The Professional Learning Network (PLN) that we investigated this week was Edmodo. It is very easy to use and it is Free. I have been using it this year to post assignments and the Daily Agenda for students and to also stay connected with the parents. Many of the assignments can be turned in on Edmodo and the teacher can annotate it for immediate feedback for the student and nothing needs to be printed. The parents can view everything between the student and the teacher so they can stay current with what is going on.
This week I learned how to use Edmodo to connect with other educators. This will help me stay current with the latest technologies and I will have a resource at my fingertips to talk to other educators and share ideas. I'm looking forward to building this PLN over the summer.
Here are a couple of videos to help you get started.
This was a very informative week. I created my first Twitter account and issued my first few tweets. Through Twitter, I am following a couple of educational chats one of which is #Edchat. You can easily keep updated with #Edchat topics by clicking on the hashtag of any tweet that has "#edchat". The hashtag in front of a title is used to combine all of the tweets in
one place so people can follow specific tweets and focus on the chat in
real time. I am also following Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) who created a chat to focus on topics for educators.
Here is a video to help you get started using Twitter.
I really feel that Twitter will be a good place for my own professional development and it will be beneficial not only for myself but the other teachers at my school.
I look forward to following these tweets and learning more about Twitter. Follow my Twitter account @DSchwartzTech.
I was a little worried when I first started this class. There is a learning curve when something new is undertaken, especially when technology is involved. There looked like so many things to learn that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep up with everything.
I took a class two years ago on how to create a blog but after that class I did not keep up with blogging on it like I thought I would. I do remember being very frustrated during the class because I wasn't sure what I was doing and everyone else seemed to be moving so much faster than I was. I have learned much more about technology in the last two years which is helping and this time the creation of my new blog seemed a little easier. The design in blogger is different than it was before so that might have also helped some. I'm still trying to find my way around Moodle though. I'm sure the more I use it, the better I will be at navigating it.
I'm excited about using the RSS feeds. This week we learned about Feedly which is a great tool that can be used to compile all of the RSS feeds that you want to read from your favorite blogs, news sites, podcasts and Youtube channels. Feedly has a mobile app so you can read your content anywhere you go and can quickly be accessed on your phone, tablet and computer.
Here is a video explaining how to get started with Feedly.
I think they will be very helpful in keeping me up to date with some of the latest technology and science tips in the classroom. I'm looking forward to adding to the list I've already started.
I've definitely grown this first week and I've learned some things that I can use immediately at school.
