I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

The first rule of fight club is to…. Oh wait! Wrong club...
Beware the Ides of March
Salvete omnes! I was visiting YouTube the other day, my home away from home if you will, and in between my usual viewings of cat videos I was able to watch a video titled, New Media Consortium. In the video the presenter, Adam Levine, discusses the importance of establishing a network of colleagues, both in and outside of your discipline, to experiment and explore new techniques of integrating technology in the classroom.


The most important thing, I think, Adam says in the video is, “it is really important for us to stay connected to people who are smarter than because we can’t know everything”. I think it was important for me, and for other people who may be like me, to hear that it is okay to reach out for help. Being someone who wants to be able to do and know it all, this is not something that comes to mind easily. Adam’s whole video really emphasized the necessity of having a Personal Learning Network, or PLN.


As a newbie teacher myself I set out to expand my own personal learning network, since at the moment it was less or a network and more of an informal club. I ended up joining two social networking groups specifically for teachers called, Classroom 2.0 and The Educator's PLN. Both of these websites share many similar aspects. Each has a large variety of forums available covering topics from the future of education to various comparisons of social media tools and their uses in the classroom to issues such as obesity in schools. But it doesn't end there. There are blogs, books, podcast, and tutorial videos available for members to access and utilize. Once you setup your profile page, you can link it to you other social media accounts, like your Diigo that I know you all have started since we last talked about it.


Your personal learning network doesn’t only have to be you colleges from work. These sites are a great resource for teachers of all experience levels, whether you’re just starting out or you are tired of doing the same ol’ thing, to branch out and expand their personal learning network. And once you finish, maybe we can see about you joining a club that should not be mentioned.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 7, 2017 at 7:54 PM

    It is really nice to have a network away from work. I like getting new ideas to bring back to work and share. Sometimes things can get a little stagnant when you see the same people every day and it is nice to branch out and see new things.

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