Post #5 PLNs - What Are They?

A personal learning network (PLN) is a group of people or tools that you can use for help, inspiration and collaboration. PLNs are not only for teachers. Students can use a PLN to work on a research project or organize ongoing assignments.Teachers can find interesting ideas, new ways to teach, creative class projects, or even something as simple as an idea for classroom organization. One of the best ways to find people who are interested in the same ideas is Twitter. I have already created a twitter account for this class, and I am searching for other educators who are excited about math and reading. These are two passions of mine. In a previous class, I was instructed to create a Pinterest page. This is a tool used to gather ideas more than people. However, as an aspiring elementary teacher, I will use this tool to find creative games, lesson plans, classroom decor, and more. I can also follow people who post this information if I choose. Finally, my first C4T assignment was Dan Meyer, a math teacher with great insight and ideas for teaching mathematics concepts successfully. I have continued to follow his blog and draw from his experiences.

Another piece to my PLN is personal contacts. My mother was a kindergarten teacher and my sister is a high school math teacher. Through them, I have made other teacher contacts locally. All of these teachers are people that I see fairly regularly or that I can call to discuss ideas. One contact in particular is the kindergarten teacher at my elementary school. We talk at least weekly to compare the things my son is learning in his school with what she is teaching and to discuss different methods and how they work. Together, we have learned different ways to communicate with parents and different activities used to enforce a concept. We have also discussed scheduling problems that she had in her class at the beginning of the year and worked together to think of a solution that is currently working out really well!

I am currently compiling my PLN on a website called Symbaloo. Here, I can create tiles linking me to all of my PLN sources. So far, I have one for twitter, one for pinterest, one for Mr. Meyer's blog. I also have tiles designated for all of the important documents that I use for EDM 310. It's still a work in progress, but I am very excited about the idea of having all of my information in one place.