Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Journal #7: My Personal Learning Network.


As a teacher I have the obligation to be a life long learner. I need to keep updated with new teaching strategies, possible educational policies that that are becoming wide spread, and mentors to assist in problem solving. A PLN is a personal learning network online that people use to spread their knowledge and connect to learning devices. It is a great way to get teaching resources online, and find experts and other teachers with the same educational concentrations. Some examples of these are Twitter,  Diigo, and Educator's PLN

TWITTER
Twitter is a social site that allows me to follow sites and people of interest. Cites like flocabulary (@flocabulary) makes educational music that can be used in the classroom. Another site, Writing With Chalk (@writingwithchalk) offers free lesson plans and activities. It can also keep me informed of local events for field trips or cultural events that might be of interest from local cities, like the Temecula Theater (@temeculatheater). Social sites allow me to keep in touch with my teachers like Jeff Heil(@jheil65), and fellow classmates. Different chat sites appear at different dates and times which allows a live discussion of current concerns and allows students to find mentors in areas of educational interest. I found an educator earning her doctorate who gives a lot of good advice, A Teacher's Life (@MsNJH23), from an online chat, and was able to "follow" her to save her site for future advice. I am also following Tere Ramos (@SpedAdvocates) who specializes in special education, which is my concentration. Different chat sites will allow anyone to log on to join discussions of hot topics and ask for advice from educators all over the world.
An example of a New Teacher Chat from (#ntchat) when we discuued the pros and cons of long range planning on 7/27/12:


 

DIIGO
I can create my own personal library on a social bookmarking cite called Diigo. When I see an interesting article on the Internet I can bookmark it into my own personal Diigo library. All of my useful information is stored in one location. This is very helpful when I need to do a report. I browse the Internet until I find all the information that I feel I need, and then go to my library to refer to my findings. I don't need to keep searching for the same sights in Google or favorite a page and wait for it to upload. I can refer to educational articles of a similar theme (e.g. civil war, tolerance, cultural) by tagging each article to a theme that will make it easier to look up. Parts of an article can be highlighted for easy reference. and the location of the citing makes it easy to reference any reports I need to write. This can also be used in a classroom setting. It allows students to look up articles for research that have already been previewed for content, instead of wondering the entire world wide web.
I can share personal learning articles of interest with students or collegues. http://www.diigo.com/user/jsmiranda/PLN
Diigo also lets me bookmark educational cites of interest for future reference.
I can also save groups with good informational resources. http://groups.diigo.com/user/jsmiranda


 DIGITAL DISCUSSION FORUM (NING)
On cites like Educators PLN teachers reach out to other educators for advise and support. Anyone can post an issue in order to ask for advice from experienced teachers on the web. I looked at a forum that asked "what does inclusion look like in your school for the student, the special ed teacher and the regular ed teacher" by Marcy Perry. I learned that it takes a lot of communication and planning between teachers for a inclusive mainstream classroom to work, but it is possible. After being invited to the page you can get a cool e-badge!





Visit The Educator's PLN

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