Personal Learning Network

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a great way to stay connected with a community of education professionals and researchers via social media sites. The world of social media is spreading like a California wildfire and it’s important for us as teachers to stay up to date and connected with our students who are quickly learning and mastering navigating these sites to get information. We need to make sure we are out there putting out the best information for them to latch on to.

RSS feeds on the other hand I feel I need to keep doing the research on. I’m still unaware of how it can be helpful and what its main purpose really is. Particularly I used feedly to find what I believe are rss feeds. Some sights I came across through Feedly were:

Medlineplus, (http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/exerciseforchildren.html) &

Medical News Today (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/284180.php) I found these to sites to packed full of information and extremely useful for this class, other classes I’m taking, and for my business. Again, my only problem here is that I don’t know how my search through Feedly for RSS feeds lead me here, but at this point I am just happy I found this information.

When it comes to social media and teaching I get really confused and highly amused all at the same time. Twitter is one of those things that I guess could be useful but I don’t really see how it is different from other social media platforms.  All I can think of is it’s important to reach out in all forms and in any way possible in order to reach our students. For example in my business I have all sorts of social media sites but I use only one of them. But I can be found and that’s what’s important to me. In my twitter account I have chosen to follow veterans of physical education in order to pull as much useful information from them as possible. On the other hand it’s also a big compliment when I share or post something and it is favorite or retweeted by one of these folks. It let’s me know that the information that I have to share is important to others and not just me.

I have to admit when I first started using Diigo I thought it would be over and done with rather quickly and that I would never use it again. However, with features like bookmarking and highlighting I am able to keep a great list of important websites I come across and highlight the information that is most important when I come back to it in the future. Diigo is a great tool and I need to continue to be consistent with using it. I highly recommend others to use thus feature as well. I can see the ink in my printer last longer already. Overall I found that my experience with PLN was educational. That’s what this is all about right! Now armed with this new knowledge of creative ways to build a network and a community of people connected that are continuously sharing their research, articles and thoughts of physical education, fitness, exercise and health is a great way to stay informed and educated with like minded people.

    As mentioned earlier in this assignment and previous assignments when it comes to social media and technology I’m rather standoff-ish. If it wasn’t for having my own business I wouldn’t have any of these social media sites to begin with, but I know that social media and technology are more important to others and it is important to reach people in as many ways as possible. Today our children know more about navigating the social media world then we do and it is important to connect with them in as many ways as possible. They need to know we are their to help and guide them through learning and most of all we need to just be there for our future leaders.