I added to my personal learning network (PLN) through the use of Twitter, Delicious, and the Educators PLN. I added people to my Twitter and Delicious networks who I felt had similar professional interests as me, and who I felt I could learn from. Through Twitter, I followed an educational chat for kindergarten teachers. I also tagged useful sites through Delicious which I can access on any computer. A digital discussion forum I joined was the Educators PLN, which is a great source for videos, articles and blogs.
1. My PLN: My personal learning network is a way for me to connect with individuals all over the world who have similar interests as me such as education, speech and language pathology, creative tools for learning, and technology in the classroom. By using many different sites such as Twitter, Delicious, Wikis, and Blogs, I can learn from others as well as contribute to discussions. Once I am a teacher, I will be able to use the resources I have through my PLN to learn teaching strategies, correspond with other teachers, and keep up-to-date on current events in the teaching world.
2. How I Use Twitter: I have been using Twitter as a way to 'follow' people with common interests who I think I could learn from. Twitter is a good tool for learning from others, as well as passing on information you find helpful. The more I follow, re-tweet, and tweet the larger my PLN will grow.
Inside My Network: So far I have six people in my network who I feel I could learn from. The people in my network include teachers/principals, people in the speech and language pathology (SLP) field, as well as special education professionals.
A teacher, Jeffery Heil, and a principal, Gino Bondi, are two professionals I am following because they are both interested in how to incorporate technology into the classroom. I see the importance of keeping up-to-date on current technology, and feel that I could find useful information on this through these two instructors.
To learn more about SLP, I followed Stuart Russell and a site called Kidslanguage. Russell created a site named Speech-Language, which is an online community for speech language pathologists around the world. Kidslanguage was created by a SLP who provides language resources for parents and professionals. These are both great sources of information regarding my field, and exploring their sites will help me learn about the profession.
Dennise Goldberg and Autism Classroom are two people I'm following on Twitter to learn about special education, specifically autism. Goldberg offers special ed advise, and the classroom gives free teaching materials, training, and information for parents and educators. This can help me as a speech therapist be more understanding of students in the autism spectrum.
Educational Chat: I participated in an education chat list through Twitter named #kinderchat. This is a chat room for kindergarten teacher to share ideas and information on a given topic. I was excited to hear what the topic was, expecting it to be informative or useful. I was a bit disappointed with the evening's topic because it was: "Teacher Gifts: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly! Will the Real Best Teacher in the World Please Stand Up!". This whole discussion was literally about what presents the teachers had received from students, and how they feel about getting presents. I didn't find this discussion very rewarding. Before they dove into the topic, however, they did ask for people to make introductions including what projects they were working on in their classrooms. One teacher said they are working on a cross-grade project with grade 11's. The kindergarten students drew superhero's and the grade 11's are writing stories about them. They are then going to Skype in the story. I thought this was a great way to use technology in the classroom while making it fun.
3. Delicious Use: I used delicious as a way to bookmark useful online pages. The great thing about using delicious is that I can access my bookmarks on any computer, so this is very helpful for when I have a home computer, lap top, and a work or school computer.
My Network: I looked for people to put in my network who had common tags of 'education,' 'speech,' 'language,' 'research' etc. I can use my Delicious network throughout my schooling and teaching career to keep track of useful sites and people. Two professors I added to my network are Jeffery Heil and JBrown, both interested in introducing technology into the classroom. Brown focuses on introducing it into special education classrooms, which is an area of interest to me. A user who had the name tls161 was also added to my network because they had tags like web 2.0 along with interesting posts. One post by them which I thought would be helpful as a teacher is a post on ClickSpecialED, which is a great site giving tools and information on 7 "rooms", including news room, approaches to learning room, therapists and specialists room etc. I also added two people who had top tags such as 'speech,' 'language,' 'reading,' and 'research'. These were Erin Narwell and Tom Lawrence. Naswell had an interesting post on a computer based program designed to help students with phonetics. SLP often focus a lot on this to help students with their reading along with pronunciation of sounds. With all of these people added to my Delicious network, I can look to them for information to better my career.
What I tagged PLN: Through Delicious I tagged five different sites that I thought would help build my PLN. I wanted to focus on areas such as education, speech therapy, creativity. I first tagged a site called "Click Special ED", which is a site that gives tools and information on news, approaches to learning, and specialists to name a few. I then tagged the site "This Week in Education Blog", where I could learn about the latest news in education. It has a wide range of posts and comments regarding the world of education. I think it's important for an educator to stay up-to-date with education current events, and this is a good way that I could do that. Third, I tagged "The Writings of Lee Kraus", which is an educational blog focusing on creativity, innovation, collaboration, technology, and elearning. This is right up my alley because it brings fun and creative learning tools into the classroom. One post I found interesting was on the history of visual thinking where it shows a video that shows how to improve learning through visual thinking. Lastly, to focus specifically on SLP, I tagged "Mommy Speech Therapy" and "Speech-Language Pathology Sharing". These are both blogs where useful information is shared.
4. Digital Discussion: I read a blog post on Educators PLN titled "How does a teacher's attitude towards creativity affect student creativity?" by Cynthia Brandt. She was reaching out to others for advice on her situation. She is a first grade teacher and has a hard time with perfection issues. She explained that growing up her parents demanded perfection from her, and now expects that from herself. She sees how this view on herself is hindering her ability to allow her students to be fully creative. She got a large amount of responses, which drew me to this post. She got advice from a lady named Marisa Constantinedes, who suggested she read her artice "The Art of Being Creative. This article includes topics such as: What is involved in the graphic process, Why are we unable to think creatively, and Activities promoting fluency, to name a few. Seeing how many helpful responses she received, many including links, showed me the benefit of blogging and how it can help me as a future educator.
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