Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Journal #7: My Personal Learning Network


A Personal Learning Network which is also known as PLN is a visual format in which enables someone to express ones knowledge and learning tools, that can also be used for future learning. The tools I used to create my PLN consisted of a Diigo account where I can follow other users who are interested and in the same field as I am, and a Twitter account where I can participate in active conversations between other followers where we can share ideas and learn from one another. My PLN will help me greatly in the future when I become a teacher by allowing me to reflect on my prior resources as well as share these with my colleagues. I am aware that throughout my profession there will be many times in which I will need to bring new information into my classroom to continually make it interesting as well as have resources that I trust that the information is correct. There is never a time someone can stop learning, because there is always something out there that can be considered new knowledge and this is a great way to explore this.
My use of Twitter is different than a lot of people my age, and this is because I have recognized this resource as a positive way to connect with other teachers, programs, and other inspiring people. The people who are in my network that I am currently following mainly consists of the other students in my class as well as a few bigger groups and organizations. For example, train the teacher, edutopia, education_world, and the CA Teachers Association. These are more examples of great resources and why it is important to use tools like these so that I can learn from other educators. The educational chat that I participated in was the #NTChat which is the chat on Twitter for New teachers. The topic of discussion was on "How Should a Principle Support a New Teacher? It was interesting to see new teachers post on here about what they want to see in a future principle of their school. A lot of other participants included many links where one can go to look for further information. One follower wrote, "I would like to see the administration and other teachers reach out more because being a new teacher they can be very intimidating." This is very interesting because even know I am not in the current process of getting into a school as a teacher I am still intimidated and I know that if there were open and welcoming arms when I start at a school it would make the whole process a lot easier. Overall, I found the whole chat process intriguing because I really had no idea teachers actually participated in things like this. It is also reassuring because I know that when I am a teacher who has questions that I can go onto something like this and not feel alone because there are others out there who might have the same questions too. I am glad I am provided chats like these currently so that I can get a hang of how they work and at what times and such they take place. This is a great tool for teachers and educators. I use Diigo as a tool for my educational learning because it also allows me to follow users we have great information based on topics related to what I am interested in and that can benefit my career. I am currently only following five other people Angela Maiers, Emily Snow, Jeffery Heil, Rich Kicker, and Sherilyn Crawford. I chose to follow these certain people due to their same interests as I as well as the things they are posting are interesting to read due to the content. The main three tools that I bookmarked PLN were "The Educators PLN," "Twitter Building a PLN," and "USA Today Education." These three resources caught my attention because they all deal with PLN which is important because this is what I am working on currently.
The Digital Discussion that I chose to join is the Educators PLN and this site allows users to connect on the same database where more useful information can be shared. For example, important videos, blogs, ideas, news, as well as other websites. The Blog I chose to read and found very touching and inspiring was "What's Love Got to do With It?" and this blog was about a little boy that came from a home where there was no love due to circumstances that were out of his control. While the rest of the school board saw this student as a problem child, one teacher saw him as an innocent child who just needed some love in his life. This is inspiring because it is important to look beyond the outside of people sometimes and teachers need to know that they can truly help children if they take the time and work to change someones life.

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