My PLN

I have to confess that my personal learning network is still a bit scanty.  I have attempted to follow blogs and wikis of other teachers by adding them to my rss feeds on my igoogle account.  I loved the Googledoc. project and can really see its usefulness in the classroom.  Google Earth was really fun to experiment with and another great teaching tool.  The tool that I had the most problem with was delicious.  I was using Google Chrome as my browser and I thought I had imported my bookmarks but now I can't seem to access my account at all. So, though it seems like a great tool, it has only been frustrating to me.

I will continue to use the tools I found useful, hopefully becoming more skillful in the future.  Since I only get to use them occasionally in the classroom, I haven't had much of an opportunity to become comfortable with any of them. I also would have no way to develop a PLN with others in a school.

I definitely see the advantage of a PLN in that it connects you with other people who are interested in the same things you are.  I can see how learning to use these tools can help a person to access the great amount of ideas out there.

Twitter was the least helpful of the tools we were introduced to.  It reminds me of Facebook, which I don't really care for.  I also see very little use for it in the classroom. I will probably not continue to use it.

Great websites

I see so many great websites featured in other peoples' links that I fear I could do nothing for a week but look at new sites with great teaching ideas.  Several that I added are cooltoolsforschools, thirty interesting ways to use twitter, wetpaint, when youtube is blocked, and technology tidbits.

My list of tags has definitely grown.  I started out with education and reading.  But now I have added social media, googlesites, writing, literacy, and more.  I have been fairly consistent in my use of tags, not using synonyms, though that does sound like a good idea.  The reading tag that I started with doesn't seem too effective so I have borrowed some tags from others that seem to lead to more interesting sites.  These tags do seem to be useful for all the different tools we have used.  I would teach kids to use tags that are more descriptive- like using literacy instead of reading.

I have been using education and technology tags the most frequently.

I didn't add annotations because I didn't know what I was doing.  I think it would be advantageous if I can figure out how to do it.

I found that both Stacey and Geri bookmarked some of the same things I did.  When I looked at other people who had a similar interest in education and literacy, I found several that looked promising that I added to my network.

Del.icio.us could be used with a group of students by adding them to each others' networks and then they could share the bookmarks that they find in relation to a project or report.

These social networking tools could add so much to the classroom to foster student communication and collaboration when students work on a project together and are able to instantly access and add to each other's thoughts.  What a great way to stimulate problem solving and critical thinking!  There are many great ideas out there for topics but the main benefit is getting kids to read, think and write.  Getting administrators to give some of them a try would be the best way to convince them, I think.

To Tweet or not to Tweet

I am not a fan.  While I can see that some teachers find Tweeting as a way to gain support from other teachers, I feel that I need more than 140 characters from someone in a different country.  I hate Facebook because it seems that everyone feels the need to post the most mundane details of their lives and Twitter seems to me to be just as meaningless.  I have joined and will follow my two people and, who knows, I may be surprised.  I will try to keep an open mind.

Technology and Learning

November's article is an insightful discussion of the importance of balancing responsibility and learning in the digital arena. I think his point that social and ethical responsibility must be taught by exposing children to these social tools rather than blocking them is valid.  Many schools already address bullying so adding cyberbullying and other misuses of technology seems like a logical step.
His point that students too often accept information from the web without thinking critically about these sources is so true.  As teachers, we need to teach our students how to find accurate information online and to evaluate its reliability.  I try to do this by directing them to several trustworthy sites and then have them search on their own for other sites and then to compare them.
The most important point November makes is the need to teach our students to think globally and to be aware and empathize with the plights of people around the world.  I hope to continue to work on this with my students by various projects like having them research the use and availability of natural resources in other parts of the world.
This project fits well with Warlick's ideas on the importance of student-centered learning in that I let them pick the resource and the country that they want to learn more about.

Diigo vs. del.icio.us

Besides the fact that Diigo is just so much easier to type than del.icio.us :)  I thought Diigo was clearer and easier to follow the instructions.  I also liked the highlighting feature and the sticky notes.  I think I would have used this a lot when doing research for various papers I have written - if I had known it existed!  For school use, I can see either of them being valuable as a research tool to aid students.  The teacher could provide a few bookmarks that the class could access to get started researching and then they could add to and share the list with fellow students.

I don't really see much difference in BuddyMarks other than it was a little easier to attach to my browser toolbar.

Using del.icio.us (or Diigo) seems like a great way to be able to access your bookmarks where ever you are and to take advantage of the knowledge of others through networking with people with similar interests.

Blogging

Reading and commenting on other's blogs is very time consuming.  I think I would definitely be more likely to read and respond to one class blog as we do to the wiki.  That way there could be a general theme with each person adding her comments to it.

Blogs and wikis

http://www.wiki-teacher.com/index.php  This wiki offers great professional resources and then discussion of them by those who have tried them.  I can see me using this as a way to increase my knowledge of any subject area but especially in reading.  I would say that this wiki uses some of the features of a blog in that teachers can make comments that others cannot edit.  But  it differs from a RSS feed in that I can choose the comments and resources I want to access.