My Personal Learning Network

As the internet becomes more and more popular the world becomes a smaller place. Before the telephone was invented a person had to send a letter, which could take days, months or even years to reach their intended receiver. After the telephone a person could call up a friend and chat. But now the internet has brought people closer together than ever. When I was younger I used to watch cartoons with video phones in them and think how cool it would be to be able to see someone while you talked to them, well now that is possible. This small new world idea is true when discussing education as well. A person can form a personal learning network online to bring important information to them. Setting up a personal learning network is an easy way for a person to have information come to them instead of having to search it out on their own.

To set up a personal learning network one must first determine what kind of information they are looking for. As a teacher I would want to look for other teacher networks to find the information that would be important to me. A good suggestion would be to join a social network geared towards teachers. This can be a starting ground for your personal learning network. The second suggestion I would make would be to do an educational blog search in Google, or some other search engine, so that you can start following others with similar interests as you. Once you have found some blogs of interest to you a good idea would be to subscribe to a reader. An easy way to set up a reader would be to get a Google account and use the reader in there as it is very easy to use. Once you have a reader set up you can subscribe to specific blogs in it. This is helpful because in a reader new information comes to you instead of you having to continuously check back on the webpage for new posts.

One of the most important steps to having a personal learning network is participation. A user must immerse themselves into the websites that they follow not only reading them but by leaving comments and using the materials gained. I believe a goal of a personal learning network should be to gain information from others and then in return to leave your information. Starting small with a blog is suggested and then moving into a micro-blog site such as Twitter would help to deepen your participation.

I will continue to use some of the websites that we explored in this class while others although important to learn about may not get used as much in my future. In this class I created this blog site that I am currently posting on. This website gave me an outlet to learn and give my opinions on Web 2.0 tools. In addition it was a way for me to connect with other teachers. I will continue to use this blog, but I am not yet sure in what form.

In this class we also learned about a website called VoiceThread, which I immediately enjoyed. VoiceThread could be compared to online PowerPoints except there is an option to comment on the slides by others either by typing, talking, or a video. I even made one of my own with a class of mine. Many of my students get very nervous when doing presentations or speeches so I decided to let them do theirs on here. I got great results and the students were more willing to talk and present additional materials this way. I do plan on using this website again for future projects.

The next Web 2.0 tool that we looked at was Google. I guess before this class I knew Google was great but I discovered a whole new side to it. This could not have come at a better time as my district is currently changing over from Groupwise to Google email accounts. I learned how to use many of the icons on my Blackberry that I up until now ignored because I did not want to figure them out. Now that I have I actually use my phone for what it was meant for, not just a way to surf the net and text my friends but it is now actually a Smartphone to me. Google has some great extra perks to having an account such as my blog, my reader and Google Documents. I will be using these in the future. I already mentioned my blog. My reader is a way to get information from websites that I subscribe to without having to go to the website and check for updates. This has saved me time and I will continue using this. I will also continue to use Google Docs. The Word and PowerPoint features in here work great with the added bonus of being a collaborative workspace. I can share a document with a co-worker, they can add their information to it without me having to go back in and re-save it. I will continue this use as it is easy to use and saves time.

Delicious is one of my favorite websites that we were introduced to. This is an online bookmarking website. I can put my favorite websites into here and it will tag and save them for me. I will always use this website. This would work for bookmarking pages that I want to use with and for my students, as well as sorting research materials and personal items. It is easy to tag the websites so that I know why I found the website important and I can easily find it later when I need to use it again.

Skype and Elluminate are both ways to make phone calls or hold video conferences. These were new to me in the sense that I have only used sites such as these socially so I was introduced to a new way to use them. I do not know if I will get an opportunity to use these in my classrooms. However, I will continue using them socially, and if I can find the appropriate place for them in my professional life I will incorporate them.

Twitter is the final website that was used in great depth in this class. Twitter is a micro-blogging website. Its users can leave short messages that range from what they are doing at that moment to a new education bill that was passed. At first I was very anti Twitter, I thought it was for people that needed a hobby. However, after exploring it more I have seen the professional and personal benefits of Twitter. I’m still not sure of how I feel about posting on a regular basis, but I do like following other’s posts to keep up with educational and sports related information.

I do believe developing a personal learning network is important. Once I discovered these Web 2.0 tools I realized how much easier maneuvering the internet could be. Information found in a web search can be overwhelming and many of these websites help to better find and organize this information. Also teaching should be about sharing ideas and these tools all make sharing information easier for everyone. I would suggest everyone start their own personal learning network. Start out small and slowly grow your network. Even after this class I do not believe my network is complete, I believe it has just begun and I can’t wait to see where it will take me.