PLN Development Reflection

For many years a professional doing good work would almost require hiring a publicist to their their name out there to reach a mass audience. Today, whether we think about it or not, there are free and very easily used APPs that are quite powerful, allowing you to make thousands of connections while you stroll down the street or wait for your car's oil to be changed. I think most people have some degree of interaction with blogs, but not everyone uses Twitter or Google+. Before this assignment I mostly stuck with Facebook as my main focal point of online communication with others. In recent years I really didn’t put much time into Facebook either, so Google+ and Twitter didn’t have much hope. I didn’t really appreciate Twitter all that much, most of my friends who did have a Twitter account hardly ever used it, and I didn’t go about following many people. I think the only thing I tried using it for was keeping up with what people were saying about the NBA, and maybe I followed a few comedians as well. Time was the biggest issue, and I soon stop caring about it. Since I started using Twitter for this class, I found out that a couple educator friends of mine are the moderators for a teacher chat, and I was glad to get involved with the “slow chat” every Monday. The would ask five questions and we could respond to them throughout the day. These chats have been a pretty good experience and I spent time trying to craft a good answer with limited amount of text. I searched around and found quite a number of active social studies teachers that post regularly and followed them. The problem that I see that all of us find “cool things” on in our surfing of the internet and send them out on tweets. There are so many that you begin to not really look into what we are all sharing. It seems like the most useful aspect for me would be to continue joining the “slow chats” in the future and grow those relationships. As we become more acquainted, we might start caring about what the other also finds interesting.

Blogs have always been a source of varying types of information, personal interest and professional. A few years ago I attempted to create a travel/food blog on my adventures around Taiwan. Time became an enemy once again, I don’t think I completed one post. During this semester I have followed 3-4 blogs that I really appreciate. I have responded to a few that I naturally had a response to, but have had no interaction from my comment. Neither have I received and response from posting a blog about another’s. Over all, I will definitely continue my active subscription to a few of the blogs and look for others. I cannot promise that I will keep my own blog in the near future. I’d need to hire a personal assistant to keep me organized at my school before I’ll have time to produce a quality blog.

I still don’t really have much time for Google+, but my opinion of the application has definitely risen. I have a real interest in trying to find more ways to utilize google applications for my professional use. The communities I joined are quite active and because we are all there to share and find out more ideas, it is easier to find and share items that others want to read as well. I think because the Google community is more focused than an opened Twitter account, I have a better idea what others would like to talk about. As I gain more time in the future, I definitely plan on developing my personal network through this venue. Comparing Twitter, Blogs, and Google+, I find Google plus to be more useful and more flexible. It can do all the same things that blogs and Twitter both do seperately.

To conclude, it is becoming much easier to make new acquaintances almost anywhere in the world that can make a big difference in your classroom or even career. A few years ago it would be almost impossible to get connected with a talented educator who could give me tips on what they know and do. Today, I can do that with a few clicks of the button. Most people use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other APPs for their personal entertainment and keeping track of friends. But we free and easy to use APPs such as Google+ and Twitter, you can get connected with thousands of people who have a similar interest as you, and can share our collective experiences to help each other and gain so much in return. Now that smartphones are becoming almost commonplace, all those venues are constantly at our fingertips. You should consider their use as integral in helping you perform better, interact with valuable connectors that knows everyone, and a free convenient “club.” It does take being consistent in developing your network, and be mindful of what and how you put yourself out there. The returns can be great.

Subscribe to five active blogs in Feedly

Comment on a post on three of the blogs

• 

• 

• Google+

Join two public Google+ communities

• 
• 
• Create one posting or comment in one Google+ public community
• Capture screenshot of your post or comment
• 

Add three Google+ users (from the communities you joined) to a circle

• 
• Twitter

Follow at least six people/groups on Twitter

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Re-tweet two interesting tweets

• 

Tweet five times with a hashtag (Capture screenshot of your tweets)

• 
• Tweet once with a @mention (Capture screenshot of your @mention)

Tweet once with a @reply (Capture screenshot of your @reply)

• 

Participate in one Twitter edchat (Capture screenshot of your TweetDeck)

• 

Why I Friend my Students on Social Media

Not everybody wants their students at home, on their vacation, or pretty much everywhere we go. But that is almost what it turns into being once you add your students to Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social media venue we use. We don't want to filter anything we "say" to be student/school acceptable. There are concerns that our political standings or religious beliefs  might become awkward sometime in the unknown future. It just seems safer and better for everyone to keep our students segmented out form our personal life. We just need to have time to relax and worry about our job, its better for our health. From a school's point of view, we wouldn't want to put our teachers in a compromising situation that through some miscommunication, a well intentioned message turns into a legal/media nightmare. As a parent, I recall the many times that teachers lured students into inappropriate and damaging situations. It just makes sense to segment our students out of our personal life. If students need to contact us outside of school, they should use the school's email or other venue setup specifically designed for that purpose. 

With all these concerns, I decided to add my students as friends on Facebook when the fb craze hit us nine years ago. My policy went as follows

• I never "requested friendships" from any student, I only added them as they requested me to add them.
• I make a serious effort to stay out of my students personal lives. I don't follow the majority of their feeds.
• I never post anything that I wouldn't want my most immature student to know about me.
• I don't use fb as a diary, its more of a online super convenient "phone book" to keep track of people that I don't want to lose track of.
• I untag myself from any photo or post that would be awkward for my students to see.

It takes effort but I believe the benefits are worth it. I just don't have the solution on how to handle the potential for disaster if all teachers added their students. On the other hand, with the exposure our students are getting to all kinds of people online, maybe the key is educating our students about internet safety. At least they know who their teachers are. 

How One Teacher Changed for the Good of Her Students

Having our students love school, is so, so... first grade, isn't it? Somewhere around fifth grade our students were ready for graduation, and by graduation, I meant from college. There are always a group of students who had enough of summer and were excited to be back in the classroom, but that would wear off by the middle of September. Pernille Ripp describes how students in our classrooms, in her classroom, somehow stopped loving school because of the manner in which we tried to fit them into a system that works for the teacher, and in the process, squelching the enthusiasm for learning of our students. In her classroom, she dealt primarily with straight edges, classes had a specific recipe to be followed. As a result, student's eyes soon glassed over and just burned time as they sat through another lecture. 

Once she realized the issue, she had no one else to blame but herself. I believe that if all of us sat down and considered, many of us have played our part. For me I can recall assigning work that bordered on busy work, and lectures on "boring" topics that was an amazing sedative. Now that we have allowed students to go through our classrooms wishing that "school" didn't exist. Ripp states that is time to create a classroom in which  creates passionate workers. 

So what to do? Rip asks "what is in my control? Homework, grades, punishment, the ways information is presented, the community building, the shared ownership." I really can agree with her perception that we constantly need to question if there is a better way. As I teach history from year to year, no course can ever be the same. I want to go after my passions each year and allow my enthusiasm spill over onto my students. Let's find ways to get the involved in the class, let's get them out of their seats. We need to focus on how our students learn, and not how I can teach the subject more efficiently. Its not a simple matter, students may enter into our class already burned out. But that doesn't mean that we as teachers are helpless in bringing back an enthusiasm for learning. It begins with us.