As teachers, we want our students to be career ready for the 21st Century. What happens when we’re not ready to be in the 21st Century ourselves?
In my previous post, I talked about 21st Century Learning Skills: curiosity, cooperation, communication, and critical thinking (Find out more about 21st Century Learning at http://www.p21.org with a focus on curiosity. Now we are ready to move on to cooperation.
If you join a PLN you are going to have to think about what your level of contribution will be. It is fine to be a “lurker”, or someone who watches what happens but does not necessarily take part in discussion or provide ideas. If you like the idea of sharing anonymously without any expectation from others that you should share in return; here are some great resources for you:
Our next topic is communication where we’ll talk about how you can really get involved with your PLN and really learn a lot!
A variation of this post can be found in my original article “What is a PLN and Why Do You Need One” found here.
In my previous post, I talked about 21st Century Learning Skills: curiosity, cooperation, communication, and critical thinking (Find out more about 21st Century Learning at http://www.p21.org with a focus on curiosity. Now we are ready to move on to cooperation.
If you join a PLN you are going to have to think about what your level of contribution will be. It is fine to be a “lurker”, or someone who watches what happens but does not necessarily take part in discussion or provide ideas. If you like the idea of sharing anonymously without any expectation from others that you should share in return; here are some great resources for you:
- Pinterest- This is a social bookmarking site where you can organize information you gather from around the web.
- EduClipper- This site is very similar to Pinterest except that it is specific to education. The idea is that you can create your own digital clipboard. This site is part of EduTeacher.
- Symbaloo for Education- This is another alternative to Pinterest for social bookmarking. You can create your own boards of bookmarks as well as view what others have created. An interesting way that Symbaloo is being used by teachers is to provide a means for students to stay on task when using the internet. For example, have your class visit your Symbaloo board for resources on a specific topic of research rather than worrying about students getting off task or viewing sites that are off topic. There is an app which can be used for this resource as well.
- Delicious- This is another social bookmarking site but with much more utility than Pinterest and EduClipper in my opinion. Any site, regardless of whether or not there are images can be saved, described, and categorized. I have literally hundreds of sites bookmarked for both school and personal topics. Additionally, you can search within the site to see other people’s bookmarks that they marked available to be shared.
- Learnist- Of the sites mentioned in this post, this is the only one which is currently blocked on my district’s network. However, there is an app for this resource and I have the ability to submit a request for the site block to be removed. As stated by the website: “Use Learnist to share what you know and learn new things. Create Learn Boards on topics you understand and add learnings by pointing to videos, blogs, images and documents on the web”.
- Livebinders– What are Livebinders? Think of it as the ultimate way to organize your resources whether you have created them yourself or found them on the internet. It’s truly a wonderful source for you to utilize to keep yourself organized as well as to get new ideas and resources from others. Here’s an example for math Common Core: http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=187117
Our next topic is communication where we’ll talk about how you can really get involved with your PLN and really learn a lot!
A variation of this post can be found in my original article “What is a PLN and Why Do You Need One” found here.
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