It’s Time to Add to Our PLNs

Clock Work Man by Sean MacEntee  /  CC BY 2.0

My students – preservice teachers – learned how to create their own PLNs this semester. The students read education blogs and they wrote their own. They use a reader to make following blogs easier. They followed educators on Twitter… and they learn to tweet, to retweet, and to favorite. They shared as well as benefitted from what they read. Their favorite curation tools were Delicious and Pinterest. They created plans to curate and share what they learned as well as use it in their own soon-to-be classrooms. They also planned to publish their own experiences and ideas. They are excited about the opportunities that collaborating with others in our PLNs offers to today’s teachers.

One of the challenges when developing your PLN is to find blogs to follow. There are many excellent education blogs today, but each beginning teacher comes from a different place with individual experiences and needs. Choosing the first blogs to follow can sometimes be challenging. I, of course, make suggestions for a variety of disciplines. I also provides lists of award-winning and award-nominated blogs.

Vicki Davis (Cool Cat Teacher) has published an article about this year’s Edublog Award finalists and accompanied it with some of her usual wisdom and experience. In a message that I send to my students this week (exam week already!) I will recommend that they read her article and check out the blogs on the finalists list. You can read it at The Edublog Awards and the Legacy of Beth Holmes. I know that I plan to add to my PLN through the Edublog Award finalists list!

Education Hashtags in Twitter

Canary

When I was a child my mother and I kept pet birds. We enjoyed canaries and parakeets mostly. The canaries were lovely singers and some of the parakeets learned to talk. They were fun. Mickey, one of my favorite birds, was a cockatiel. He was very friendly with a personality of his own.

So why am I thinking about birds? I feel like I'm surrounded by Twitter birds this fall! I've enjoyed my students' and my experiment using Twitter in class. I learned a lot about Twitter. I added to my knowledge of educational technology through Twitter. I've also read some wise tweets, some funny ones, and some heart-warming ones.

Twitter Bird

I did not plan to write another post about Twitter for a while because I wanted to explore some other interests, but... I couldn't resist sharing Joyce Valenza's post about educational Twitter hashtags. (And thanks to Vicki Davis for sharing it on Twitter!)

In Educational Twitter Hashtags, the infographic, Joyce Valenza has shared popular hashtags that you can use to focus on your areas of interest. Choose a hashtag that interests you and do a search on it in Twitter. Try more than one. You're sure to find some helpful information... and you may want to visit that hashtag (or two or three) again.


Compiled By: OnlineCollegeCourses.com