A PLN or personal learning network, is designed to have educators and future educators all come together on the web to share ideas and to collect information so that they may use in their classroom. As a future teacher, I have expanded my resources in which I may receive information from teachers all over the world. This will benefit me by being able to see teachers experience in the field. I will have several questions as well in which will need to be answered and many of these teachers will give me information that will help me understand what is expected from teachers.
I have created a Twitter account in which has opened an opportunity to follow several educational Tweeters. Some of them that I am following are Mark Brumely (Educational technology leader), Education Nation, US Dept of Education, Discovery Education, and Education Week. The reason i picked these people and organizations is because they have posted interesting websites in which address the issues in education. I feel that this will help me be connected with education more and I will always be informed with the latest news. Having a network and following it actually educates you and continues to keep you educated about what is going on around you. This will help me become a better teacher because I will be able to understand and avoid issues that are affecting teachers, schools, and students.
I participated in a chat called #kinderchat in which was held at 6pm (9pm EST) on April 2, 2012. The topic was homework hassles in which many believed that homework for a kinder class was a waste of time. Many of the teachers agreed that homework should not be issued because they need the time to go out and play. Parents made comments that homework takes away from their family time and consumes children and they later on get tired of reading and writing. My main concern was that I didn't see on teacher or parent address how it might benefit them. I feel that homework should be issued as practice for the students so that they can learn faster and or get that extra attention that they may need at home from their parents. I don't see how they are losing family time when they can actually sit down and help their child with homework. Teachers teach at school and parents also have to participate in their child's education and make sure that they able to do the work that is expected of them. If the parents have time for family time then they also have time to care about their children's education and their needs for learning. I felt that this chat had more opinions rather than facts and the reason for homework was being missed. This chat really upset me for the fact that I believe in giving students material to continue to learn at home and so that their parents can participate in their child's life by using these materials and showing them how important it is to be educated.
In using Diigo, a bookmarking tool that stores your bookmarking from any computer, I am able to follow different people that interest me and can contribute towards my learning as I become a teacher. I am also able to bookmark different articles that i am interested in and i am able to share them with those that are following me. I have found it very useful in which i am storing many websites that are about education. Something new that i just learned was that I can follow people on Diigo. the people that I am following is a librarian a couple of teachers including my professor and a classmate. The reason that I choice these people is because they are educators and are bookmarking information that I may be able to use the information in which will keep me informed about teaching. I find this tool to be very useful for the fact that I am able to store websites and access them any time any where if I need to. Some of those websites that I bookmarked were "put out or get out" in which was a blog that was posted by a former PLN member. The topic is about teachers needing to show that they are willing to actually keep up with technology so that they can teach their students. The next blog that I bookmarked is another blog called "the Professional Failure" in which shows a meeting of staff and teaching talking about how to make improvements and how they were half asleep and others were not even engaged or showed interest in issues that were being addressed. The last website that i bookmarked was the actual Educator's PLN for the fact that it has several blogs that can be read and are written by other teachers. In joining the PLN I am able to once again find resources that will benefit me in the future. I really enjoy this website and love watching and reading the different blogs that teachers post.
In joining The Educator's PLN I have found interesting articles and blogs that teachers post for others to read. On this website I am able to find articles that talk about teaching and methods to improve my teaching skills. It also gives us a way to interact with others that are out of state and I am creating a bigger network for myself. One of the blogs that I spoke about earlier was "The professional failure" By Anne Beck in which she shares a video of a staff meeting they had with they principle. It was interesting for me to see this because I have been in staff meetings before in which those teachers were actually involved and had questions about how to better the school. This video showed teachers doing other work that was not about the meeting. Others were half asleep and the rest really didn't show any sort of interest. It really amazed me to see this because of the fact that I will be a teacher and have to sit at these meetings, i can only hope that the teachers are not like this during our meetings because it shows how much they really do care about the students. I actually bookmarked two of her blogs because of the fact that she addresses very important facts about what is happening now with teachers. She also speaks the truth when she says that we have to update our style and learn what is now all around us so that we can prepare our students for the future. These teachers really failed to show how professional they truely are and how much they actually care.
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