Teaching can often seem like an overwhelming individual
endeavor, in order to avoid this feeling of isolation it is helpful for
teachers to join and participate in a professional learning network, or PLN.
This network can be withing the school, within the district, but teachers are
now using social media and other technologies to reach out and network online.
The purpose of these PLNs is to provide a space where teachers can ask for
help, provide ideas and receive feedback on questions and ideas, in doing this
PLNs not only aggregate information but also provides a dynamic sense of
community.
There are many different forms of PLNs and many sites are
devoted to curriculum sharing. It is important when interacting with these
sites to read and review with a critical eye. With the copious amount of
matieral available online it is critical to sift, organize, analyze the validity of
information with attention to the currency of the information, the reliability,
authority of the source and lastly the purpose/point of view. Indications of
validity are: the site/blog is well known, has good reviews and it is relevant
to what you are looking for. When looking at a site I also look at the comments below the post. I look at the dates to see when it was most recently read and commented and I look over to see if the comments are mainly positive or negative.
The blog I was guided to through my trusted hub of EDUTOPIA,
was a blog called “ I Want To Teach Forever” by Tom DeRossa. His blog covers a variety of topics and
themes and his purpose seems to be aggregating information from a variety of
sites on a certain topic. I was interested in finding a place were I could access
free lesson plans. I typed ‘lesson plans’ into the search engine on the site
and it brought me to a post by a guest author Karen Schoeitzer, who is a writer
for TeacherDegree.org. The post was entitled, "40 Places to Find Free Lesson Plans Online". Karen reviews each of the various sites and I found them very helpful.
No comments:
Post a Comment