Journal 7: USING YOUR PLN!!!! (NETS III & V)
My Personal Learning Network consist of Twitter (social networking site), blogs, Diigo, and an Educational PLN website. My PLN wil help me become a successful educator in the future because I will be able to connect with a network or colleagues, professors, teachers, in the same field, mathematics. With my PLN I will be able to get information, ask questions and best of all get help from other successful, experienced educators!
With a great tool called Twitter, you can use this powerful tool for your educational purposes than a place to "tweet". With Twitter I am able to follow my colleagues and other teachers. I am using twitter also to follow math teachers and professors. Twitter is a great tool because you can also join LIVE chats. Live chats are amazing because you can chat with people around the world and be sitting in your living room. The #mathchat I participated was on thursday at 7 p.m. eastern time. Instead of using twitter I combined twitter with hootsuite in order to be able to organize the chatroom since the chats will be going fast. And boy, did the chat go quickly! There were 567 followers and it was difficult at first to be able to read everything. I was only in the chatroom for a little bit over an hour but I would love to join this chat room once more.I used Hootsuite and joined a mathchat since I am pursuing my teaching in mathematics. The chat discussion was: How do I teach to a specific, prescribed curriculum? someone said,"I think many issues surrounding 'prescription' of curricula are more about teaching to tests/exams rather than curricula per se" I liked this "tweet" the most. It is very true how a lot of teachers will not go outside the box but stick with what the district or state wants you to teach.
I also used Diigo to start my PLN. Diigo is pretty much a bookmarking tool. People might ask why can't you just use the bookmarking tool on firefox or internet explorer. Isn't it the same thing? The BIG difference is that in Diigo you can follow other people and have a network where you can find helpful websites; such as in your teachings. For example, I followed and tagged couple math professors since I want to become a math professor as well. I could of followed other professors but I stuck with the subject mathematics because this is what will help me the most! With that I am able to create my own network. I believe nobody can do everything in life by themselves and need help from other creative teachers. As you can find interesting websites on their diigo, they can also use yours as well and find interesting websites that you have found. I can definitely see myself using this program in the future especially when I first start as a teacher because I will need as many tools and knowledge as possible as a newbie! Certain ones I tagged that I know will be using in the future is: Pauls Calculus notes. I know whenever I need more tools in calculus when I teach this is to have this website bookmarked for future reference so I won't forget this site!
Lastly I used a digital discussion forum (NING). I used the Educator PLN website. I just browsed the website and watched some useful video clips. I watched a video clip on the "Impact of Budget cuts in Education". I like these digital discussion forums because sometimes it is nice to just sit and watch videos on education instead of reading. Almost everything we use even the tools such as twitter, education chats, diigo, etc. uses some sort of reading. So it is nice to be able to sit and hear instead of read. This was a simple yet very powerful clip on how we need to fix our educational world. How we need to fix our priorities. How we are enrolling more students each year but firing more teachers as well.
