Journal 7: Reflect on Professional Learning Networks

In my opinion, professional learning networks are a great asset to have in one’s professional, even personal life. I believe this way due to the fact that I was able to gain a great amount of information from these networks that added to my classroom. For instance, from Classroom 2.0, I was able to learn about a few different strategies that I could include in my lesson plans in order to increase my student’s phonemic awareness. These strategies involved including songs and movement in my lessons where I am focusing on phonemic awareness. Another professional learning network that I believe is very helpful was the RSS feed we created in class. I believe that the RSS is beneficial due to the fact that all of the information I could imagine searching for was all in one place. It made life so much easier. For instance, for my reading centers in my classroom, I need to find various worksheets or activities for my students to complete for the sound they learning that week. Instead of searching on google, I used my RSS feed to look through the various blogs I followed, which allowed me to gain multiple worksheets and activities in a short amount of time, rather than searching through google for them. Lastly, I used Twitter as a professional learning network by searching and following different primary teachers that could give my helpful ideas to incorporate into my class. As one can see, the learning networks can be a great asset to a person’s professional life, but I believe it can enhance one’s personal life too by making all of the information they feel is important or interesting all in one place.