JOURNAL 7: PLN

As an educator, I have to be updated on how to integrate technology in my classroom.  This can become a challenge,  but one I am willing to take.  Educators have to be on the cutting edge of technological innovations and to use the plethora of resources out there to their advantage.  My PLN (Personal Learning Network) is an innovative way to organize my work, and to share/collaborate with other educators around the country/world.  For my PLN, I have used Twitter, Diigo, and Google Drive to enhance my teaching and my knowledge.
Twitter is a way to follow people on the internet who are looking for
the same subject as you are.  If I am looking for a specific topic, I can follow the discussion and I can be connected to those who are looking for the same thing that I am following.  I can have multiple followers since we are all looking for the same thing.  I had an opportunity last week to become a part of a discussion on twitter.  For about an hour, the main topic that was being followed was whether to have long-range plans or to wait until the semester starts to plan.  This was the first time I have been a part of such a discussion online with teachers from around the country and Canada.  I had posted my tweettes and had to move very fast to either reply, elaborate, answer, or retweet.

Diigo, like Twitter, is also a social networking site that links people from around the globe.  However, my primary use of diigo is to link to other teachers and network with them.  I can take the diigo tags and embed them into my blog and helps me organize my work properly. I can bookmark the site that I visited, and get the sites for the same subjects that others have visited who are also following me. 

Another way that I have found very helpful in my teaching career is the use of Google Docs.  This is an interactive way where I can review and edit what my students are writing.  The advantage of this is that it is stored in the cloud and will always be there.  You can use features like color codes for different parts of the essay, and students can get feedback right away.  For instance, you can make the introduction red, the body blue, and the conclusion green.  You can also insert feedbacks right away and let the students edit their mistakes.