Social & Professional Networks

   Think about how the Internet has impacted your own personal learning, communication, and sense of community. Write a new post that includes a screenshot showing your participation in a social or professional network, and a summary of how you use that network for personal or professional connections or for new learning. In your post reflect on the following:

• When does the Internet help your learning? When does it distract from good learning for you?
• How might your answers to these questions be similar to or different from the answers your students might give?
• How might you support your students in using the Internet as their own personal learning space?

The Internet is a wonderful learning tool for the teacher.  Initially, many years ago, I started using the internet as a menas to tap into resources that were readily available.  The non internet teacher had to rely on the colleagues at their school sites for lesson planning and resource assistance.  I was able to find a plethora of lesson plans, sample welcome letters, power points and many other great tools I used in my classroom.  As search engine technology began to improve I began to demonstrate the use of these resources to my colleagues.

With the advent of E-mail, the internet quickly became the primary source of sending "written" correspondence.  This was enhanced by the ability to send file attachments via email.  I was shocked!  Amazed!  How can a file and a message travel the world in mere seconds.  This idea now trivial, but that was the reality in the mid 90's when I started teaching.

Within a few years, my lens about the internet had changed.  Before, the internet was a place to "get stuff"; things that I needed to make my teaching life easier.  Now, the internet is the place where I go to "learn stuff".  With the rapidly changing technological world we live in, it's almost impossible to stay up on the latest tools and trends with some help.  This is where my Personal Learning Network (PLN) comes in.  My PLN, which consists for friends, colleagues, educational bloggers, and complete strangers who have a voice and add remaning to my understanding about education in general.  I've presented at conferences where Twitter, or Google Reader were advertised as the PLN.  We must be careful here not to confuse the tool with the network.  Twitter (see screen shot below) is just a tool that aggregates all of those posts from the people I respect and admire.

Can the "internet" be a distraction?  Sure it can.  Can students be off task and spend endless hours doing nothing online?  Sure!  However, our role as educators is to guide the students through the sea of mind-numbing non-sense of internet garbage and help them to find the gems that enhance their efforts towards becoming healthy human beings and contributing to the common social good.