Personal Learning Network-Reflection

1. PLN's

A personal learning network or PLN for short is made up of various technological sources and people that help your individual knowledge.  These various technologies include Twitter, Facebook or any social networking site, Diigo, Blogs, Youtube, etc.  These webpages or web tools are various ways to connect with millions of other people on the internet to gain information, or at it's most basic, to gain a connection to another individual with similar interests.


Currently in my personal PLN I am using web 2.0 tools like Facebook, Youtube, and iChat.  For this class I was required to expand my PLN by using Twitter, Diigo, Blogger, and more.  For the sake of being completely honest about my PLN I will most likely after this class (and the subsequent grading of these assignments of course) delete my Twitter account and my Blogger blog.  Personally, I am not a fan of Twitter as I think that many people use it to display useless bits of information in 140 characters or less. I do not see any relevance for it in my PLN and do not plan to use it in the future.  Additionally I am not by nature a "blogger."  I can see myself becoming one if I had relevant things to blog about but right now I don't feel that is the case, though I have seen the positives far more in blogging than in Twittering.  Diigo is something I plan to keep in my PLN.  I think this is a great tool for sharing relevant websites and also for finding them.  (It beats copying and pasting into word and emailing =) )  Additionally you can connect with an enormous audience as opposed to the limitations your Gmail contacts list has for you.


I plan to use my PLN when it comes to my future as an educator sparingly.  I am very old school in my approach to education.  I am a Perennalist for the most part when it comes to my educational philosophy and believe in the importance of classic literature, and history when it comes to education.  I do plan to use sites like Diigo to continue to find resources for my teaching as I have found the site to be a valuable, educational tool.  Additionally, I will use Facebook to stay connected to colleagues and former students as I have done with many of my former teachers.  Additionally, I plan to use Youtube videos as a great source for examples for my students.  Youtube is an extremely valuable PLN source for classrooms, especially for the visual learner.  Finally, I may or may not use blogging.  I am sure I will come across many blogging sites in my future research, but as for me creating and adding to a blog, that remains to be seen.

2. RSS Feeds

I subscribed to RSS feeds using my blogger account, and my blog page.  In choosing which RSS feeds I subscribed to I chose feeds that I was interested in as someone with a B.A. in English Literature, and some just for fun.   In the literature realm I subscribed to current literary criticism,  and American Literature, which is a journal put out by Duke University.  For real time news and fun information I subscribed to the NY Times, and for fun Perez Hilton's celebrity gossip.  Obviously the latter is for amusement purposes only, the NY Times provides me with the most current news headlines, American Literature gives me real time updates on the world of American Literature, and Literary Criticism gives me many new articles of criticism on the books I have read many times.  Below are the links to the RSS feeds actual sites.

Literary Criticism:

http://explore.westervillelibrary.org/literature

American Literature:

http://americanliterature.dukejournals.org/

NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/

Celebrity Gossip:

http://perezhilton.com/

These various RSS feeds will aid me in my continued knowledge of the world, and the world of literature.

3. Twitter

My twitter pseudonym or screen name is @SORBnWONDERLAND
The people I am following include some personal friends, a few classmates from 422b, a few celebrities, and a few educational sources, such as Literature Books, and the Nook for Barnes and Noble.  Literature Books gives updates constantly on (obviously) new literature and new books; giving me a huge list of things to buy for my next subscription, my Nook.  The Nook for B&N twitter is a great source for lots of relevant literature information as they continually "re-tweet" many other relevant literature sources tweets like ParragonBooks or RoostBooks.  I chose these individuals to be in my Twitter network because they give me updates on things that I care about, such as celebrities I enjoy, or classmates and friends with fun, new information about an educational topic or just their everyday lives, and literature sources that provide me with new books and new sources for books constantly.  Although, as I stated previously, I will be deleting my Twitter, it has been interesting checking it out for myself and reassuring myself it is not something I need, nor is it something I am interested in using.

4. Diigo

Diigo is the PLN tool I enjoyed learning about and using the most in this class.  My Diigo bookmarks included many great sources for English teachers as well as students trying to write a paper, as well as sites for future teachers.  My bookmarks included: JSTOR: an online journal that gives you access to tons of different journals and articles on a vast variety of subjects.  This is a site I used hundreds (literally) of times during my undergraduate studies.  I also bookmarked Project Gutenberg; which is a free, online source for e-book versions of many classic pieces of literature.  Again this was a great source for when I was looking up various passages of books, different poems etc; another site I used hundreds of times.  I bookmarked the SCTA site which is Student California Teachers Association:  This site is the main hub for Student CTA members.  I myself was a member of CSUSM's SCTA and thought it was a great society for future teachers to look into.  Furthermore, I bookmarked EasyBib, which is a free source that places your sources into APA, MLA, or Chicago format for you.  Finally, and probably the most used site by me as an undergrad was the Owl at Purdue Writing Center site, which gave easy to understand instructions on writing methods, citing sources etc.  Not only did I use this in my own studies but I also used this as a resource when I was working at CSUSM's Writing Center.  It is a great tool for anyone writing a paper and needing any kind of help.  The groups and people I follow are people who are either English teachers, or literature enthusiasts. 

5. Digital Discussion Forums

The digital discussion forums I follow are Classroom 2.0 and Educators PLN.  Both sites I found to be equally interesting and full of educational information.  Though, the site I did gravitate towards to more was Classroom 2.0.  They both had a similar layout but I found navigating Classroom 2.0 easier and more efficient for me.  I especially enjoyed the videos and pictures tab as these provided be with entertaining examples of what educators are doing these days.  One of the video's I enjoyed was Reading Strategies for young readers, which I will put below.  I enjoyed this video because it gave a voice to young readers who can be shy or nervous about reading or reading aloud.  At one point it utilized puppets to give the young reader the feeling that they are not doing the aloud reading but the puppet and thus, they had no reason to be shy.  

6. PLN Experience

My experience with working with PLN's in this course was in some ways enlightening and educational and if I am being honest, in some ways boring as I consider myself pretty tech-savvy already.  I enjoyed learning about Diigo and Classroom 2.0 as these were resources that I had never heard of before, let alone used, and I found them to be extremely useful and beneficial to my future as an educator.  One thing I disliked was the use of Twitter.  I have very strong opinions about Twitter, and they are all negative.  One thing that this class made me re-think about and subsequently become more nervous about, is how much technology and internet PLN's are being used in classrooms today.  Though I believe that in many instances, technology has bettered today's classrooms, it does make me question whether or not we are going to far, and whether or not teachers will someday be obsolete because of tools like Twitter, and Skype.  I think that we as future educators need to understand and embrace technology and utilize all that it has to offer in our classrooms, but more importantly, we need to know when the technology needs to be turned off and when we need to rely on real, human interaction.  All in all I think that this course provides its students with a plethora of sources to build their PLN's.