1. A Personal Learning Network is defined to “consist of the people a learner interacts with and derives knowledge from in a Personal Learning Environment. An important part of this concept is the theory of connectivism” (Wikipedia.org). It is the way in which a person develops and creates professional resources to further their learning while not always being in a face-to-face environment. As a teacher, the resources to new developments and forms of teaching will have to be personally retrieved. Having a PLN active and ready to go will help ease the process of searching for reliable sources. New methods for teaching and tips for the profession will be accessible wherever I go.
2. For my Twitter account, I chose to follow fellow classmates that are either starting the education specialist credential program this fall, or planning to start it at some point in the future because I plan to become a special education teacher too. I also chose to follow fellow educators from people that either follow or are followed by jheil65 and that provided details of their interests and careers in their profile. The educational chat I participated in was #spedchat on Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 8:30est/5:30 pf. The topic was inclusion, which couldn’t have been more appropriate since not too long ago I just had a conversation about this with a teacher in a local school district; however, I specifically remained a lurker. Even if I tried to participate in the conversation, I didn’t know how! The tweets and retweets were going by quick, and quite frankly, I couldn’t keep up with who was commenting/replying to whom. There were several different opinions that floated by unnoticed, while others were retweeted, making the same message scroll by more than once, making the whole thing even more jumbled. My lack of initiative came not from insufficient knowledge of the topic, but rather my insufficient knowledge of Twitter.
Overall this experience made me realized that things such as Twitter might serve educational purposes after all. I could have benefitted more from the chat if I had more familiarity with Twitter, but at least now I know that it is available for me as a resource.
3. Diigo is a learning network in which I not only have the ability to bookmark web pages, but I also have the opportunity to share with others in the Diigo community what I’ve bookmarked as well as search for and view what others have bookmarked. The sharing of resources allows for the exchange of knowledge, which then makes Diigo another valuable site to add to my PLN. People I chose to follow include educators that are either extremely active in bookmarking, or have created something on Diigo that I find valuable. I chose to bookmark pages “PLN” that either helped me with this assignment, or lead me to something that helped me with this assignment. I also bookmarked pages that had introductions to PLNs, as well as included steps to getting started and making the most out of a PLN.
4. I joined the Educators PLN; it is a learning network for educators, which provides tools and resources about education. I watched the video “Education for Uncertain Futures” on the Educators PLN. This video discussed a current problem that the education sysem is facing: outdated curriculum. Various presenters discussed the irony of schools using education from the past to prepare students for the future. The question is how to better equip students to transform the furture if they are not being provided the right tools. Teachers’ education came into question as they themselves need to accept technology as a resource for information as the first step towards updating the way in which students learn. I understand the concern of an outdated curriculum, and I also understand the concern of getting the profession of education up to date with technology. I think the profession as a whole has taken too long to integrate technology and education, but that can be due to many factors. I think continued education on the resources available can slowly start to tranform the way educators think about how to teach and develop new ways to approach material. Technology is moving at a great pace, and learning is neverending, and I think at one point learning and technolgy will find the right balnace for classrooms everywhere.
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