I see professional learning networks as a valuable resource. As
teachers many of us have been sharing ideas in the hallways and in
lunchrooms for years. Fairly recently a whole new world of sharing
possibilities has opened up with not only professional learning networks
, but also with sties like Teachers Pay Teachers and Pinterest. These new opportunities save time and expand our pool of resources exponentially, ultimately to the benefit of the learners.
I
use Teachers Pay Teachers often as a go to for already prepared
materials. My students recently wanted to learn about horses, so rather
than spend days learning about horses myself and developing a unit, I
was able to easily access many well developed units on TPT. This is a
very affordable time saver. Also, I needed a new, cute Thanksgiving
project to do with my class. Pinterest is my go to for finding tons of
easy and creative projects to do with my class. I just can’t believe
all of the great ideas and materials we all have access to now!
On
my Digg feed, I found myself mostly looking at a site called “A Place
Called Kindergarten” and “Chalktalk: A kindergarten Blog.” I would get
lost in these sites because there are so many ideas and one leads to
another. Before I know it an hour has passed and I hadn’t gotten to
other feeds. I love having a list of feeds to refer to, however I lack
time to look into most of them. With these feeds the searching is more
open ended than sties like TPT and Pinterest where I can search for the
topic I need and not get lost in all of the other ideas.
Classroom
2.0 is the affinity group I joined. I found some posts to be
inspirational and reassuring as a teacher and in reflecting on the
profession. Overall, I found the site itself to be overwhelming. I
searched fairly long and often, and found mostly resources for older
students. There could be more for primary students that I didn’t find.
I also like the offerings of webinars. I can see myself participating
in these after I get all of my graduate work done.
Through using a
blog in this 512 class, I can see how it would be a valuable resource
for teachers to have their students hand in work. It’s easy for a
teacher to click and view the students’ portfolios of blog posts, which
can contain texts, images, videos etc. There is also a record of
interaction with other students through responses. I could see using
this or an app like Edmodo for this purpose.
Of all of the tools
we tried in this class, I spent the least amount of time with Twitter. I
know there are others like it, like Kik and Instagram. A tool like
this could be interesting to use on a field trip. A teacher could
possibly design and interactive activity like a treasure hunt with a
tool like this. I could see that being really engaging for the
students!
