LAI 590

The more I delve into the world of social media and technology, the more I realize how much it can improve my classroom and also me as a teacher. At first, the thought of live tweeting from my Kindergarten classroom seemed silly. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my students do amazing things throughout the day but often get no recognition for it. Twitter could serve as that form of recognition and also a way to share information about my classroom and our school. Alan November and Brian Mull perfectly define Twitter as being "an organizational structure that makes it an effective tool for connecting with students and others online". Both authors go on to discuss how the use of a hashtag has changed the world. Just the other day, I used twitter hashtags to find out more about an educational program my school is considering. I was greeted with several thousand tweets about the program, many of which contained articles attached. Not only was I able to...

The social networking site I chose to join is The Educator's PLN . The Educator's PLN, or Personal Learning Network, is a place for educators to come together and share sources, connections, videos, blogs, and discussions. It acts as a support network for educators. I chose this site because I really like the idea of collaboration and each person bringing something unique to the table. When I first joined The Educator's PLN, #Edchat. #Edchat is a place for educators to quite literally, chat with each other. It is a network of educators with similar questions, ideas, problems, etc. I followed the #Edchat discussions via my Twitter account. I plan to use The Educator's PLN as a place to gather new information and ideas, learn from my colleagues and connect with other educator's around the world. I also plan to stay connected with the #Edchat discussions. I find that the topics they cover are things that I often have questions about or need more clarification on.

When I first thought about this analogy, I was lost. Today's learner is not typical. Today's learner is evolving and thinking in ways never possible before. The more I thought about my students in my classroom and myself as a graduate student now, a learner is like a flower. I chose to a flower because flowers are always growing and also dying and evolving into something new. In George Siemens article "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age" , Gonzalez says: "The 'half-life of knowledge' is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete. Half of what is known today was not known 10 years ago." I felt that this quote perfectly described today's society and also today's learner. We are constantly evolving and changing what we know and the way we learn so that we can keep current. For example, I just attended a training on using my Promethean Board last year. I just received an email that the software has ch...

When I first read the assignment guidelines, I instantly knew that I would love this module. Pinterest is one of my favorite websites as a teacher. I have found fresh ideas and unique activities for my students. We live in such a creative world when we take a moment to look around. I was also very intrigued at the idea of Diigo. I had never hard of the site and after a little bit of time, quickly learned how useful it is. It is very much a convenience tool. All of the articles and important websites that I read are organized by tag and also highlighted with things that I like to read. I began to see how different the sites were as I delved deeper into them. I was very familiar with Pinterest prior to this assignment, but after reading more about it and watching some online videos, I learned new features that I did not know before. In comparison with Diigo, the inability to highlight is a major letdown in my opinion. When I am looking at different articles, I sometimes only need a sma...