Midterm PLN Reflection

At the beginning of the semester, I felt that I was very comfortable with technology and how I could use it as an educator.  During my fall semester of student teaching, I was in a fourth grade classroom that completely embraced using iPads within the curriculum and learned numerous techniques about how to harness this technology as a teacher.  I also was an avid Twitter user and used it as a medium to communicate with friends both near and far away.

However, after I started this class, I realized that I knew how to use technology as a 23 year old social human being, but was not nearly as proficient at using it as an educator.  Within the realms of reading and writing blogs, I feel that I am stuck between two worlds.  I will sporadically update my own blog or check the blogs of others but am not opposed to learning new techniques or communicating with others.  As far as tweeting, as I stated earlier, I feel extremely confident.  I am definitely in the matrix within this realm.  I feel very comfortable using hashtags, sharing information from educational sites and converting it to a tweet, making meaningful additions, etc.  Archiving, I feel that I am again stuck between two worlds.  There are some websites where I feel very comfortable saving information such as Pinterest and Scoop.it, but do not feel nearly as comfortable with others such as Diigo or Tumblr.  In the last section, commenting, I feel that I can grow much further.  I often feel that I only comment when I am required to instead of taking an active role in communicating with fellow educators.

As far as my plan to cultivate my PLN for the rest of the semester, I really want to broaden my horizon as far as which sites I archive information and becoming more of a resident within my professional life. I will do my best to look at websites such as Diigo and will also look up different blogs that teachers around the world have created that may relate to situations I am encountering or my educational passions.  This will also allow me to grow within the area of commenting.  I can not only look at others' resources but also respond with my own points of view and resources (if applicable).

Technology is a vast but extremely useful tool that I plan to not only use this semester, but also for the rest of my life as an individual and educator.  I am very excited to see how I continue to cultivate my PLN to become a better resident of the web and teacher for my students.