Blog Post #1 - PLN's Chapter 1 & 2

I thought the format of the two texts, Personal Learning Network and Web 2.0 How-to for Educators, was unique and beneficial for an educator. After reading the first two chapters of Personal Learning Network, I realized that the chapter addresses a specific topic concerning PLN’s as well as examples of how to get started. The goal of creating a PLN is to connect people with common interests through the use of technology. The author mentions different PLN sites such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. It was highly interesting that the authors described how to use an RSS reader to connect to Diigo pages per topic (Richardson & Mancabelli, 2011, p. 49). Adding many different PLN’s to one RSS allows you to cater the news to yourself! In the other text, the authors highlight the sic C’s of 21^st century learning era which include creativity, collaboration, communication, connections, and critical-thinking (Solomon & Schrum, 2010, p. 21). We are able to incorporate these important pieces in each lesson with the use of blogs or editable web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, or interactive whiteboards. Interactive whiteboards are spaces on the web where media can be shared and edited in real-time. Tuzzit is a new interactive whiteboard which allows you to connect to Twitter, Facebook, etc. Students can collaborate on an assignment of tutor each other from home. There is a fee account – try it to see if you could use this type of technology in your classroom!