Week 2
1. Twitter
2. Pinterest
3. Classroom2.0
4. TED
5. CafeMom
Week 3
1. Twitter This Twitter page gives current news including articles and quotes related to education.
2. Pinterest This Pinterest page provides ideas and images that can be used in the classroom.
3. Classroom2.0 This website contains a forum where educators share their ideas and advice of ways to improve your classroom.
4. TED This video discusses the importance of relationships with teachers and their students.
5. CafeMom This group is made up of moms discussing the issues regarding the Common Core State Standards
Week 4
1. Twitter This twitter page provides resources and tools for teachers and students. There are many links to articles about current news in the education world. Many of the tools provided are ways to help teachers teach certain topics, for example, "How to teach vocabulary in math and science."
2. Pinterest This pinterest page gives learning websites for kids on different subjects. There are sources for reading, math, phonics and science that have games and additional practice. Children can play games, conduct experiements, and even have a story read to them on these websites for better a understanding of subjects.
3. Classroom2.0 This Classroom2.0 forum discusses ways to recover from a difficult class. Some advice is to keep a "Why I do this" folder to remind you when you're having a tough day why you became a teacher. The advice is very comforting though because it reminds us that teachers are only human and make mistakes.
4. TED This video shows the importance of nonverbal communication. Amy Cuddy talks about how first impressions are made on a person's body language. For example, a person shows confidence in their posture, people will think that they are confident. Nonverbal communication is not only important for job interviews, but also in your classroom and among your colleagues.
5. CafeMom On the advice link of CafeMom, guardians discuss the topic of ADHD and how you can whether your child has ADHD or it is normal behavior. Pediatric, Dr. Anthony Rao, discusses advice on what to do if you think your child has ADHD. Underneath, parents discuss their own experiences with ADHD and also give advice to other parents on what to watch for and actions to take.
Week 5
1. Twitter This Khan Academy link has current news and resources related to education. There are pictures and videos for students to use for extra help and also for teachers to use to improve learning in the classroom. There are strategies provided for students to use when struggling in a certain subject.
2. Pinterest This link shows different books that are great to use for retelling. It explains how to conduct the retelling and what types of questions to ask your students. Instead of just retelling with writing, this link shows retelling with different types of art like drawing and painting.
3. Classroom2.0 This link has information for the future of education. There are videos and recordings of different topics to listen to. There is also a forum that discusses teacher and student relationships. For example, one topic is about if teachers should use Facebook for teaching.
4. TED This video shows how Charles Leadbeater went to the slums of Rio and Kibera, where some of the poorest kids are, and saw them using new ways to learn. He points out how much more these children could learn with resources that they are not exposed to. He uses a formula: education + technology = hope. I think that he is very optimistic and it was refreshing to see this in education.
5. CafeMom This link has advice for parents who homeschool their children. It was very interesting to read because they are concerned that what they are doing at home is not enough for their child. The advice people gave were very encouraging and offered resources for this concerned mom.
Week 6
1. Twitter This Twitter page is called Education Week. It discusses issues in education and has ways for people to interact with each other. There is a specific tweet that asked the question: "Should students have more unstructured time in school?" Attached is a link to a forum where people have discussed this topic on students' school time.
2. Pinterest This pin on Pinterest links to a site that has ideas on how to set up your classroom. There are pictures available and ideas provided to use for your own class. Some of the classes have themes of animals or colors, different settings, patterns, as a way for teachers to provide an interesting learning environment.
3. Classroom2.0 This link leads to a global education conference which brings educators from all over the world to have discussions. You are able to sign up and chat with other people at the conference in a chatroom. There are also recordings of the conference available after it is completed to go back and refer to.
4. TED This video is of Mae Jemison as she explains how science and arts should be taught together. She goes on to talk about how we must revitalize the arts and sciences in schools. I completely agree with this video because I have been in schools where science is hardly ever taught. Reading and math are normally focused on mostly throughout school and there are teachers that do not even know how to teach science because it has been pushed aside.
5. CafeMom On this post there is a question: Do you allow your kids a mental health day away from school? I thought this was a very interesting topic to post because when I was in elementary school my mom would not let me stay home occasionally if I wanted to. Just recently, in the school I am in, a student left school early to get a haircut. I did not think that this type of issue is prevalent in schools but I learned that it is more than you think after reading this blog.
Week 7
1. Twitter This Edutopia twitter page has news and inspirational ideas for things that work in the classroom. This specific link goes into detail of having Google glasses in classrooms. It goes into detail of what the potential of having these glasses in the classroom would entail. For example, they are hands free, so students can record what they are doing without having to stop what they are doing.
2. Pinterest This pin provides teachers with multiplication tricks and songs for children. By involving Gardner's multiple intelligences, students can remember these math tricks with the learning style the understand best. These types of tricks would have been very helpful for me as an elementary student because I catch onto songs very quickly.
3. Classroom2.0 This forum explains ways to put "power" in your powerpoint presentations. There were very helpful hints like stay away from bullet points, use no more than six words on a slide, etc. that you can use in your classroom as a teacher but also as a college student. They have many ideas to keep your students interested, especially because we will be using technology, like powerpoints, in our class.
4. TED In this video Ken Robinson discusses how schools kill creativity. He goes on to talk about how it is unpredictable of what the world will be like in 5 years, yet we are educating students now who will be retiring in 2065 and we have no idea what the world will be like then. I enjoy how he makes it a point that creativity is as important as literacy and we should be teaching and embracing creativity.
5. CafeMom This forum discusses the topic of inclusion and how parents with children who have special needs feel about it. There are mixed comments from parents about this issue and I can see it from both points of view. Inclusion can help students with special needs build confidence and they can thrive in a "normal" classroom, but there are also times when students with special needs need more attention and time which can be taken away from the other students.
I really enjoyed looking at these PLNs each week and I was so surprised to see how prevalent education in among the twitter world. I am glad to see that people really care about certain issues and share their opinions and websites provide information for us to be informed. I would continue using all of these PLNs in the future so I can stay informed and gain a lot of knowledge that they provide.
