Education is always changing, there are always new ideas of what is best practice and new technology tools are constantly being introduced or updated to better meet the needs of educators and students. How does a teacher stay up to date on all of the new products, processes, and information that is available? This is where Professional Learning Networks (PLN’s) are key to remaining a successful educator in the midst of all of the changes. I have been using my PLN for quite a while, however the Integrating Technology into Curriculum course has really helped me expand my network for a deeper learning community and opened my eyes to more effective and efficient ways to use the PLN that I have started to develop.
My school district has been using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) for many years, so I became a member of a variety of Google Plus Communities that have helped me learn about how to best implement the GAFE tools that are available. These communities have helped me develop a solid understanding of the tools that are available as well as some new and innovative ways to use the tools in the classroom. One of the best things about the Google Plus communities are how much the members want to help one another out; whenever I have a question I can search through the communities and usually the answer I am looking for has already been posted, however if it is not I can post a question out to the community and generally get a response from the members in a very short time.
Through the posts in the Google Plus communities, I have also found some of my favorite blogs to follow like Kasey Bell’s Shake Up Learning Blog and Teacher Tech- Alice Keeler. These two educators have dedicated much time and effort into sharing what they have learned about how to integrate technology effectively with a focus on using Google Apps for Education. With the assignment of building my PLN, I have branched out and started following additional educational blogs. Kathy Schrock’s Blog and her entire website have been designed to share resources and tips with other educators and I have found it to be extremely helpful and a go-to resource when I am looking for hints or best practices for integrating technology for a particular purpose.
Prior to this course, I had a twitter account and followed a few educational individuals but I never really used it as a professional development resource. After finding more educational leaders to follow, I have found it to be an amazing resource of new tools or new ideas of how to use tools I was familiar with. I love how I can find new resources easily by searching for a hashtag of #edtech or #edchat and also how it is easy to stay up to date on new ideas by spending a few minutes each day skimming through the resources and posts from the people I follow.
For this course, I decided to start using Pearltrees as a curation site to keep track of an organize the different tech tools and resources that I have found. I think this has been the most beneficial addition to my PLN because prior to using a curation site I had a bunch of random bookmarks in a variety of places, now that I have a method for organizing the resources I can easily find what I am looking for. This has been extremely beneficial in my position because when thinking of ways to help teachers integrate technology I can search the tools I have in specific folders and find resources to share with them. I also enjoy the ability to collaborate with others on folders within my curation site so I can share resources with others I am working on group projects.
Prior to this class I had not spent any time listening to ed-tech podcasts, so the concept was new to me. I am torn on how much I enjoy listening to ed-tech podcasts and how often I will continue to use them. What I like about them is that I am able to listen to them on my commute to and from work, so I feel like I am making good use of my time, while gaining new insight into educational strategies, practices, or tools. However, I have also found that generally there is a lot of wasted time within the episodes and I have to listen to the entire podcast in order to get the useful information from the episode. I won’t completely disregard listening to podcasts though, because through listening to many episodes from the tech educator podcast I found multiple resources that I have been able to introduce to the teachers I work with. Therefore, I have found that if I am picky about the episodes that I listen to from the podcasts I follow, there are some that are worthwhile episodes to listen to, but I do have to use my judgement because not all apply to me or my needs.
Throughout this course the idea of a professional learning network has become even more important, I have been able to deepen my roots and build a better community around me to support me and find resources in. The next steps for me would be to take what I have learned from the my PLN and share it with others. Through reflecting on other educators and their role in my PLN, I have realized that the network is only as good as the members, so in order for there to be information for people to find and answers to the questions people have, there has to be other educators and individuals willing to share their experiences and ideas. Now that I am more comfortable with my role in a PLN and my new position as a technology instruction coordinator, it is time for me to start sharing my knowledge and experience with others.
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