Personal Learning Network

I don’t think I really had a personal learning network before this class.  I mean I  searched the web for good resources, emailed people, and bookmarked things into my favorite’s folder, but that was about it.   I can honestly say that I never had read a blog, let alone create one.  I knew that there were Web2.0 tools out there, but would have never believed that there were so many great things out there that are easy to use, free, and great for emphasizing communication and collaboration.  I have discovered great ways to implement these things in a mathematics classroom and will continue to challenge myself to integrate more of the tools into my classes.   I do have to admit that I it makes me scared that once this class is over I will not have someone there pointing out all these cool tools available to me and encouraging me to try them out and talk about how I could apply them in the classroom setting.  Prof. Schroeder, would you like to be my PLN assistant (volunteer of course)?  Keeping connected and up-to-date on new technologies is almost a full-time job itself!

It is actually pretty crazy how much I have learned in these eight short weeks.  I am excited to use these great tools and resources to engage and motivate my students.  I would have to say that I have fallen in love with Google and all of its applications as you could tell from all my other blogs.  I found voice threads, flickr, and digital timelines to be very cool tools and hope to integrate those somehow.  I love the idea of having a classroom website with a blogging page.  I would also love to have a gadget on my site where I can communicate with parents about upcoming events in the classroom.   I will most definitely be replacing my paper math journals and transform that into a classroom blog page where students can respond to my prompts and respond to each other’s posts.  I will also (as part of my unit plan) have students making their own webpages about using math/algebra in the real world or  I also like the idea of having students make a tutorial website on a topic that they have learned in class as an alternative assessment.  I was initialing going to implement the plan next year, but once the students heard about my ideas they have asked that I let them do it this year.  

I love bookmarking with tags—I have been only using Delicious, but don’t know what I want to do in the future.  I really love Diigo because I really love all the extra tools that are free for educators and students, but I have built a network of people and resources in Delicious so I don’t want to lose that.  I know that I could use both, but I have to be realistic about things and know that I will not want to bounce back and forth.  (I do think there is a way to transfer over my stuff to Diigo, but I will have to further investigate that later).  I feel I am finally getting the hang of tagging and have found that connecting with others with the same interests and educational goals is easier than I thought.  I am not a social person by any means and usually stick to my small circle of coworkers and friends.  I never thought that I had the time (or need) for expanding that circle, but found that it is well worth the time spent making those connections.