Journal #7 My Personal Learning Network

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is an online community of individuals in education trading information and learning together. It can be for specific purposes like a subject, or it can be more of a broad subject like education itself. Some tools that can be used in a PLN would be some social networking sites such as Twitter or Blogs.

As a teacher, creating a PLN can be beneficial when seeking information on how to better one’s classroom or one’s self as an educator. As I observed the chat between Educational Arts Integrators at #artsint on Thursday at 4:30 p.m. EST I uncovered alternative ways that core subjects in school can be taught through art and creativity. I believe that this chat could be beneficial to all teachers, because of the importance in utilizing different forms of teaching. For instance, creative learning could apply the idea Multiple Intelligences, particularly for visual learners. For example, a student that is not very good at math may do well if creativity were incorporated into the lesson plans. One lesson plan that was brought up during the discussion that could exercise these ideas was “dancing to math.” Ultimately, the arts play a huge role in the creation of the mind and in making sense of the world as a student.

One educator that I decided to follow during the Arts Integration chat was Eliza Peterson. I was originally interested in her because she seemed to lead the chat and others “re-tweeted” a lot of her comments. Her bio mentioned that she is a teacher as well as an author, which gave her comments credibility. She is the creator of The Inspired Classroom website, where she writes articles on how to integrate creativity and art into the classroom.

Another educator I decided to follow, along with others was Susan Riley. Susan is a photographer and teacher that is also an advocate of art integration. She is the creator of the website, Education Closet where, like Eliza, writes articles on the benefits of creativity in the classroom. She provides lesson plans, handouts, videos, online classes, and other resources. I also followed some other students and educators.

I used Diigo as a tool while observing the works of a few of the participants in the Art chat. It was beneficial to me because I could easily bookmark websites while following along with the chat. This gives me the opportunity to look over the articles later on, and use them as tools for my future classroom. I added both Eliza and Susan’s webpages to my Diigo as well as an article, “Visual Art as Critical Thinking” and “Sunni Brown’s Graphic Facilitation webpage.”

The Blog Video that I watched on The Educator’s PLN was #Edchat: Join The Movement. The video expresses how the chat evolved from being a small discussion to a large discussion, now involving many educators all over the world. The chat takes place every Tuesday and the discussion topic is voted for on Monday. #Edchat is open is to any educator that desires change. Creating my PLN by engaging in online chat’s using Twitter and Diigo has opened my eyes to the benefits of professional social networking. I am eager to build my PLN and use the resources I connect with in my future classroom!