The Personal Learning Network I have built by using various social media, blogs, and RSS newsfeeds have increased my knowledge with the field of Education and has given me countless resources to utilize for my own benefit as well as students’ benefit. I use the RSS Newsfeeds to help keep myself up to date on news and current issues within the field of education. The different RSS newsfeeds helps illustrate issues that I may have been unaware of and brings these issues to my attention. Feedly.com provides great resources for teachers in their RSS newsfeeds to help them develop all areas of their pedagogy such as teaching styles, instructional materials, technology, activities, psychology of student learning, and even how to relate to students and help them become more engaged in their education. I have subscribed to many feeds on feedly.com but the most beneficial feeds I have found is the Edutopia RSS newsfeed and Education Technology newsfeed. These are great resources to help teachers become more aware of the technology available and how these resources can increase student learning as well as make themselves a more efficient and educated teacher. Students can also benefit from the RSS newsfeeds by being exposed to specific topics and issues within education and help them gain a perspective of their environment and how they fit into their environment. Overall, I am able to research and learn about almost everything within the field of education to help me refine and perfect my pedagogy for my future students.
Twitter has also been a useful tool to learn and explore different areas within education. Twitter allows me to search for specific areas within education such as common core, education news, or various resources and follow the conversation regarding that specific issue. Once I have followed the conversation, I can then either add to the conversation or just read and learn from what is being said within the conversation. Resources such as articles, websites, blogs and other sites are posted on Twitter as external links, which can add to my learning and can help me develop my pedagogy further. Some of the feeds I am following on Twitter that I have found beneficial are Education week, Discovery Education, KPBS News, Huffington Post Education, DML Research Hub, Edutopia, and National Geographic Education. These have been shown to offer various resources for both teachers and students and can also illustrate issues within the field to help broaden students’ perspective and develop their critical thinking skills. Since I am fairly new to Twitter, the only discussion or hash tag I currently follow is our class hash tag #422sp14 and school #csusmedu. Since I have signed up for a Twitter account, I have only tweeted once for our class. I have not had any responses from that particular tweet, however I plan to use Twitter for my personal and professional growth in the future to help keep me up to date on current issues within education. Overall, I believe Twitter is a great tool that can help teachers collaborate and communicate with each other on various issues and help keep the lines of communication open between teachers and people within the field of education.
Diigo is another tool I found to be useful for developing educators’ pedagogy and professional development. Diigo allows educators to join different networks that are interesting or useful in their profession, research these issues or topics, and contribute to their network through articles or other forms of information. This helps educators gain perspective and knowledge within a specific area. Also, Diigo offers educators research articles within either their network or even community to help them in their teaching profession. Some of the groups in my Diigo library are EduBlogs, Wikis in Education, and Teachertube. These pages offer many different resources to help teachers understand the nature of school and help students achieve their full potential. I have learned from these pages that there are many different methods to teaching and resources available to help teachers with their professional development and pedagogy. Overall, Diigo provides resources to teachers to help them develop professionally and provides a community for educators to collaborate and communicate resources with one another.
The Ning Group I explored was the “Classroom 2.0”. I also applied for a membership with both Educators PLN and Classroom 2.0. The most interesting part of Classroom 2.0 were the blogs and articles posted within the site. There were over 1000 blogs to search and vast amounts of data within each blog discussion. These blogs provide endless amounts of information for educators to perfect their pedagogy and help their teaching become more efficient and engaging for students. Articles and blog posts include technology in education, classroom management, teaching styles, activities and lessons, and even resources to help students better understand what skills will help them succeed in school. I found articles within the site relating to the common core, which would help educators transform their lessons to meet the new common core objectives for their subject and class. These are all great resources to help teachers gain the knowledge they need to help students to the best of their ability. As well, teachers are better equipped to convert their teaching methods and material over to the common core. Overall, The Classroom 2.0 site has shown to be an excellent resource for helping educators prepare their students so they achieve their best in school and helping teachers provide the necessary tools and information to their students to assist them with their educational careers.
My overall Personal Learning Network experience has taught me that there are great resources online for teachers and educators of all types and as long as educators are flexible and open to new information, educators can benefit from developing a Personal Learning Network. These resources can help educators develop professionally by providing tools, such as lesson plans, behavior management plans, communicate and collaborate with other educators, ask questions, assist other educators, share experiences or information, learn how to integrate technology into classrooms, and more. Educators can become prepare themselves to shift their lessons and material over to common core standards and use technology within the classroom to help guide instruction and engage students’ activities. I have learned from developing my own personal learning network that I can find almost any resource within my personal learning network for developing my teaching strategies and pedagogical practices to better my students’ educational experience. I have also learned through developing a personal learning network that education is a profession of continuous learning and that I am committing myself to a lifelong commitment to my education as well as my students’ education. Overall, I have learned that my personal learning network will continue to grow as I continue my education in the teaching credential program and develop my pedagogy as an educator.
No comments:
Post a Comment