Journal #7: Professional Learning Network

The professional learning network concept was a good experience. I kept forgetting to use the RSS feed because it's my first time having it, so I can't comment much on that! I think RSS feeds are helpful, but I save most of the websites I enjoy to my "favorites" anyway. I check them a few times a week, so it is essentially the same thing. As far as Twitter, I learned many neat ways to utilize it in the classroom: like having students tweet as historical figures, or researching vie specific twitter hash tags. However, I think Twitter would have been much more useful had everyone in the class been required to follow each other. Twitter only works as a collaborative platform if you have several followers and follow several accounts as well. I wrote more about that here. 

This blog that we are keeping is a nice little way to bounce ideas off of each other. I truly think this could be used in any classroom with students old enough to manage their own blog. If every student add each other's blog to their blog roll, you might see a lot of communication and sharing of ideas. I would prefer that all of the blogs are private and only visible by each other though..I know blogger has a setting for that. A blog like this might foster greater student involvement and engagement.

source: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreTeachers

The affinity group I joined via Facebook, We Are Teachers, was a really great experience. We Are Teachers is always growing. When I first joined, it had just under 150k members and now has over 155k. These members are in various stages of the teaching spectrum: from  instructional aides to substitute teachers,  pre-service teachers to veterans and everyone in between. Members work in all subjects including special ed, art and music, as well as all grade levels k-12. So this group is quite holistic. I have already talked about how the group is very interactive. Group moderators post regularly (often multiple times a day) and will post things like relevant articles, links to resources, and education/teacher-based humor in the form of comics/memes. There have been several times where they ask members to weigh in on various issues affecting education in the comments and this often creates very enriching dialogue. I have loved being able to see what other educators feel abotu certain issues. A few such topics come to mind: removing recess as a punishment, how to deal with students who blurt out, and how to avoid "burnout" as a teacher. One of my favorite things that We Are Teachers does is called the "teacher helpline." Weekly, they post a question/issue/problem form a group member and allow the rest of the members to comment their advice. It is really helpful as it is clear these issues are some that many people run into as educators, and that I may run into sometime in my career. We Are Teachers has also given me numerous ideas for activities and art projects to do with students. It is a really great resource! We Are Teachers can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreTeachers