Journal 7: PLN

Networking is key to success.

If a person is sincerely dedicated to what they are doing, they will network as much as possible to make sure they are on the cutting edge and have learned as much as possible.

Teaching is an art to me - one that I must craft into a masterpiece. It will always be a work in progress, considering the constant advancements and that is why learning from others is so needed. As time changes so do our students, and their needs for learning change as well.

My public learning networks were a good experience. Some were better than others - nonetheless it was still a good experience. I joined Edmodo and made accounts for my students.  There was one student in my class, however, that no matter how many times I remind him to make sure to add us on Edmodo - he simply wouldn't. Therefore, I had to e-mail the class the assignment and then have a separate one emailed to him. Maybe he's afraid of technology, and I need to ease his way in... I don't know. Aside from that student, I found the students in my class really enjoyed getting an email with their project assignment.

Furthermore, I joined interest groups on Edmodo with other teachers and enjoyed their sample classroom projects and lessons. One thing that I found useful was a simple coding sheet one teacher had to help out his students, that was cool! I needed that for myself. Also, there's a teacher by the name of Mr. Kash that will help my 8th graders in Social Studies prepare for their History STAR test. I haven't shared my learning strategies and materials into that group yet, but I can see myself doing that in the near future. For now, I have read a lot of their articles and posts and have found them to be useful.

Furthermore, I added a twitter account for the private school I work at. I sent out a message to all the parents that we have one set up, and I gave our account name. Unfortunately, only 8 parents followed. With a school of 150 students, I felt that was disappointing. I guess twitter is good for larger facilities. In any case, I updated it for about a couple of weeks and kind of gave up on it. I will return to it from time to time for consistency, but it is not a network that works for everyone.

 On my own personal twitter, I did start following different teacher organizations or teaching groups. For example, I have grown to love "Extra Credit" - they really post some amazing technology resources on there.

As of right now, I haven't used any of the teachers' ideas in my classroom "yet"... but as I keep reading their posts and articles the more I am becoming comfortable learning from them and gathering insight into the ways that others teach and are successful at it.

My biggest failure was the RSS feeder. I would go to it from time to time, but it wasn't as fun as my daily routine of going to the websites that I like to go to. For example, I really like to check out aljazeera.com for news updates about what is happening in the middle east. My RSS feeder was filled with updates by them, and they had so many updates that I would have to scroll down in order to see any other updates from anyone else. Granted, I could have just deleted that off my RSS feeder, but I didn't. Also, I don't like that it is aesthetically dry, meaning, it looked like scrolling text. I love the graphics and ambiance of my websites and searching through them, and the RSS feeder, though convenient wasn't aesthetically pleasing.

In any case, networking is an imperative aspect of success. It allows the networker to learn new strategies, and it gives him/her access to information that he/she may not be able to get on her own or was not aware of. Public learning networks are a must for any professional who takes their career seriously. 

Journal 6: Self Reflection

Initially, the book work was difficult - especially that bistro page that required linking from one folder to another. That assignment took me three days to figure out what I was doing wrong. Apparently, every time I would save a file I would save it with the exercise name (ex: chapter  6 exercise 3) instead of jenskitchen  - this created issues and confusion when I was trying to link to different files within the page.  Once I figured out what I did wrong, and I saw how all the files linked within other files, I was overcome with a sense of accomplishment.  It was hard to learn at first, but once I knew how everything linked together, I realized what an easy and fundamentally important process this is.

Also, I loved learning about css more than anything else. It is a lot of fun to click on a few keys on the keyboard and create an aesthetically pleasing page.  Creating the 2 column web page in class was a lot of fun - granted, I kept accidentally typing an extra hash tag and parenthesis messing up my page; however, it was a lot of fun, and also very rewarding. The most exciting feature is being able to hover over a word link like "Home" or "Books" and seeing it change colors. Also, I loved the gradients that were used to create that special graphic touch. Fun stuff. But, I wish someone would create a system that would highlight any mistakes... I hate missing a colon or something and to sit for 30 minutes trying to figure out what I did wrong. :P

Journal 5: Tweet Tweet :)

I work at a private school, and I figured it may be a good idea to start a twitter account for our school. I followed a good handful of educational twitter accounts and sent out an e-mail to all our parents to add twitter if they'd like short messages from the school. Only 8 parents started following us, but I'm sure it will pick up soon. Although my primary job there is a teacher, I am given a lot of green lights to move the school forward when I see a good idea. So far, twitter as a communication tool with the parents isn't looking to be that effective - but time will tell. I haven't given up on it yet.

Even though I have a personal twitter account, I'm not inclined to it on a social level. I'm not too amused with what people (or celebrities for that matter) do from minute to minute. On an educational level, I am starting to see the benefit of getting short shout outs to articles and guided towards meaningful studies about education and learning. This has made twitter all the more worth while. One group I'm following is called extra-credit team. They're really amazing about clearly explaining and analyzing the multimedia world. :) That's one group everyone aught to check out.

One thing I haven't used in my classroom; however, I'm excited to explore is twitterfall.com. I like the idea that a buzz word can be searched for and a roll of comments with those words show up. I'll probably try it out this week.