PLN: Journal 7

Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network (PLN)

Personal Learning Network is an informal learning network that consists of the people a learner interacts with that creates an environment of personal learning of the individual. You will often become familiar with the abbreviation PLN which is in most technological articles or websites. PLN is a connection of people who learn from one another where you control who you are making connections with. You want to connect with people of the same interests or professions. I have already benefited from creating my own personal network where I am able to learn and connect with people that share my interest in career. 

I started with the newly developed verb to "tweet". I joined Twitter which enabled me to create a flow of information that I am interested in that allows me to explore new educational information. I choose to follow people that had an interesting profile blog as well as educators that seemed experienced in technology. Melissa Edwards, Daniel Edwards, Linda Yollis, Elizabeth Meyer, and Alexandra Francisco were the five people I chose to follow. Melissa Edwards has previously taught fourth grade gifted students and I chose her because as a multiple subject level I will be teaching fourth grade as well as students who will have different learning abilities. Daniel Edwards, no relation to Melissa, is a techie who uses Edmodo with his students which is something that I researched in this class and feel it would be beneficial to my future students. He also is for the structure of a flipped class which is a new teaching style we learned about in the magazine Learning and Leading with Technology. Linda Yollis has been an elementary school teacher for 25 years and is committed to integrating technology in the classroom which will be helpful to learn about her insight and strategies of teaching. Elizabeth Meyer is an author and educator who is passionate about working to end gender stereotypes in schools which is very important when entering the field of education. I am interested in her views of teaching this in the classroom. Lastly, I followed Alexandra Francisco who is a teacher of English Foreign Language students at the secondary level. I tried to follow people who would be useful for me and who are all on different paths of teaching. 

Tweetchat is an awesome way to chat with people that are interested in similar topics or are looking for the newest advancements for their classroom. With tweetchat you are able to pause the conversation because information flows so fast. On Monday, April 2nd I participated in the KinderChat and the topic was "Homework Hassles". They referred to homework hassles as an issue for the parent, student and teacher and discussed different styles of homework. Teachers and parents chatted about the new technique of a flipped classroom. I was shocked that even Kindergarten classrooms are using this and it is beneficial for the students parents and teachers. I did not participate in the chat, I just watched because I would not have any experience, but was useful as I want to become an elementary school teacher. It was interesting to see the flow of information all in one place and the different experiences from the teachers themselves.

Diigo is another website that I got involved with that allowed me to bookmark sites that I want to go back to as well as see sites that other people bookmark. From our previous Diigo assignment I already created my tags that categorize what I bookmarked. I have tags that fall into my personal interest including ed422, education, cyber bullying, learning etc that will link back to the page that I bookmarked. I followed Bill Derry who is a coordinator of information and technology literacy in public schools. I am interested in his tags of integrating technology in public schools. Colleen Sheehy has nearly 1000 bookmarks and her recent ones were Educational Technology and Mobile Learning and an article that was a response to Flipped Classroom which both caught my attention. Another person I followed was Karl Fisch who is a math and language arts teacher. He had a many followers and bookmarked interesting educational topics. Bill Campbell was the fourth person I followed who also bookmarked the flipped learning. I am noticing that most people bookmarked that specific arciles because it was a response to five common criticisms. Tony Bollino most recent tags were about elementary education and how twitter is involved in the classrooms which are both something that I am interested in.

I choose to join the Educator's PLN and I watched a video of Tom Wujec who presented research about "the marshmallow problem" which is a project to create the tallest structure made from speghetti, masking tape, string and a marshmallow. It is simple but hard, and forces people to think fast and collaboratively. He found that the less successful were college graduates and the most successful were Kindergardners which was shocking. He stated that the reasoning behind the collgee graduates were they were trying to create a plan and structure and they were worried about who was doing what, almost as if they were over thinking it. The Kindergartners always started with the marshmallow which was the opposite approach and started building prototypes which was more successful. This was very interesting to me and I enjoyed this video. This type of research is the most interesting and jaw dropping because you would assume the more educated would succeed the fastest but it is in fact the opposite.