Saturday, November 17, 2012


REFLECTION:
 
PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK

 
Reflect on the current policies in place regarding social networking in your school or district. How has this workshop shaped your opinions about the potential of these tools to facilitate learning and collaboration? What are the challenges you face regarding incorporating these tools and allowing teachers and students to network virtually? Describe how you plan to address these challenges in the coming school year.
 

Wow!  This was a very informative class.  I am happy to know that with the RSS (Really Simply Syndication), I now have a tool that will allow me to update and modernize my own PLN on topics that directly impact the way I will now select and conduct technology professional development training for the stakeholders in my school/district.  Also, I will now be able to share with all stakeholders information (i.e., articles, video, current news updates, etc) that can possible provide best practices that have been utilized by other school/districts.
Even after being asked by a school/district to conduct technology professional development workshops on tools that would allow administrators, teachers and/or students to network virtually, many of the sites are blocked.  My challenge has been to try to convince that school/district that “unblocking” these sites would allow (1) the stakeholders to apply what they have just learned (2) an opportunity to connect, communicate and collaborate with all stakeholders effectively in a timely manner.
 
For the upcoming year, I plan to address the challenges by:
(a)    Obtaining permission to have access to websites (i.e. teacher tube, Google, etc) prior to scheduled training
(b)   Offer technology workshops for administrators and teachers to include Blogs, Twitter, Podcast, RSS Feed and Google Reader
(c)    Offer scheduled workshops and follow-ups that offer CEU credit via Professional Learning Community (PLC) during prep periods, after school and during inservice on developing Personal Learning Networks for administrators and teachers

 


        

 

Wednesday, October 31, 2012


Wow!  As many technology training workshops that I have attended and conducted, I was unaware that I had a Personal Learning Network (PLN).  Prior to this class my, PLN included (a) taking a class (b) colleagues, (c) reading professional journals online/off line (d) books (e) magazines, (f) newspaper articles (g) radio (h) television (i) emails (j) professional seminars/workshops (k) internet websites (l) wikis (m) chat/instant messaging (n) personal conversations with friends and family via phone and/or email (o) taking f2f courses and (p) elearning/online classes.

I am happy to know that with the RSS (Really Simply Syndication), I have a tool that will allow me to update and modernize my own PLN on topics that directly impact the way I will now select and conduct technology professional development training for the stakeholders in my school/district.  Also, I will now be able to share with all stakeholders information (i.e., articles, video, current news updates, etc) that can possible provide best practices that have been utilized by other school/districts on topics that are of interest individually and collectively.


Describe why you selected to use the tools you selected to be your Personal Learning Network (PLN)?