Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network

A PLN stands for Personal Learning Network. It is an online network in which teachers can connect with other educators to build a community among teachers all over the world! Your PLN allows you to create a collaboration network with colleagues and other educators, and it can be accessed whenever and wherever you are. Examples of PLN are social networking tools like Twitter, Search engines (Wiki, YouTube), blogs/news (like Diigo as a collaborative social bookmarking tool), communication tools (Skype, email), and you can follow colleagues and educators (through twitter and facebook). PLN can help me as a teacher, to collaborate information and ideas with other educators through the collection of tools in my PLN. I can gain information to news, information, lesson plans, updates regarding education. I can access and share great ideas to use in the classroom or as an educator. 

Twitter is a great way to share links to helpful educational resources. It is also a great way to gain easy access to the educational links that other educators are posting. I can follow people or groups that I find interesting in terms of educational information. I chose to follow HPTeachExchange, eschoolnews, TeachPaperless, edutopia, and EdWeekTeacher; I am following them because each one provides me with a broad spectrum of education-related news, and with useful teacher resources. On Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 4:00 pm, I viewed the online chat session going on in #edchat on tweetchat.com. The topic being discussed was "how much should educators be allowed to determine their own professional development?". The chat included discussions about the extent that educators should be allowed to determine their professional development, what the requirements of teachers should be, different views on how learning happens, and what potential in learning there is when teachers have some amount of control in their professional development. From this chat, I have come to understand that teachers do not feel that they have much of a say in their own professional development because of the strict standards of the district. I was inbetween the extreme views as far as how much educators should be allowed to determine their own professional development. I believe that it is important to help guide, intervene, and model teachers' curriculums to standardize education to some degree, but I also believe it is crucial for teachers to have enough choice in their own professional development so that they are able to adjust to the learning styles of their students. 

Diigo is a social bookmarking tool, that is made public for others to see, depending on the topics they are interested in researching. It is a very convenient tool that allows easy access to things that people who see my Diigo bookmarks may find interesting, and that allows easy access for me to find things that may be of interest on another person's Diigo bookmark list. I am following Marissa Onaga, Ms. David, Rich Kiker, Viki Davis, and Sherylin Crawford on Diigo, because their research includes information on education justice, education news, technology in education, technology in math, and micro- and macro-issues in the education system.

I joined a digital forum called Classroom 2.0. Classrom 2.0 is an education social network where you can join discussions, and also to find and connect with other educators. Some of the features include videos, online seminars, discussion forums, and online education groups. This website provides a video that explains how to use Classroom 2.0 as a social network for teachers. According to the video, Classroom 2.0 is a social network that has a lot of opportunity to add and join discussions. It is a great source fo professional development, as you share helpful resources and information with other educators. Some helpful features include free live seminars, videos, discussion forums, introduction walkthrough of Classroom2.0, and a constantly updated calander for the schedules for the webinars. I believe that Classroom 2.0 is a great social networking tool for teachers, especially for professional development. On this social network with countless members, you have the opportunity to connect with educators around the world, and to share and gain knowledge in teaching and in education.