Networking to Learn

Before taking this course, I didn't know what a personal learning network was, let alone the fact that I had been participating in them for quite some time. I currently belong to and follow:  Edutopia, Ditch That Textbook, Film Riot, Teachers Using Google Suite for Education-GEG Virtual, and Teaching Tolerance.

I have learned a lot and have been applying what I have learned from my reading and viewing to my lessons and my classroom practices. My overall experiences with these groups have been really great.  I feel like the communities have really been all about sharing and showing others what works well and what doesn’t work so well sometimes.

I have been consuming a lot about how to make my classroom more technology and group work based since my district has gone one to one with Chromebooks/google in order to try to go  paperless.  (Yes, that is the real reason that they decided to give the high school students Chromebooks.  It was too expensive to print.)  I decided to take the opportunity to get my students more engaged with the technology at their fingertips and have been working at incorporating this tool into my classroom ever since.  These PLN communities have helped me find new ways of achieving this goal.  As far as contributing goes, I feel that I haven’t contributed much other than sharing what has worked well for me in my classroom and what has not worked so well.  However, I feel that this sharing is what helps me improve and grow as a teacher, so for now, I am okay with this.

I am currently on sabbatical this year in order to stay home with my young children (so that they didn’t have to attend daycare during a pandemic) and to further my education in this program.  I have been very active in contributing to the Pennsylvania Digital Media and Film programs over the past few years.  We have been working together to create our own yearly film festival for our students to participate in, and that has been going well.  Last Spring would have been our second annual festival, however, it was cancelled due to COVID-19.  I have not really contributed to the ELA part of my field as much in these communities, however, my innovation plan is based in writing, so I am hoping to start contributing more as I engage in this process.

After connecting with my classmates and looking into some of their favorite learning networks, I have found that there are many other places that I can connect to to gain more knowledge about teaching with technology. I am very excited to start exploring this avenues as this program continues.

Facebook:

Edutopia has been a great tool to help with engaging students with technology in the classroom.  They have really helpful videos and ideas that have helped me create some wonderful ways to incorporate more group centered projects into my ELA classroom.  They are a non-profit, so that was also appealing to me.  Right now most of their front page material is based on virtual teaching an learning, which is also a great help.

Teachers Using Google Suite for Education-GEG Virtual has been an amazing community for teachers that use google suite to share what tools that they are using in their classrooms every day.  Everything from google classroom to all of the new addons and apps are discussed here on a daily basis between members.  They post reviews, videos, and lots of class strategies to engage students with these tools.

Web:

Ditch That Textbook is another great place to go if you are looking to start using technology a lot more in your classroom.  The creator is a google guy, and this site has everything you need to know about how to incorporate the google tools in your classroom if you are looking for them.

Teaching Tolerance is a site that is geared towards educators teaching their students about the diversity in their world and how we can all work together, no matter who we are or where we come from to make the world a better place for everyone.  There are many lesson ideas, projects, and conversations about tolerance and about how to teach what it means to our students.

Youtube:

Filmriot is an amazing channel that gives film makers tricks, tips, and ideas in every aspect of filmmaking.  This is one of my go to channels for my digital media classes when they need to see an example or need a better explanation of the skill that we are currently working on.