1. According to onceateacher.wordpress a PLN or Personal Learning Network is all the people who you communicate and exchange information with, typically online. While this definition is limited, the idea of the PLN is to create a larger network for educators to use as resources to expand teaching practices and learning experiences. My PLN is a great tool that I created with my personal teaching interests in mind. As my undergrad degree is in History and Elementary Education and my thesis topic is related to Multiple Intelligence instruction, many of the links and individuals I added deal with one of these two topics. I am always looking for ways to make learning fun and exciting, rather than a list of dates and names of places and people. As for my thesis project, I am always looking for a way to make the research easier and better overall.
2. Twitter Chat- innochat# Thursday 12-noon ET on 4/14/11, discussing: Innovation’s Unintended Consequences. The Twitter chat was extremely interesting to take part in. I was intrigued to realize not only how many educators are using educational chats, but also individuals in business, law and just socially conscious individuals. In the innochat forum I found that most of the participants were actually businessmen or women and while the topic discussed in many cases related to their businesses, the questions posed and ideas discussed as a result created a huge platform of ideas to teach from. The main question asked was what is one innovation that had unintended outcomes? One of the answers I loved was water bottles. While they provide us with clean safe water, all the plastic has created an environmental concern over recycling, waste and animal life safety. I didn’t participate as much as I could have, but instead enjoyed gathering ideas about what people found relevant in their lives, which makes teaching more fun and current. As for my Twitter network, most of the individuals I chose to follow are involved in Multiple Intelligence education, research or implementation. I have a huge amount of physical research to do for my thesis and any additional resources or help I can get, I will love. I chose individuals who had several posts that were thought provoking or personally helpful to me. It’s not the most advanced way to go about things, but at I check-in, it seems to be useful.
3. The Diigo network process was similar to how I approached Twitter. In Diigo, I chose people who have great resource ideas, links, and teaching ideas for history. I have never liked history being taught as names and dates. I believe it is so much more, so educators who can give me ways to show why learning history is so important and inter-related to all aspects of learning can only make me a better educator. In my Diigo tagroll I tagged several links which relate to multiple intelligence, these resources are 10 Brainpowered Wonders in The King's speech, Does a high IQ Garantee Success, Interpersonal Diversity, The Multiple Intelligences-resources, and Colin Rose's Accelerated Learning.
4. In joining a group, I joined Educator’s PLN, and found a discussion that hit a personal point of interest and concern. After working with children with disabilities in both a Special Day Class as well as an Emotionally Disturbed Class, I find classroom management to be vital to learning. I also have a book that I think may help the teacher out and wanted to share my limited experiences and resources. Additionally I could sympathize with the teacher’s frustration because she was trying to teach reading to children with behavior issues. I student taught first grade and was expected to teach a class of children with ranging abilities to read, a huge task that I really don’t want to endure again and after working in the ED class, I can’t imagine working both issues at the same time.
