My Personal Learning Network

Starting my PLN, for those not familiar, it stands for my personal learning network. This contains valuable resources for my educational journey. This includes my use of feedly, twitter, and classroom 2.0. In the past, I had used google reader to follow the news, local news, favorite blogs, etc. However, I had not followed anything linked to education besides Ted talks. I had no account or experience with twitter and I was quite apprehensive to start using twitter. I had only seen people use twitter for gossip, beachbody fitness, and other silliness that I did not relate to. However, after starting my account I am shocked to see how many valuable resources are available for education. I recently joined Classroom 2.0 and was accepted as a member. As an educator today, I see how having a PLN is necessary for the education profession because there is a constant stream of information available for curricula and forums for discussion.

As I had mentioned before, the use of RSS feeds was not new to me. Google reader was a great source for me to have my news and blogs located in one place to scan through and read the articles that peaked an interest for me. Feedly, is another great RSS feed to do the same. I have noticed that it is harder to link blogs to feedly than it was with google reader and there are quite a few blogs that do not link to feedly. I also found this problem to exist with podcasts as well. For example, I love listening to KCRW podcasts "To the Point" and "Eclectic24" and I was unable to link those to feedly. However, there were some great links that could be added like the blog "Ask a Tech Teacher" and my favorite tech websites Gizmodo & Wired. For example, the Ask a Tech Teacher blog posted today "3 Apps That Encourage Students To Read". It lists a Starfall app as one of them, which is awesome. I did not realize Starfall had an app. I had used Starfall.com on my laptop for my little one before kindergarten. She was able to familiarize herself to letters sounds, and beginning stages of reading. It is great to have more accessible tools for student learning. At this moment, I am following 10 websites in feedly but I will continue to search for more valuable information to add to my RSS feed.

Twitter, I never thought I would use it and now I don't think I could do without it. I had no idea there were so many valuable resources for education on twitter. It is unreal! I am already following 60 people! I added the people recommended from the book, Personal Learning Network: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education, Richardson and Mancabelli (2011). I also combed through the educators available on http://twitter4teachers.pbworks.com/. There were a lot of people on this list that did not share any tweets or were not valid twitter accounts or no longer tweeted. So, I added only the people that had at least 100 tweets and made some in the last 6 months. It was great to see educators with thousands of tweets. And there were so many articles and conversations that sparked my interest immediately. For example, @WeAreTeachers the article "Proving the Myth of Mulitasking with a Simple Experiment" for all the teens with an incoming text, snapchat alert, instagram alert, music blaring, etc. I found this article to be relevant for the modern teen, and the experiment outlined in the article was a great way to show students how all of their multitasking is actually distraction from the learning process. I have not tweeted yet. I plan on sharing my educational journey and information I find valuable to the educational community. To say I am impressed with Twitter is an understatement, I am shocked how it is easier to use than feedly and gives me access to a network of educators that I did not realize was possible.

Which leads me to Classroom 2.0, I have been accepted as one of their members. Classroom 2.0 is a community for educators to collaborate through forums, videos, and articles. I explored Classroom 2.0 extensively and I found that it was a little outdated. I found that many discussion and blog posts were from 2011 and earlier. I also saw quite a few posts from educators asking for help on a matter with no response, which is discouraging because I would think more educators would respond with a helpful tip or link. However, I did find some valuable discussions about Google Drive, Smartboards, and Collaborative Concept Mapping. I see Classroom 2.0 being a valuable source from the community of educators if there is more participation and posts.

Overall, I am excited with my PLN. I am already checking my sources daily and gaining valuable insight. I see my PLN only continuing to grow with educational sources.

Richardson and Mancabelli. (2011). Personal Learning Network: Using the Power of Connections to Transform Education.