PLN, personal learning network, is a group of people
that connect within one another to create a network of shared, informational resources
online. This allows educators to collaborate with anyone around the globe and enables
one another to obtain different ideas or techniques about education. I have
slowly initiated my personal learning network through online social networks
such as Twitter, The Educator’s PLN, and Diigo. I will be able to broaden my
teaching ideas from those who are more knowledgeable and have more teaching experience.
Not only will I develop a virtual learning environment with educators, but I
will be able to create virtual friendships as well.
Twitter is a social networking tool referred to
as micro blogging, which enables people to share information in short bursts of
blurbs or comments. I am following Lisa Dabbs, Jaime Vandergrift, Jamie Murray
Armin, and Rick Wormeli to name a few. I
use Twitter the most too collect information that will help me to become a
better educator because there are so many people with amazing resources who
share often. I gained a lot of great information and tips about conservation
and “Earth Day” when I joined the topic in #ntchat on Wednesday, March 27, 2013
which began at 5pm. I learned that there is a large group of passionate people
who want to save our earth and make it better for the generations to come. More
and more schools are investing in recycling programs and such, yet most of our
teachers have to find ways to incorporate Earth Day into the curriculum because
some schools lack still lack the passion for conserving our planet.
Diigo is a free social-bookmarking website tool
that allows you to save and share a collection of information, which can be
accessed from any computer or location. One neat thing that it allows someone
to do is to highlight certain areas of an online article. It is a great tool to
broaden a personal learning network because it allows you to follow certain
people and be able to tag the information that they have collected. I have
followed a few people such as Susan Glassett, Angela Maiers, Jackie Gerstein,
Alice Keeler and Lisa Dabbs, who leads the #ntchat. I am following them because
they have a lot of great resources that I can learn from and they have a
passion for teaching. I tagged a few things as PLN to refer back to if needed
such as: an article from www.iste.org that
talks about what a PLN is and how to incorporate Twitter, a blog post by Lisa
Nielsen and her 5 things for beginning a PLN, as well as Personal Learning
Network 101.
I joined The Educator’s PLN at http://edupln.ning.com/ to help enhance my
personal learning network. I found a video, which interested me, called “How
Much Should Homework Count” by Rick Wormeli. He talked about homework as
“practice”, which is “an extension of that which is already learned”; I feel
this is how homework should be viewed. Wormeli also does not agree on
“packets”. He even gives different practice to different students depending on
how each one is absorbing the material because he understands that all students
learn differently. Wormeli only weighs homework
at about 5% or less; anything more than that can misrepresent the accuracy of
the grade.
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