Journal 7: My Professional Learning Network (NETS-T: 3,4, & 5)
This is my very first experience with social networking, let alone Twitter, and creating
an educational professional learning network. Since I began this university class on advanced technology, I have learned that a PLN is a group of educational professionals who contribute and share similar academic skills, ideas, goals, and resources. This community of individuals give suggestions, advice, ask questions, and offer help and assistance to each other. Professionals become part of a chat group and interact on social networks such as Twitter, Educator's Professional Learning Network, Classroom 2.0 and Digest of Internet Information Groups and Other Stuff (Diigo).
Why should I develop a PLN?
In the arena of special education, of which I have been involved in for many years, there are ever changing laws, state and federal mandates, court decisions, and more children being identified with disabilities, that it is necessary to keep myself informed and aware of these changes. I feel that through a PLN I will be a better and more informed teaching professional. I am especially interested in new assistive technologies to use in my classroom with my students with special needs.
1. Twitter
On Tuesday, Aug. 2, at noon I joined edchat. I wasn't sure what the topic was because all the tweets seemed to address different topics. At first I was very confused and not sure of what to do. I began as a "lurk" and just read as many comments as possible. While reading others tweets, there were many followers looking forward to Tuesday tonight's "spedchat" on Inclusion. Facebook seems to be a very popular social network for many on "edchat".
On Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011, at 5:30 pm, I participated in "spedchat". The topic for this evening was "inclusion". The moderator was Damien Bariexca, a psychologist, teacher and doctoral student. I followed the online chat and read many different responses to the topic question: is inclusion for everyone? Of course there were some differences of opinions to this topic questions. Some followers agreed with the idea but others shared the overwhelming challenges such as working and training general education teachers, paraprofessionals and dealing with social and emotional behaviors. I have to admit, I really enjoyed my first participation chat. I did notice a student in our Ed422 class participate as well Once I got involved, I decided to pose a question and to my surprise there was some discussion. I have to say, I enjoyed the experience and got some very good information.
2. Diigo
I just learned what Diigo stands for: Digest of Internet Information Groups and Other Stuff.
What I like about bookmarking on Diigo is the organization and easy to find topics under my tags and the short description. This makes it easier for me to quickly find what I am looking for and easier to share with colleagues. My intent is to use Diigo as a resource and research network by following other educators who have the same interests as me. Since I began this class, I have tagged a variety of interesting and informative articles, sites, and educators. I googled a search on WIKI for special education teachers and found a great blog titled: Supporting Students with Disabilities and am following 4 members: S. Delaney, S. Hartnett, J. Waldron, and A Didio. This blog has 7 other areas to research and teachers to collaborate with: Learning disabilities, developmental delays, emotional/behavioral disorders, communication disorders, hearing impairment and physical disabilities. What a find!
And of course the fifth person I chose to follow is jheil65 because he has a multitude of information, resources, and persons with whom to collaborate with on the Internet. My professional learning network is on a roll.
3. Classroom 2.0
Why should I develop a PLN?
In the arena of special education, of which I have been involved in for many years, there are ever changing laws, state and federal mandates, court decisions, and more children being identified with disabilities, that it is necessary to keep myself informed and aware of these changes. I feel that through a PLN I will be a better and more informed teaching professional. I am especially interested in new assistive technologies to use in my classroom with my students with special needs.
1. Twitter
Once I started to develop my PLN, I realized that all the students in this ed422 class are already members of my network as well as my professor, Mr. Heil. After logging into my Twitter account, I hashtagged: spedchat and discovered a multitude of special education teachers, speech pathologists, counselors, advis0rs and general education professionals. The first person that caught my attention was "techieteacher". This special ed. teacher shared information about assistive technology which is something I use in my classroom, but am always looking for new technologies for my students with special needs. I then decided on following "leslielipson". She provided a great site about positive IEP experiences. A topic close to me as I can have as many as 4 IEPs in one day. Finally, Special Ed. Advise was especially interesting. Checking in on what educational counselors have to say and share is informative and I found some great sites related to IEPs, how to collaborate and support
parents. This website has some helpful tips for special educators conducting an IEP meeting: http://www.specialeducationadvisor.com/iep-success-takes-more-than-love/. And of course I added this to my library on diigo.
