Monday, April 9, 2012

Journal #7 PLN


A PLN is a personal learning network. This means, different websites where people can communicate about topics of interest. Personal learning networks are beneficial tools to connect people all over the world that share information with each other. A PLN will help me as a teacher because there many sites that can keep me connected to my students. In a personal learning network students can blog, tweet, or chat about discussion topics for the class. This will be beneficial to the students because they can collaborative with their peers and myself outside the classroom.

Furthermore, a tool I have used to communicate with my peers is twitter. Twitter is a PLN which enables people to communicate short blurbs back in fourth. Twitter can be used to link information to people that follow you, or you follow.  To follow means to have the ability to see each posting a person is making, and vice versa. Following people is important because I can follow other people in the education profession. For example I want to be a special education teacher, so I follow @education_IEP, and @SpecialEDNeeds. Also, Twitter can be used in forums where people can chat about particular topics. In fact I participated in a Twitter chat that was educational. The chat was #kinderchat that took place on MondayApril 9th at 6:00 pm. The topic was about creating environments that encourage imaginative play. I learned that a lot of educators believe free play time is important for kindergarten students. This is because they need time to be themselves, which is 5 year old children that have imaginative minds. One teacher said she plans around 60 minutes of free time a day. This may not be consectively. Little free breaks will keep the children more focused in learning.


In addition to twitter is a resource tool call Diigo. Diigo is a network tool that enables users to tag websites to read later. Diigo can be used as a network tool because users can share websites with other users. This can be done by placing the link to Diigo on a blog for others to see can do this.
In addition to twitter is a resource tool call Diigo. Diigo is a network tool that enables users to tag websites to read later. Diigo can be used as a network tool because users can share websites with other users. This can be done by placing the link to Diigo on a blog for others to see can do this. On Diigo I follow scholastic.com, where is information for teachers about lesson plans, books, and strategies ideas. Also, I tagged PLN for special education lesson plans. I tagged this because I am interested in resources for special education lesson plans. 


Lastly a digital discussion forum I joined was Educators PLN. This site is for collaboration between educators.  I looked at a blog entitled 5 Tips to Help Your Child Become Self-Confident. I found this blog important because a teachers job is to make all the students feel included and comfortable in the classroom, and this is influenced by a student's self confidence in the classroom. One tip that I found interesting was "Don't Label Them." The blog says if you constantly tell a student they are weak, they will continue to get low test scores. Encouragement is the number thing a teacher can give a student. 

No comments:

Post a Comment