Creating a Personal Learning Network

I was a little hesitant about creating a Personal Learning Network because I did not think I would find it helpful to my teaching or classroom. After further investigation, I discovered that having a PLN could be extremely helpful to me, as long as I allowed it.

I have had a Twitter account for a long time, but have never thought to use it to gain access to other educators, blogs, articles, data, etc. I began my educational twitter account by following educational magazines or websites, like TED Talks or Huffington Post. I then decided to find some popular educators because I felt I could learn more from them. I first began by following the creator of Classroom 2.0, Steve Hargadon, since I knew his Twitter account name. I then looked at his followers and found, Nicholas Provenzano and Erin Klein. They are both well-respected educators and are supporters of technology in the classroom. I was able to learn a lot from them about ways to get your students engaged by using technology in the classroom. I only tweeted a couple of tweets, but was surprised that other educators favorited my tweets. It was interesting to see how using hashtags in my posts sent my thoughts out to a large audience of people, and getting a somewhat response from them. Although I did not have any twitter conversations with someone, I still felt connected to the other educators on the site.

I used my twitter account to sign up and make a Feedly account. From there I was able to access any blogs made by the educators or websites I follow on twitter.  I followed Erin Klein’s blog, Nicholas Provenzano’s blog, TED Talks videos, Education Week, and Education- Huffington Post. Just to name a few I enjoyed looking at. I thought it was a great site that I could use to access all the articles and blog post I want to read in one place. It is nice to be able to see all the different perspectives of what people think about certain topics, and also gain new ideas and inspiration from the different articles. I think I will continue to use Feedly in order to keep myself connected to the educational news of the world and ways to inspire myself and help inspire my students. 

I joined Classroom 2.0 which is a website used to help educators interact with each other, ask questions, share blog posts and articles, and in general help each other become better educators using technology. I was able to read a lot of great articles, blog posts, and discussion forums pertaining to a variety of things but specifically to technology in education. I joined a discussion forum dedicated to elementary school teachers and found many great ideas to use in my future classroom. I found an article through that forum discussing how to use your SMARTboard to its’ best potential. Also, I was able to find a great post about how to integrate timelines into a CCSS classroom.

Overall, my PLN experience was a good one, although it did not come without any difficulties. At first it was extremely difficult for myself to navigate through some of the sites, like the Ning group and Feedly. After I got the hang of the websites it became easier to find what I was looking for, and to navigate around the site. In my opinion, I think Feedly would be a better resource to use than Twitter and Classroom 2.0 because it is easier to access exactly what you are looking for. Although I would not object to using Twitter for instant access to data, or Classroom 2.0 for advice from other educators. I think PLNs can help teachers by staying up to date with material, and constantly finding new ideas to incorporate. There are many creative and seasoned educators around the world that we can all learn from, and PLNs give me the opportunity to learn from someone I would not normally have the opportunity to learn from.

Here is my badge from the Ning group!


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