Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a professional reciprocal network to connect with, learn from, gather resources and share what you have learned on sites such as Twitter and Diigo. My PLN gives me the ability to connect with other teachers, administrators and experts that live in other cities and countries. We share strategies of how we can best impact our students.

I set up a Twitter last year, but was only using it to contribute random thoughts into the vast interweb. I now use it as an educational tool. I use it to connect with people who teach similar subjects or age groups or teachers who are dedicated to similar social causes such as diversity and closing the achievement gap. My network includes teachers, teacher credentialing students, educational policy experts and close friends that use social media in their daily jobs. Basically I am connected to other people that can provide me with resources for my classroom. I attempted to participate in the New Teacher Chat (where I wasn't familiar with the technology they were discussing) and Gifted Students Chat (where I wasn't familiar with the inclusion policy for districts they were discussing). I settled on the Mid Level Education Chat on July 28 from 5-6 p.m., where we discussed how you can get students to create dialogue in the classroom. I gave suggestions via HootSuite for face to face interaction and technology. It was interesting seeing people posting from all different mediums: phones, iPads and different Twitter software. The dialogue moved fast, but not too fast, one of the perks of smaller discussion group. I responded to people posting and they replied to me to share ideas I hadn't though of, it was very useful and inclusive.
 
You can use Diigo to publicly bookmark sites that serve as resources for classroom activities; you can also view those that other educators post. You can find people that use similar tags and connect with them by adding them to your network. I follow the director of a multimedia language center, an IT high school teacher, an EFL instructor, an E-Learning and writing specialist, and a SpEd poster. I follow the people with tech jobs because I am interested as to how I can incorporate tech more efficiently into my classroom. I follow the others because, like the first 3, they post helpful links, but they serve niches that I have worked with before. I tagged two educational blogs, one for the Library Student Journal Editors and the other for Teacher Reboot Camp. I joined the Library blog to get addition support showing students sites where they can get research for their papers done. I choose the Reboot blog to get ideas for new ways teachers are using technology and reminding myself to "reboot" my previous misconceptions about technology. Lastly, I choose George Lucas' Educational Foundation's website. It provides tried and true resources that have worked and can be duplicated.

I joined Classroom 2.0, it's a social network primarily for educators who are interested in learning more about Web 2.0 and Social Media in education. I watched the video on Staten Island Green Charter School for Environmental Discovery. The idea was to create a K-8 school that is pollution free, uses interactive white boards, gives kids a chance to develop spiritually and offers PE classes.