(NETS 3, 4, 5)
A personal learning network (or PLN) is an online community that allows for professionals and students to collaborate, share information and resources, and to discuss the current topics of the day. A personal learning network can be especially beneficial to educators. Through educational PLNs educators from all over the world can share with each other what has worked in their own classrooms.
An easy and effective way to start your PLN is through twitter, through hashtags. Through tagging your posts with hashtags you place your post into a stream on that topic. Through the use of hashtags people can have chats on certain topics. Through this active chat/stream you are able to get access to a lot of useful information. When you do see someone putting out a lot of useful information anda resources, you can choose to follow them on twitter which will always give you access to what they are posting.
Today I chose to participate in an educational chat on twitter at 8pm ET using the hashtag #5thchat standing for 5th grade chat. Today the topic was on bullying which I found interesting because it is a very relevant topic to current events. It was a slightly slow-moving discussion, but there were several active participants in the discussion who provided the chat with a lot of helpful tips in regards to bullying, and a lot of good links to helpful websites. This topic is something that really needs to be adressed in schools and in the districts right now. Bullying right now is an issue in schools that is having disastrous repercussions and therefore should be at the forefront of things that need to be fixed in schools. Some people in the chat provided the group with informations on programs that have been implemented in their schools and/or districts. Others provided us with simple solutions in their own classrooms, such as "rave and rant notebooks" where students were free to write personal issues they were dealing with and was particularly helpful for students who were too shy to speak up themselves. I felt that my contributions to the conversation were limited because I, as I am not yet an educator, I cannot provide the group with examples of what works and what doesn't in my own classroom. My lack of experience made me feel slightly unknowledgeable on the topic so I just asked a few questions to the group. One thing I asked was "What can educators and faculty do about cyberbullying? Should they do anything when it happens outside of school grounds?" I thought this was a good question to ask because I know that is a question educators are asking themselves right now in regards to cyberbullying, specifically. One response I got was that if it affects what goes on in our classroom, it is our duty to do something about it.
Along with Twitter, another useful PLN is Diigo, a social bookmarking website. Here, you can tag websites you found informative that you would like to be able to access later. In addition, you can follow other Diigo users who share the same interests as you to see what sort of websites they themselves are bookmarking in hopes that you will be able to access even more informative websites through the people you follow in your network. After searching for people on Diigo I chose to follow a handful of people who have tagged websites under tags that I would be interested in. Mostly educators, their libraries consist of website in education, technology education and elementary education; all topics that would be useful to me. On Twitter I'm following: saraallen91, marykreul, ncarroll24, flyonthecwall, and msnorthrup. On Diigo I'm following: Wesley Fryer, Ludmilla Smirnova, Jeff Thomas, David Warlickand and Lainie McGann Rowell. I tagged some very interesting articles via Diigo from people in my network. Some of the articles include why or why not students should interact with teachers through text or online, social studies lesson plans, and Sir Ken Robinson.
I aslo joined Classroom 2.0 a PLN specifically designed for educators. What attracted me to this particular PLN is that posts made by members can be sorted based on subject (math, science, etc) and by level (elementary, middle, etc) to make things simple to find. Through searching "elementary" posts I came across an article titled "Dital storytelling for beginners" which as well as being about my target age group, it is also very relevant to this course. Through this article, which was provided to me by a fellow Classroom 2.0 member I was directly connected to two websites that are useful in digital storytelling, that make it very easy for children to use. These websites are Go!Animate and xtranormal. On go!animate users can create a an animated video in minutes complete with music and dialogue, a very fun and interesting way children can learn to tell their stories. Xtranormal is another great website that uses good animation and can incorporate voice recordings to add to the story being told. Within minutes of searching the Classroom 2.0 network I gained access to two great resources that would be fun and beneficial in the classroom.
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