Journal 7: My PLN

 NETS-T 5 a. participate in local and global learning communities to explore creative applications of technology to improve student learning.


The acronym PLN stands for Personal Learning Network, which consists of interaction of many people interconnected by a common interest creating a network that contributes to their professional development and knowledge without ever meeting them personally, but virtually.  I have created a PLN of education and educators using Twitter, I Google, Blogger, Diigo, and Classroom 2.0.  Having built a PLN will aid when becoming a teacher by allowing me to communicate, share, and acquire ideas to keep my classroom and teaching up to date, while  maintaining my students’ attention and making learning fun and attractive.
Twitter is an online social networking service that allows its user to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as tweets.  My first step to build my PLN was using my Twitter account, KarlaJayMedina, where I have been able to communicate, by “following”, with other students who share my field, teachers, and other education professionals from all over the nation.    By using and searching hash tags related to education I have been able to see other professionals’ comments and if I found the user interesting I would be able to follow him/her, making my network more numerous. This is how I met @teachingwthsoul, Lisa Dabbs, creator of #NTchat. # is called "hash tag" in the Twitter World. Using hash tags also allows Twitter users to meet on a certain day at a certain time to discuss a certain topic, creating a chat session with users of interest.  For example, I attended #Edchat, held on Wednesdays, on November 1, 2011, at 5:00 p.m., PT, the topic: how important are school administrators? Is it possible to have good schools without administrators?  In this #Edchat teachers and education professionals agreed on the importance of good administration and how their leadership impacts the teachers, and consequently the students and the community.  I found fascinating how these professionals shared ideas and retweeted encouraging quotes that would demonstrate their true feelings about administration and how it could improve, and the reasons to why administration might not be reaching their potential.  Discussions such as these might enlighten many users to new approaches for the students’ welfare.
Diigo has helped me bookmark articles that I have read about education, allowing me to highlight what is important and to tag the article to related topic makes information easy to find by other Diigo users who follow me, and whom I follow.  A couple of Diigo users that I am currently following are Jeff Thomas, director of Technology and Track and Field Coach and Mary Hillis, EFL teacher in Japan. I am following these education professionals because I am interested in the journals that they have bookmarked and the information they have provided in their Diigo, consequentially, this expands my PLN.  In Diigo, I have bookmarked the profiles and tagged them as PLN because this allows me to find the members of my PLN easily.  
Another tool I used to expand my PLN was Classroom 2.0.  Classroom 2.0 is a digital discussion forum I joined, which is a place where presentations are offered by education professionals; comments can be made through the chat forum, beside the video.  There are articles that other users share, similar to Diigo.  I previously viewed a presentation featured by Teacher Bryan Jackson.  His topic was about the community and integration of it.  I found interesting his idea in relationship to getting to know other communities through the internet and how much we will learn and know of ourselves.  Viewing his presentation and the people chatting about it helped me know of other teachers and by asking them their Twitter and asking them questions through the chat room and commenting and discussing about the presentation helps me to get to know them and expand my PLN.