Personal Learning Network

So far, I think that my personal learning network utilizes a lot of great tools. I love being able to read about what other students are learning in their classrooms and their field placements. I feel like a great deal of what they are learning is really relevant to me, but they are not necessarily topics that I've thought about before or heard about from my teachers. I love when someone writes a topic on their blog that is more contraversial, and I have the opportunity to read multiple different people's opinions about the topic. I feel like I can really learn the most when I have the chance to see both sides of an issue. However, potential drawbacks to this are that it can be difficult to keep up with posting in a blog, twitter, webpage, etc. We all have busy lives and I feel like it would be easy to let updating my PLN slip by the wayside. Also, it's really easy to read someone's comment and to think that you will respond to them later, and all of a sudden, a whole week has gone by and you are just remembering to respond to their post. By that time, however, they probably aren't checking back anymore to see if you responded, and you have lost their interest from the initial post.

However, tools like the RSS feed are really helpful to ensure that you don't get bogged down in the time that it takes to check multiple blogs, several times a week. This tool allows me to go to one place and easily see if any particular blog that I follow has updated their feed since the last time that I checked. If they haven't, I will know quickly, and I won't waste my time traveling to their blog page. Also, tools such as tweetdeck do the same thing for twitter and facebook. It allows me to quickly see the updates since the last time that I visited either of those two website, without having to sift through information that I already have read. Also, it allows me to sort out new tweets, pictures, status updates, etc. so that I can quickly focus on exactly what I am looking for. These features do help save a tremendous amount of time.

I think that I would prefer to read less blogs, more frequently than read a huge number of educational blogs. It seems much more overwhelming to remember to check a lot of different places. Therefore I think that it is much more beneficial to find a few blogs that I enjoy and check them more often. As far as following educational blogs on twitter, I have found that most of the ones that I have chosen are okay, but I have had to sift through a lot of information that wasn't that useful. For every piece of really good information that I found from a tweet, I had about seven other pieces of information that I looked into but didn't really think was valuable. However, the one thing that I do really like about giving and receiving information on twitter is that the posts are very short, and thus quick and easy to read and write. Therefore, the amount of time that I spend on twitter at any one moment in time is very minimal, and thus I don't find it to be as time consuming as blogging. Therefore, I think that the PLN is a great tool for exchanging information and learning good information related to teaching and technology from my peers and experts on the internet. The only problem seems to be the time needed to stay on top of it. However, tools like RSS readers and Tweetdeck do aid in making the upkeep more manageable.