This week, we explored Personal Learning Networks (PLN) and how the internet has so many useful tools - social media pages such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. - available to us. The availability of these connection sites are beneficial for us because we can connect with people who are useful in guiding our learning experiences. Additionally, having access like this allows us to read/ gain knowledge of what they are thinking as they research. Before this week's activities, I wasn't clear on what a PLN was until now; I learned that a "PLN is a tool that uses social media and technology to collect, communicate, collaborate and create with connected colleagues, students, friends, family, etc. anywhere at any time. Participating educators, worldwide, make requests and share resources. According to a blog post on eduTopia, Tom Whitby explains that, each individual educator becomes a potential source of information. Collecting these sources in a location to access them is the PLN. There are no two PLNs that are the same" (Whitby, 2013, November). I believe that because traditional routes have provided many opportunities, establishing your own PLN is an essential step toward deepening your abilities as a collaborator. It is important to have a PLN because it is an empowering, transformational process, which fundamentally transforms
your professional learning and communicating/ collaborating approach; this is essential because it is useful in lifelong learning.
Aside from learning about what a PLN is, we created Twitter accounts and began collaborating. "Twitter, the social media application, is the backbone for most PLNs. Each 140-character post allows quick and easy transmissions of information to links yielding websites, videos, podcasts, blog posts, articles, interviews and excerpts -- dream resources for classroom professionals. By simply asking, teachers receive content and strategies from sources around the globe" (Whitby, 2013, November).This is my first encounter with Twitter and I found it to go very well, it was not hard to navigate around. Being that I'm not too big on social media, nonetheless, Twitter is fun to use.
This tool will be useful in my educational activities because it provides a way to share learning opportunities with others not just in this class, but also outside of the class, anyone in the class can tweet out questions requesting resources or share the learning that is taking place in the class. We can also do this by connecting beyond the class and looking at professional and educational accounts. I will definitely add Twitter to the collaborative portion of my PLE being that, that is the focus of the weeks to come and also because it's organizational structure makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online.
Lastly, I read an article titled 7 Reasons Why Students Need Technology posted by College Blender of course, and I highly suggest people take the time to read it. Although it is a tad dated it is very informative and hopefully it brings a new perspective on technological importance for learning as it did for myself.
References
Whitby, T. (2013, November). How do I get a pln. Retrieved from ttp://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-do-i-get-a-pln-tom-whitby
Hey Jackya, I agree on how we can use Twitter to share and obtain information for learning purposes with others around the world. It really makes the world a smaller place.
ReplyDeleteThanks! It definitely does.
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