Professional Learning Networks

 

 

To Tweet or Not to Tweet?

 

 
I must admit that my professional learning network assignment for my TIE300 course initially gave me the flux!  Signing up on Twitter, following other education professionals and organizations, and tweeting or retweeting about resources, I found to be quite overwhelming.  After my initial apprehensions with learning the lingo and understanding the practice of following someone, I found twitter to be truly interesting, enlightening, and beneficial (both professionally and personally).
Tweet On!

Actually, for a lover of learning like myself, Twitter can be quite addictive.  I found myself fluttering from person to person, organization to organization, and site to site.  I've spent a many endless night just examining educational sites, articles and tutorials.  Having the ability to connect to professional educators from all over the world, view live presentations and webinars, and obtain articles, lesson plans, and activities that cover across every learning domain and 21st Century technology, I found exciting.  I'm able to learn as I seek the knowledge, methods and experiences necessary to teach. 

 

 

Many of the professionals and organizations, I follow, provide an abundance of beneficial information and resources, but my favorite sites are by stay at home moms. They can stand shoulder to shoulder with many early childhood educators.  I find their early educational ideas and activities to be fresh, innovative, and just plain fun.  Some have early childhood education backgrounds, others don't, but all seem to display a love for learning along with their children and often expand their own knowledge by becoming certified or returning to college to complete a degree in ECE.  This is something I have a personal connection with.  One of my favorites is the "Kids activities Blog", by Holly Homer, which was posted by Teach Preschool @Teach_Preschool.  The most recent post was 10 Best Nature Apps for Kids by Marnie Craycroft.  This site has information and resources for parents and educators. The activities are categorized by age and learning areas. 

I find their activities are shared from a place of love - the love they have for their children and their parental desire to enhance, promote, and stimulate positive growth and development in their children.

As with all parents, they seek to find ways to increase their children's ability to succeed in life and are willing to share their own successes and failures and display the challenges that are involved with being an engaged parent -  I applaud our students true 1st teachers.

 

From Tweeting to Chatting

 

It's perfectly natural to want to get in on the conversations you see the educational professionals, parents, and students posting about.  So this Wednesday at 8:00 p.m., I jumped in the #ptchat nest.  The topic was, "Introverts in the Classroom".  I was quite intimidated about joining in on the conversation but they provided a link to the seven questions that would lead the discussion.  I found this to be quite helpful, since the actual chat moves extremely fast.  The previewed questions allowed me to have a response ready for when the question were posed, enough time to read what others were saying and note the resources they were posting.  The hour flew by, I was tired but I completely enjoyed it.  I do intend to build my twitter nest with more educational twigs from other chat trees.

I couldn't get my screen shot to save to my computer, so I just took a few photos on my iPhone. 

My tweets on #ptchat, discussing "Introverts in the Classroom".

 

 

 

Forty-five tweets, one hundred fifty eight followings, and thirty two followers later, I found the overall social media experience of tweeting and chatting to be educationally, professionally, and personally extremely beneficial and FUN!

Mining for Strangers.

Digital Mining

For my technology course, at National Louis University, my instructor had us go digital mining for information on a perfect stranger.  A fellow student and myself were assigned the name of a stranger and requested to investigate them on the internet.  Just by Googling their name we were able to dig up all sorts of personal information on that person.  With just a few more clicks on the keyboard, we obtained their age, birthdates, occupation, salary, residence, relatives and many more priceless personal nuggets.

Digital Excavation

As with any excavation, tools are required.  Our digital mining tools of choice consisted of various search websites.  As I previously stated, our search began with Google which provided a list of other sites that led to more in-depth information on our female target of interest.  With each site searched we were able to auger our way through her life.  Pinterest.com gave us a picture of our subject and on  twitter we obtained her occupation and examples of her professional experiences and interest.  On Illinois-teachers.findthedata.com, we retrieved her place of employment, years of service, salary and educational history.  Instantcheckmate.com gave us her birthdate, age, current residence (also her previous residences) and close relatives, which allowed us to obtain the same information on each of them.  If we chose to pay a fee, we would have been able to obtain all of the personal information listed below:

     Civil Judgments                    Old Phone Numbers               Foreclosures

Corporate Affiliations          Email Addresses                     Issued SSN

Water Craft Owned              Tax Liens                               Aircraft Owned

UCC Filings                         Florida Accidents                   Sexual Offenses

Phone Numbers                    Professional Licenses             Neighbors

Properties Owned                 Hunting/Fishing Permits        Business Associates

Voter Registration                Weapons Permits                    And Much More!

With Chicago.blockstopper.com we were able to obtain a picture of  her residence, the taxes, square footage of the home and lot along with it's parcel number.  Every search site divulged more and more personal gems about a person we've never seen, met or talk to.  It allowed us to tunnel our way through her life, making it an open book.   

No longer a Stranger

This investigative experience left me feeling that my assigned subject was no longer a stranger. Her life unfolded with every search site we examined. This caused me to reflect on all the information that computers and the internet have made available to anyone willing to dig.  Each time you make a purchase, apply for a job, and sign into a new website, you leave information about yourself.  Every bit of personal information you submit, leaves a permanent impression (digital footprint/tattoo) on this global social media environment.  Thought and care must be taken with every transaction, and each time you log in and are required to divulge your personal information.   I found this assignment to be very enlightening, valuable and yet disturbing.  I believe that it definitely would be a good topic to discuss with students, making them aware of the significance their digital tattoo can have on their life.