A PLN is a personal learning network that helps you learn, gain new insight, and collaborate with other people who share the same interests as you. My PLN is made up of educated math teachers, technology teachers, a couple of teacher organizations, and useful educational websites. My goal is to be a Geometry teacher one day and my PLN mostly consists of math teachers. These math teachers inform me on useful web links to provide math lessons and helpful math hints. The technology teachers that I follow post useful links for incorporating technology in the classroom. Lastly, the few teacher organizations that I have on my PLN infom me of important educational news from the goverment (state and federal), teacher conferences, etc. My PLN is very helpful for my future teaching career, and incorporates several different tools.
Twitter is my first tool that I used to create my PLN. Twitter allows you to post useful information to share with the network community, and fosters collaboration with people who share your interests. I chose to follow 9 educational organizations, 3 math professors, and 2 technology educators. The 9 educational organizations are dedicated to helping not only math teachers but all teachers in general. Two of those organizations are affiliated with the US Department of Education, which constantly informs me of new educational reforms, news, and goverment influence all throughout the country. The 3 math educators I chose to follow are all college professors that not only post helpful links for math educators, but other fun math concepts like mathematical jokes or innovative lesson plans. The technology educators I follow are passionate for promoting technology in the classroom and constantly feeds helpful tips and links to incorporate technology in any and all classroom subjects. The chat I chose to participate in was Edchat, on March 29th at 12pm EST. The topic was " What are the possibilities, negative or positive, if we do blended (Internet and F2F) classes on secondary level?" The benefits that most people exhibited on the chat was that students get more variety in their learning structure, students get more prepared for college, and it allows for better scheduling for students. Students are restricted and planned to be in a classroom a certain amount of time per day, but the Internet is always available to them. The Internet also provides more access to other experts besides just the teacher. Blended learning can also get more students motivated to learn, as most students nowadays are constantly online. A Face to Face environment requires deliveries of school supplies, and the Internet is free. Blended Learning can decrease school spending because of the time spent using the Internet. The main issues that can arise with Blended Learning is that teachers are not educated enough to appropriately encompass Blended Learning, and students might not have access to computers outside the classroom. Overall, Blended Learning is a great benefit for students. This PLN chat was very enriching, and I can see myself participating in more chats in the future.
Diigo is a great tool for creating a PLN. Diigo allows you to follow and collaborate with people of interest just like Twitter, however it is also a social bookmarking site that allows you to bookmark useful websites. This is a public site and using tags, you can look up useful infomation you might need, or post useful websites that you want to share with the public. People who often share your interests post useful website links that you can always easily access because of the bookmarking capability. I chose to follow 4 educators that specialize in math and technology. The websites that they bookmark are greatly useful to me for my future math teaching career. The first website I bookmarked for my PLN is edtechpost-PLE diagrams. This website provides useful links and tools to create a positive and engaging personal learning environment for all educators. The second website I bookmarked for my PLN is Teacher Reboot Camp. This website lists goals that all educators should strive for and useful resources to educate teachers, gain student learning, and increase test scores. The third website I bookmarked is Creating a PLN with Web 2.0 Tools. This site provides more web 2.0 tools that can be useful for expanding your PLN.
The last tool I incorporated to my PLN is The Educators PLN. This is a website that used the NING tool that is a PLN for educators to join. This PLN is constantly growing as new members are joining, and new information that is useful to educators is constantly be uploaded in video form, blog form, articles, and website links. This is an already constucted PLN that fosters collaboration and educational transformation. A very interesting article I read was titled " 5 Reasons Why Educators Should Network". This was a great article to read as this NING site was created to help teachers network. This is a great article to convince other teachers to end educational isolation and work together to help transform education. This article conveys that educational isolation, teachers keeping isolated from one another, is one of the reasons our education system has had a downfall. Creating a PLN network allows teachers to collaborate and grow from one another, instead of struggling alone. The five reasons to network are to " learn with others, serve your students, access a dynamic resource, extend your learning base, and to stay engaged in education" (Roscorla 2010). By networking with fellow educators, you are constantly extending your learning base and you are serving your students by gaining useful information to be the best educator you can be.
PLNs are greatly useful for future and current educators. Having a PLN allows you to share your knowledge, and constantly gain new knowledge that can help you in your teaching career. Educators should have a passion for learning, and PLNs greatly foster that. Using your PLN, you have a better capability to grow and become a great educator. People with other interests outside education can also collaborate to grow in their field of expertise. Everyone can greatly benefit from having a PLN.
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