Blog Post #6

According to PLN: Your Personal Learning Network Made Easy , a Personal Learning Network (PLN) is,"the entire collection of people with whom you engage and exchange information, usually online." Going by that definition, we all probably have a huge PLN. It says the ENTIRE collection. This could mean email, Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc. Think about how many times a day you access any of those. For me personally, it is alot! However, I do not utilize these sources as well as I should.

Dr. Strange provided us with two websites that are very helpful when creating your PLN. I liked Symbaloo the best. The other website he recommended was call Netvibes. Both are like a social media and website dashboard. You have access to all of your accounts on one page! This could be very helpful when looking up information. You could bookmark different websites and easily be able to go back and forth while comparing the information.

I think a PLN could be super useful as an educator. You could follow educational blogs and establish relationships with those authors. On Smart Exchange you could swap ideas with other teachers for interactive white board lessons. Maybe join a facebook group for new classroom ideas. Pinterest is a great site to find ideas for lesson plans, classroom decorations, organization, art and so much more! You could connect on Twitter through hashtags and following other educators.

I will create my PLN by using Symbaloo. I will bookmark all of my social media sites and news websites. By using facebook and twitter I will find people and pages to follow with educational updates. Hopefully I can find pages who are coming up with new ways to use technology in the classroom. I could search #technologyintheclassroom and see what I can find. The people who I find, I can connect with and have for future references. To begin my PLN I can find my teachers who use social media and those who blog. I can follow them and get their updates. To help broaden my PLN, I could see who my teachers follow. I can follow the people they follow and hopefully that will open up many opportunities for learning that I would not have found before!