Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network

NETS- 5 
       An educationalist must overcome many trials when in hopes to accomplish the challenging goal of enlightening the youth to develop into life-long learners. A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a very useful tool, that helps make this goal possible. A PLN is a system of connecting with people and collecting ideas, sharing of resources, and contacts to better improve oneself as an educator. When building my PLN, my purpose is to be surrounded by other educators and scholars with similar interest, in hopes to academically ameliorate my career. I created my PLN through the use of Twitter, Diigo, The Educator's PLN (Ning), blogsites, and Classroom 2.0.These tools helped me become a better teacher for my future students. When creating a PLN I am able to grow by obtaining resources, ideas, and most importantly feedback from affiliates in my PLN.  Many educators share a similar struggle and could benefit from learning to find a similar solution in a PLN. Further, some solutions work best for certain situations, but a PLN provides an endless solution to all educational struggles.

First, to launch my PLN, I became a member of Twitter. On Twitter I set up a TweetDeck, which allows me to create multiple customizable columns to follow different streams. I have been able to follow a home stream, new teacher chat (ntchat), edchat, ed422spring12, my inbox, and any mentions about me. My network consists of many fellow future educators from education 422 class. I am also following Tom Whitby which is the founder of edchat, and EDU PLN Ning. He is a great inspiration, and I strive to educate for the sole benefit of others just as he did for several teachers. I also followed the moderators and co moderators of the edchat I participated in, Jerry Blumengarten and Shelly S Terrell.  I followed a few other people from edchat because, they were either experienced teachers, technology specialists, or they gave multiple links that were great resources. These people included: Chris Rambo, Aaron Perrell, David Wees, Chad McGowan, and Leslie Whittington.

On Tuesday, March 27^th at 9am, I participated in the edchat discussion. The subject was, “What is the proper way to teach, and is it the coaching model for teaching, observation?”. This chat was very hard to keep up with; luckily there was a pause button. I learned that some educators believe that coaching creates a learning atmosphere among colleagues. Others think teachers should focus on a positive atmosphere, and coaching helps people learn how to improve, create starting points for new possibilities. In contrast coaching can make teaching too competitive. Through this experience I built a stronger PLN by following many experienced educators.

Next, I created a Diigo account for my PLN. Diigo allows a user to create online bookmarks, and even tag the resources with specific topics.  In Diigo you can also follow people with similar interest and benefit from the resources they have tagged. By searching the community I found many educators, which delivered valuable resources. These people included: Therese Mastro, Ms. Ronning, Elizabeth McCarthy, Dan Gibson, and John Goldsmith. I also tagged three sites under PLN. First, I tagged a site that teaches how to become an educator by building a PLN and creating a blog. Then I tagged a resource from edchat which explains doable homework activities for all students (of multiple intelligences). Lastly, I tagged a site that showed numerous ways to use Twitter in the classroom. These sites will help me benefit when developing a PLN and a teaching career.

In addition to Twitter and Diigo, I became a member of the Educator’s PLN, which is a Ning site dedicated to the support of a Personal Learning Network for educators. With this website I watched a video entitled: “Not on the Test”, which highlights the result of the pressure from standardize testing. Further, schools often lose essential programs and funding for students in areas like music and physical education. Students often are missing core educational values like life-long learning when only studying for what is on the test. Lastly, I commented on the video that this cycle can be changed starting with the teachers.