My Own Personal Learning Networks

Although I have grown up with technology, it is still difficult to remain current on all the different digital tools. The feeds are an excellent way to stay up to date and involved with the upcoming sources and methods used in the classrooms as well as life in general. Feedly and Pinterst have been my most favorite and utilized resources of. I did not delve too deeply into anything else because I found these two websites kept me occupied thoroughly. Feedly was excellent for education technology whereas Pinterest gave me hands on education activities.

Twitter was a source I struggled with. I had an account previous to joining this course but never used it.  As of now, I follow a few teachers who specialize in technology, a few of my friends, and the news. As for hashtags—edutech and education were the ones I would look at. However, I felt I did not receive as much as I invested in this site—when I tweeted, there were no responses back. It was a resource I tried to involve myself into but was not as interested or impacted by it as much as the other tools we were provided with.

LibraryThing is my favorite item I am taking away from this course. As a bookworm, this site took a passion I had and connected me to others who have a passion for reading. They challenge and encourage one another to push their reading limits and go out of their comfort zones to try something new. I think that is the perfect example of what school itself should do for students—encourage and challenge. There were book-reading challenges, the excitement over reading lists, as well as encouragement to complete books that may have been a more difficult read. There was nothing on the website that di was not encouraging and I feel that is how school should be as well.

This past month has opened my eyes to just a few of the millions of different types of resources for teachers there are in the world. Whether or not I use them all is not the question, but rather, how can I use what I know to better help my students, myself, and the school I am working with? In what ways am I providing an excellent education for my students whilst making it engaging and interesting. I think once some type of balance is found, success will follow.