PLN Reflection

A PLN or Personal Learning Network is a collection of educators who share information with each other. The site I joined was classroom 2.0 which was almost set up like a version of Facebook. It has many different resources and a forum where discussions can take place between members of the website. Along with this the site offers up ways in which members can sign up and subscribe to certain discussions that other members are having. They also give you updates on events that are taking place allowing you to view and search for one that are upcoming. I can see how this would greatly enchance my teaching experience, I can collaborate with other educators and bounce ideas off of them on how I can further my endevours as a teacher. Along with this, I can share how I go about teaching my class which may help someone else.

The RSS feeds are very helpful in the sense that they filter out what news might be interesting to you. For me the main two I focused on dealt with history, they gave me historical headlines which I can use in my classroom and lesson plans for the day. I feel it really helps you keep up on the news going on and stops you from having to read things that maybe might not be so pertinant.

For my Twitter account I have a multitude of people I follow, since I plan on teaching history I searched for viable history twitter accounts and found a couple. Along with this I chose to follow a few others that were more akin to my personal hobbies. The best use for Twitter that I can tell is that it is almost like an RSS feed that gives you the information quick and you can choose to look further into it or not. Beyond that the only other thing is being able to possibly connect with the people you are following if they take the time to respond to questions you have.

Diigo I do like using for the main point of having access to information that I have run across in the past, being able to recall it quickly and saving my bookmarks. It lets me mark things that I find most important and in turn also share it if I feel the need to. Some of the people I found on Diigo share their links they have found on certain subjects and materials, which is helpful because it saves you time from having to search all over the net for things yourself.

Classroom 2.0 discussion boards has a wealth of information and some interesting discussions on them. I looked at a posting by a teacher asking about trying to get teachers to use technology in the classroom on a daily basis. The consensus among the people who took part in the discussion said having the students present their assignments using a technology tool was one of the most effective ways to use technology in the classroom on a daily basis. Which is very interesting, it allows the teacher to find some creative solutions for students to use technology to work on assignments.

Overall I think PLNs are very helpful in the fact that you are connected to so many resources that can be very valuable to use on a daily basis. One of the biggest pros of using a PLN is being able to bounce your ideas and gather ideas from other educators. Some of the cons I find is that you do have to do some filtering out of questions and deal make sure make interesting discussions as others aren't so inclined to join in all the time.