Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Journal 7: Developing my PLN

A PLN is the acronym for Professional Learning Network.  A PLN comes into formation when a person begins to use social networking sites such as Twitter, to create a community of preferred professionals and people, who maintain an interest or insight, into similar topics.  It provides a way for people to access information globally and extend their options for professional development beyond the immediate community of resources available.  Having a PLN means that I have unlimited access to resources and collaboration that are specifically linked to my area of need.  I can also provide this support to others who may be seeking a need for resources, strategies or even words of encouragement. Especially in this time of limited funding for professional development and support, I have found that building my own PLN has already shown to be of great worth to my teaching.  Three social media sites that I have used to help me in establishing my own PLN include: Twitter, Diigo and "The Educators PLN" website.  As budget cuts have swept through public education, the priority on professional development opportunities has all but ceased to exist.  It is important to me that I remain committed to being a lifelong learner not only for myself but for the benefit of my students.  Creating my PLN has provided me so many new colleagues whom I may never have otherwise ever worked with.  I have already worked with people who can help me to create more unique behavior support plans for my students with social emotional disabilities.  I have also gained a plethora of resources to assist me in developing a professional development workshop on differentiating instruction and Web 2.0 tools, for my staff.  A PLN can provide a fresh perspective and a wealth of new ways to approach learning.

The first social networking site that I have used to access and build my PLN, is Twitter.  In my naiveté, I understood Twitter to be something where people posted "tweeted" information about their daily activities.  Feeling that there wasn't really much to my daily activities that would entice others, I stayed away.  However, I have now become introduced into the potential of Twitter which far exceeds my initial understanding.  Twitter has enabled me to make contacts with educators and thinkers abroad.  As  a teacher of students with identified disabilities, I am always searching for unique ways to bring the curriculum to my students.  I want them to maintain an experience that is positive and builds upon their ability to self-advocate and lead independent lives.   ThroughTwitter, I have made several contacts that will provide me with the supports and collaboration that I am looking for.  What I find most valuable is that I have been able to be in conversations with people who are "famous" in the world of education and I able to be part of their academic circles, their PLN's.   Currently, I am following: Alan November an Ed Tech and 21st Century learning skills expert, Timothy Gwynn,whom I found and added after following Michelle Baldwin.   Both Michelle and Timothy present to me as very accessible and extremely knowledgable.  Their profiles both include statements of a commitment to forward thinking and development of technology use and education in the classrooms.  Nicole Eredics is a wealth of information on inclusion and conducts a weekly podcast centered on inclusive classrooms.  I have read Paula Kluth's many books on teaching students with Autism.  I can now follow her Twitters as well.  I have also been led to new experts through following here Twitters.  Within one week of beginning my concentrated efforts with Twitter, I already feel that I have such an amazing wealth of resources.  I have also gained two followers on Twitter as a result of my PLN Network on Diigo.

Om July 24th 2012, at 9:00 a.m., I participated in my first Twitter chat.  #edchat is a site where thousands of people in the education field elect a topic of the day.  Once the topic has been voted on by the participants, a continual stream of Tweets, begins.   The topic during my experience was on the value and sustainability of PLN's.   At first, I was overwhelmed with the speed of the posts.  I saw comments that I wanted to expand upon but they were replaced in a flash by more wealths of knowledge.  As information sped by, I began to write down the names of people that I saw frequently or whose Tweet contained a link to an article that I was interested in.  Many of the people I chose to follow on Twitter and Diigo, came from "lurking" on the #edchat stream.  Tom Whitby appeared several times in the discussion and so I added hi to both my Twitter following and my Diigo network.

Diigo is a social networking and bookmarking site that I also utilize in an effort to build my PLN.  Upon registering to the site, Diigo lets me tag things of interest that I find as I am searching the internet. It then categorizes them into a "tag roll" based on the title that I give it.  In this way, I am able to build a library of resources.  in addition, Diigo allows me to connect with other people who are Diigo to add to my network.  When I come across an article on the internet that I like and want to keep it as a resource, I can bookmark it and tag it.  I can also add the author to my network or look up the author in the network search engine and decide if I would like to follow that person based on their profile and their subject tags as well.  Tero Toriavan, for example is one of the people I have chosen to follow in my network.  He is a special education specialist with an emphasis on Autism.  I found him when I clicked on Paula White's Diigo network page.  I had found her from the #edchat, looked her up on Diigo and when I clicked to follow her, a whole range of other people from her PLN opened up to me.  Danielle Klaus was another person I chose to follow because I found her profile to suggest she was knowledgable in the subject of education technology and adding her would be a good part of accessing resources and ideas to implement more technology in to my classroom.  Also, her PLN offered lots of people who could help me with my overall professional development and to provide future trainings and development with my staff and students.

The final social networking site I utilize in an effort to build my PLN is " The Educators PLN" website.  This site is another overwhelmingly awesome source for building relationships and ideas for my classroom.  Once again, as with the information rich Twitter and Diigo, I will also utilize this site in helping me create professional development presentations to help forward the thinking at my school site.  My PLN offers me hope with its ability to offer me fresh ideas and perspectives practically every time I choose to access it.  As I become more proficient, I would love to incorporate myself more as a contributor rather than an observer.  What I find myself doing is starting one blog or video, and then from that I get linked into something else, which introduces me to someone else.  I feel that it can go on to infinity.  I guess that one of my future goals will be to better navigate all this beneficial information and collaboration.  One blog Mrs Keehners Blog, has become my current favorite.  Her blog offers millions of references, articles, sites and professionals into the topic of differentiation in learning and incorporating Web2.0 tools.   Her blog has given me so many great ideas that I can't wait to start the year.  I will be co-teaching with an 8th grade language arts teacher this year and I would love to encourage my teaching partner to participate with me in the blog chats regarding our daily co-teaching experiences.  I found a few people on the site who shared negative stories and I know that my partner and I will be able to show a different perspective.  Once I become more comfortable myself, I would like to collaborate with some educators from my school site to create our own PLN.  Maybe even students too!

 A few of the sites that I selected to tag PLN include:

Assistive Kids Together, Inc. www. kids together.org/at I chose this site because there are so many articles related to promoting moderate/severe students into the classrooms learning with their like peers and how assistive and adaptive technologies can be used to help. I am passionate on this subject

Another site that I tagged in my Diigo PLN is Mrs.Kheener's Blog I especially appreciated and want to research more into all her listed resources on differentiating instruction using Web 2.0. This is the area where I set my professional goal for this coming school year.

 One last site I chose is educators technology.com because I want to continue to research their articles on web tools for the classroom.

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