Blog Post #6

PLN, I have come, to find out, is such an essential tool for teachers! PLN stands for personal learning networks. Students have their own personal learning networks through friends and peers.  When students have questions about school work, projects, homework, study problems, tests, etc, they can call, text, tweet, or Facebook to get in touch with their classmates to be able to accomplish their goal. Teachers, most likely, may not have those connections like students do.  PLN enables teachers to connect and establish relationships with other teachers, administrators, professionals, and experts. For a new college student at the University of South Alabama, I do not know a lot of other students, and I have found that Facebook and Twitter are the best forms of PLN for me.

Another form of PLN, for tools, is through an internet website called Symbaloo. I have found this website very helpful! If you set Symbaloo as your homepage, like I did, you can access all of your favorite websites as soon as you pull up your browser. Symbaloo allows you to add titles, which are websites, such as G Mail, Pinterst, Ebay, Facebook, Twitter, Netflix, and so much more! There is even a Google tool bar in the middle of the page where you can search Google as if you were on the regular Google homepage.

My goal for starting my personal PLN is to start right away! I first need to do my research on other biology classes that have blogs and practice problem-based learning because those are some of the qualities that will be involved in my own classroom.