Connected, Organized, and A Self-Improver!

            According to Edublogs post by Robert Burt (Burt, 2014), Personal Learning Networks (PLN)'s are about making connections and building personal relationships with everyone around you, while sharing ideas and resources, collaborating, and learning. It is also a global learning network that enables people to share diverse, global perspectives on teaching strategies, educational issues, and technologies. In my presentation, a PLN to me means to be connected, organized, and a self-improver. 

            My first PLN mentioned in my presentation is Google+. Google+ as Martin Shervington (2013) explains it is not another "social network" site such as Facebook, it involves more than "social", "communication", and "people"; it is a way of bringing people together within the context of many Google services. Google+ provides what is called Circles; it helps you stay connected to everyone such as family, friends, colleagues, bosses, and everyone else around the world without worrying about the content on your site. We all know there are some content such as pictures that you would love to share with family and friends but not your bosses, Circles provides the opportunity for you to have as many friends as you would like and select who sees what content is on your site. Another great feature of Google+ is called Communities; it provides people with opportunities to stay connected with those of similar interests. I am a part of the Physical Education community, which comprises of people from around the world who have similar ideas, educational strategies, and issues on Physical Education.

            As a teacher, we tend to feel overwhelmed by the amount of resources and documents provided and given to us on a daily basis. A great way to stay organized is to use a website called Livebinders. Livebinders is a free online binder that can neatly organize your resources or electronic documents that can be shared or presented to anyone around the world. A great advantage of Livebinders is the ability to have an unlimited amount of binders. I have created Livebinders for the many resources I have found for teaching physical education, my created documents for my school content’s Professional Learning Community, and my quad’s Professional Learning Community.

            Professional Development (PD) indicates a teacher’s development of a person in his or her professional role. All teachers are required to attend PD; it provides teachers with new ideas and strategies for teaching in all content areas. Most of the time we do not acquire information that we feel is useful or information was left out that you feel was important to your content area. A useful idea is to be a self-improver and take hold of your professional development by finding resources to help solve issues that may come along in your teaching process. There are great websites for all content areas and are specific to that content, for example for Physical Education, I use PE Universe for personal professional development. It provides discussion boards to post ideas or questions on critical issues in physical education, videos of game ideas for different skills, and a clipboard to post lesson plan ideas or documents to enhance lessons.  

            Overall, my PLN provides an opportunity to connect with other physical educators around the world, to stay neat and organized, and to enhance my capability as a teacher.

References: 

1. R. Burt. (2013, September 23). Step 1: What is a PLN? Retrieved from http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/pln-challenge-1-what-the-heck-is-a-pln/

2. M. Shervington. (2013, June 8). What is Google Plus? A Complete User Guide. [Videos and Blog]. Retrieved from http://www.martinshervington.com/what-is-google-plus/