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.
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