My Personal Learning Network

                       In creating my own personal learning network, I used a few different tools to expand my knowledge in education. I used the site called feedly.com to subscribe to a few educational RSS feeds for me to follow. I subscribed to Education, Education & Learning News, and Education News on feedly.com. I found the feeds to be very interesting and informational on different issues that pertain to education. I learned about some things that I never heard of, before creating my Feedly profile. One such story was about teachers being “cyber” bullied by parents and students. I also enjoyed that you can learn about things that other teachers are doing in the country, such as a story that I read about teacher’s blogging in small cities to get more exposure.

                        I also used a site called Twitter where I followed a few people involved in education. The pages that I followed were Lee Kolbert, Pam Moran, and Kathy Cassidy. I chose to follow each of these because they are each from different aspects of education and I believed that they could give me different insights on things that are going on. When I explored Kathy Cassidy’s page, I learned about how a first grade teacher can use Twitter to tweet with one of her own students while she is away from the classroom for speaking purposes. I also learned about different things that the teacher was involved in such as her interest in teaching at international schools. In Pam Moran’s page I learned about how involved principals can be with students even though they are not the teacher. She also gave great ideas about maintaining focus with lighting and different desk options. On Lee Kolbert’s page I read an interesting article about how to help students retain memory when studying. I looked up the hashtag titled “edtech”, and it led me to find an article about how to use word clouds with students and how they are beneficial in teaching. I tweeted in one discussion on Pam Moran’s page about a student project about chicken eggs being hatched. I tweeted “Is that for a class project?? Very Cute!” and the person that posted the project replied back to me “a research project group”. It was a friendly and curious discussion.

                        I explored a ning group titled “The Educators PLN”. The site was filled with resources about education and had many other members involved with education. There were many ways which you could communicate ideas and ask questions of other members through tools on the site like the chat room and the blogs. There were interesting forums and videos to watch where other members posted about education and related topics. I read a discussion on the forums titled “Emotional Behavioral Disorders”, which was very interesting to read about special education issues in this particular teacher’s classroom. The teacher is asking for advice on dealing with the disorder and another teacher responds to her posting by saying how important it is to show the student that you care about them. I felt that the teacher got the support and advice that she was looking for in this example in a very positive way. From this experience, I learned that teachers can truly collaborate and support each other from afar and provide very good visual representations of what they would like to show each other.

                        I feel that my overall experience with my PLN was very intriguing. I had no idea that there were so many options on the internet as far as teacher collaborative support. I find it very reassuring and also exciting to have these advanced tools available to me as I enter the teaching profession. I think that a PLN has many benefits to offer an educator, such as being able to share ideas and seek advice. There is so much room within these networks to be able to collaborate with educational peers and mentors. The only potential flaws that I could see with the use of PLN would be less privacy for the teacher on the internet and that some collaboration might not be as effective as if it were being done in person. However I feel that my PLN will help me a great deal as a teacher. One day I may come across an issue where I would like to seek some support but I would rather not ask someone at my school site, and that is when my PLN will help me out. It also will provide me with the ease of using the internet for many things like my questions and looking for ideas for my classroom. My PLN will also keep me up to date on news and matters that pertain to education, in a very quick and efficient way. It will also be a positive way for me to share my own ideas for the classroom with other teachers. I cannot think of any reason why my PLN would not help me in the future!