On Tuesday, Aug. 2, at noon I joined edchat. I wasn't sure what the topic was because all the tweets seemed to address different topics. At first I was very confused and not sure of what to do. I began as a "lurk" and just read as many comments as possible. While reading others tweets, there were many followers looking forward to Tuesday tonight's "spedchat" on Inclusion. Facebook seems to be a very popular social network for many on "edchat".
On Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2011, at 5:30 pm, I participated in "spedchat". The topic for this evening was "inclusion". The moderator was Damien Bariexca, a psychologist, teacher and doctoral student. I followed the online chat and read many different responses to the topic question: is inclusion for everyone? Of course there were some differences of opinions to this topic questions. Some followers agreed with the idea but others shared the overwhelming challenges such as working and training general education teachers, paraprofessionals and dealing with social and emotional behaviors. I have to admit, I really enjoyed my first participation chat. I did notice a student in our Ed422 class participate as well Once I got involved, I decided to pose a question and to my surprise there was some discussion. I have to say, I enjoyed the experience and got some very good information.
2. Diigo
I just learned what Diigo stands for: Digest of Internet Information Groups and Other Stuff.
What I like about bookmarking on Diigo is the organization and easy to find topics under my tags and the short description. This makes it easier for me to quickly find what I am looking for and easier to share with colleagues. My intent is to use Diigo as a resource and research network by following other educators who have the same interests as me. Since I began this class, I have tagged a variety of interesting and informative articles, sites, and educators. I googled a search on WIKI for special education teachers and found a great blog titled: Supporting Students with Disabilities and am following 4 members: S. Delaney, S. Hartnett, J. Waldron, and A Didio. This blog has 7 other areas to research and teachers to collaborate with: Learning disabilities, developmental delays, emotional/behavioral disorders, communication disorders, hearing impairment and physical disabilities. What a find!
And of course the fifth person I chose to follow is jheil65 because he has a multitude of information, resources, and persons with whom to collaborate with on the Internet. My professional learning network is on a roll.
When I went to Classroom 2.0 I first did a search for assistive technology. I found various sites and decided on a video titled "What is Assistive Technology". I chose this topic because I have students with specific health impairments including cerebral palsy, hard of hearing, and students with apraxia, dysgraphia and autism. I learned about new amplification devices for students and FM systems for the classroom teacher. I found most beneficial the adaptive student desks for students with vision difficulty as well as for students with physical disabilities. Another device I wanted to follow up on was the voice-to-text program. I did a further search on this and found a video titled "Students Using Intellikeys-USB Alternative Keyboard Systems". The video showed a student using a computer with a custom made overlap specific for the student's educational needs and goals. All these assistive technology devices help students with disabilities to improve, achieve progress towards their IEP goals, and have access to the grade level curriculum. Can my district afford these technologies for our students? I don't know, but at least I have the information and the knowledge to advocate for them.
Now that I have constructed my professional learning network, what will happen when I return to school next month. As a Bilingual educational specialist who provides specialized academic instruction to both English and Spanish speaking students with learning and physical disabilities, time is very precious. Social networking takes lots and lots of time. Twitter is a great way to collaborate and chat but I personally found Diigo more efficient, easier to gather information, and more to my liking.
Now that I have constructed my professional learning network, what will happen when I return to school next month. As a Bilingual educational specialist who provides specialized academic instruction to both English and Spanish speaking students with learning and physical disabilities, time is very precious. Social networking takes lots and lots of time. Twitter is a great way to collaborate and chat but I personally found Diigo more efficient, easier to gather information, and more to my liking.
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