Saturday, January 15, 2011

The First Week Of Internet Class

     Well, it was a good holiday spent doing nothing more than relaxing with the family.  My boys were both home with me for a couple of weeks while my wife was fully in charge of bringing home the bacon.  It's kinda hard to get back at it after a taste of that kind of lifestyle.  Going back to school was not one of the hilights of my 2011.
     The saving grace of my final term of school; I get to take an internet course with one of the best prof's at Brandon University.  Yes, I do like to suck up.  One of the key differences this time is that I'm telling the truth as well as sucking up : )

     Right off the bat, we were lucky enough to have a discussion with John Evans, a professional learning instructor with Manitoba education.  We had a chance to get introduced to a handful of web 2.0 programs that would be helpful and had a discussion on how these can be used in a digital teaching world.  Then we got to also take it another step further and looked at professional learning networks (PLNs).
     PLNs are essentially social websites for a group of people who would like to ask and solve questions on a given topic.  As a future educator I've found a couple of PLN sites that will definitely assist me with my teaching career.  Classroom 2.0 is an excellent example that has many science groups for me to join up with.  They even have those handy groups for assisting with ideas on how to use software (facebook, twitter, etc.) or hardware (smartboards, etc) effectively in the class.
     
     This was a good introductory week to this class and I definitely can't wait to see what the upcoming weeks are going to bring.

1 comment:

  1. I agree that PLNs are going to be an essential part of our teaching careers. They can be used to assist our instruction in many ways. You mention Classroom 2.0 and that's great! As a future science teacher, I too will be using that particular PLN a lot. There really are unlimited resources that are made available to us through the development of PLNs. We are now connected to other teachers globally, and I think that is remarkable.

    One idea that initially comes to mind when I start to think about the possibilities of using PLNs for instruction is their ability to create a paperless classroom. I feel that PLN's are a huge step in the right direction as they not only connect teachers on a global level but also work towards creating a greener planet.

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