My PLN:
My personal learning network right now is still small, but this allows me to get used to the amount of information that I am receiving. It comprises a lot of resources, whether these are articles, videos, ideas, or actual people; all of which I can use in future as an educator. Over time I anticipate my PLN to grow a lot, but because it is still new to me, I don’t want to become overwhelmed by the amount of information that is out there too quickly.
Twitter:
Participating in my first #edchat on Twitter was a surprising experience for me. I picked the 9am #edchat on 3/22/11, with the topic being “What methods of old education are not working?” For the first 10 minutes or so the tweets coming in were slow, then it began to become very fast paced where I was not able to read all of them coming in, especially those with links to outside resources. There were some ideas that I agreed with like getting rid of textbooks, because they become outdated so quickly and cost so much; and one idea in particular that I just can’t wrap my head around of getting rid of the teacher’s desk and chair, and this idea was re-tweeted by many as an awesome idea. The premise for it is that many teachers choose to sit rather than engage with their students actively, but I just can’t find the reasoning how this would make an ineffective teacher effective. Based on some of these ideas I chose to follow a few new people on Twitter and make them a part of my PLN. One educator @peoplegogy seemed to agree with me on the chair issue, so I followed him. As the ideas came in throughout the hour, I soon realized that this person had a very jaded view on education, and seemed content with not attempting to help students beyond the classroom; while I agreed with his thoughts on one matter, I could not on most others. I think this type of person would help to bring balance into my PLN, generating ideas that I might not otherwise think of; we will see as time goes on. I also chose to follow @shellterrell, some of her ideas were really outside the box which I liked, but some also seemed very unpractical; but in any case it was a discussion that can generate ideas that maybe find a useful middle ground. Being my first experience with one of these chats, I chose not to actively tweet this time, I wanted to see how things work first; towards the end of the discussion I even saw @jeffheil65 discussing @peoplegogy’s overly pragmatic approach to education. @cybraryman and @dwarlick are also new educators that I chose to follow, but I did not see too much from them during this discussion, a couple things from @cybraryman but things may have been moving too fast for me to see it.
Diigo:
Diigo is interesting to use as a networking tool, I found it really easy to just keep clicking through links and finding new sites based on what other people bookmarked based on the site I was on. The first site I tagged PLN was a blog listing of the “50 best technology blogs you aren’t reading yet.” This was one of those case where by clicking one of the suggestions, you end up finding a lot more by checking the blogs that that blog follows and so on, it seemed like a useful resource in finding other educators and their ideas. I also tagged “Mr. Riley’s Blog,” I can’t remember how I came to this one, but he is a computer science teacher that wants to give other teachers ideas to incorporate technology into their class. I also added “The educators pln” which seems to be a very in depth resource not only for information, but for connecting with others. Two other sites I added are actually the sites of those I found in the #edchat discussion, and they are the peoplegogy blog and the cybraryman site. I liked the fact that they are people whom I have seen converse in the cyber realm, and there sites not only shared their opinions, but linked to other blogs as well.
Digital Discussion Forum:
I visited Classroom 2.0 and browsed through the forums and found one posting asking members to say what technology they use and like in their classroom. Prezi seemed to be new to many members and be making its impact; one member posted a video (http://digitaldollar.edublogs.org/2010/02/01/the-55-interactive-whiteboard/) of how one man invented a way to make a digital whiteboard out of a Nintendo Wii remote, that had a lot of functionality to it at a fraction of the cost of an expensive retail version. This absolutely blew my mind, the second I saw him start to use it I wanted to build one right then, I just don’t have access to a projector right now, but this is definitely something I would use in the future when I become a teacher, the uses of it are endless. I also watched the video “Education in the Future...NOW!!!” http://www.classroom20.com/video/education-in-the-futurenow-1, this video showed some of the amazing ways technology is being incorporated into one charted school in Hawaii, they are really big on crossing art with other subjects, specifically science and history. As an artist by nature, I credit this trait with my ability to think outside of the box and be able to problem solve in ways that others aren’t able too, I think being able to instill this trait into students at a young age is extremely beneficial, so I was very happy to see these students and the types of projects they were doing. The fact that they are making their own virtual reality ship, to sail virtually to a companion class’s ship in another country is awesome.
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