, 2011

Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network / NETS-T 5a. / MI

A PLN is a Personal Learning Network.  A personal learning network is a collection of information and contacts that can be used to gain knowledge that I use to contribute to my career as a teacher.  The PLN I have started to assemble includes IGoogle, Twitter, Diigo, The Educator's PLN (Ning), and blogsites.  The PLN is most useful in helping with data collection and collaboration with peers.  When I am needing new ideas for lessons or fresh plans for my classroom, I can use information found from my PLN.  I cam also use chats to share ideas or ask help from my peers.  The possibilities are endless as the World Wide Web is exactly that, world wide.  There are people across the globe all sharing news and ideas.  My PLN is how I can begin to gather all of the information together.

Twitter is a "real-time information network."  There are people from all over the world sharing information about everything under the sun and beyond.  Twitter can be extremely useful when used correctly.  I have begun to build a network of other students, teachers, and people interested in education.  It is fairly easy to build your network by using hash tags.  There are themes like education or new teachers that can be found under the corresponding hash tags.  When following the hash tags you are able to get information from peers that may be relevant to your own interests.  When you see tweets, or entries by others that interest you, you can choose to follow the person who made the tweet.  There are also planned chats on Twitter where people will discuss a subject in real time without geographical barriers.  I attended a chat called "#mathchat" at 5pm 7/28/11.  The topic was, "How do I stimulate students seeing connections in math?"  It was very interesting to participate in this chat.  I am not a "math person" but I was interested in ways that a teacher can teach math and make it interesting as well.  I didn't know that I would be contributing but after watching the chat briefly, I felt that I should share some of my opinions.  It was very exciting to be a part of this real time network of teaching professionals.

Another tool in my PLN that I am extremely excited about is Diigo.  Diigo is a social bookmarking application.  A Diigo toolbar can be downloaded from Diigo.com and can be used to organize websites that are useful in your PLN.  The difference between Diigo and regular bookmarks is that Diigo allows you to tag your bookmarks in a way that makes them easier to use.  You can select any keywords (i.e. School, Teaching, Lessons, etc.) to tag each website that you bookmark.  When you need to find something specific you can search your tags on Diigo.com.  In addition, you can also follow other people in Diigo and then search their bookmarks, or even search the whole Diigo network.  In Diigo, I am following my professor, other classmates, and other educators as well.  This contributes to my PLN by compiling relevant information that is available to me with a simple search.  Some of the websites I have bookmarked within Diigo and actually tagged with the keyword PLN include a website by Cybraryman which contains a comprehensive list of educational chats on Twitter, 100 Blogs Every Teacher Should Read, which lists several useful blogs by other educators, and the Thinking Stick which explains steps to building an excellent PLN.

I have also joined The Educator's PLN, which is an Ning site that once again contains collaborative information.  You have to sign up and be approved to become a member of The Educator's PLN.  The reason for this is that you can add content to this Ning.  By pre-approving all members, they can avoid spammers from posting junk information or links.  This Ning has blogs, videos, and information pertinent to education.  I recently watched a video from Educator's PLN which was about how to use Prezi, a web based presentation application, in the classroom.  Prezi is a wonderful non-linear application which can truly help get attention of an audience.  It is a much more cutting edge style than Power Point or other traditional presentation methods.  Information on cutting edge technology such as Prezi and how it can be used educationally can be discovered on the Ning as a part of a PLN.

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