Creating Personal Learning Networks with Twitter and Diigo

Personal Learning Networks

Personal Learning Networks are a collection of resources and people from whom you want to learn about something.  Most educators create digital PLN's to share and find resources.  I am going to discuss two ways you can build a digital Personal Learning Network: Twitter and Diigo.

Twitter

I've always thought of Twitter as a social media site where you can connect with your friends and follow celebrities' accounts.  Now, I realize that Twitter can be a powerful resource for educators.  There are Twitter chats that are geared specifically toward educators.  There's an Official Twitter Education Chat Schedule.  I perused a past chat for 2nd-grade teachers (#2ndchat) and found this fantastic resource: 

Here is a link to the full resource in Google Slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GLbLQwEsfMRb4PjvVFn5Bdp7GMsg1luolL0p7gdvZNQ/edit?usp=sharing

There are so many fantastic resources an educator can find on Twitter.  Educators can search twitter and find new ideas to try in their classrooms.  For example, I've wanted to incorporate number talks into my math lessons, and I was able to find ideas from a ton of teachers who have already implemented them into their own classrooms.  I was also able to follow Sherry Parrish, the creator of number talks.  You can find all kinds of education-related groups to follow too and you can bookmark specific tweets.

Here is an excellent video that introduces educators to Twitter and Twitter Chats:

Beginning a New Education Blog

I've always enjoyed following other people's education blogs.  However, the only blog I've created was for my parents to view pictures of their children at school and read about what they are doing in the classroom.  It was a great way to stay in contact with my student's families.  Throughout the years, several parents gushed over the fact that their child's grandparents from other states could see their grandchildren at special events at school that they would otherwise miss.

I hope to use my new classroom blog to share some of my ideas and resources that I use in my classroom with other educators.  I wanted to share a list of 4 of my favorite blogs that I frequently visit for new ideas and resources:

1. Step Into 2nd Grade with Amy Lemons
2. The Moffatt Girls
3. First Grade Made 
4. Cool Cat Teacher Blog

Even More Resources for Educators

Do you follow a ton of websites?  Do you find it time-consuming checking each individual website for updates?  Then, you should try Feedly!  It's an RSS feed reader.  Tell Feedly the websites you want to follow, and they will send you the updates.  Here's a screenshot of my Feedly:

 To make your Feedly look more organized, you can create different categories.  For example, I created a category called educational resources.

As my Feedly grows, I plan on creating more categories.  I am very excited to have all of my resources in one place!  It will be much more efficient.

Just this week, I also learned about a new free resource called Adobe Spark.  This resource provides three different types of content.  The first type of content is a post.  I created a post with an inspirational quote this week.  I was able to choose a picture from Adobe Spark.  I could have also added my own picture.  Then, I chose the size I wanted and added a text box to the picture.  Here's the finished project:

Posts are particularly great for social media.  Besides inspirational quotes, you can create invitations, memes, announcements, etc.  I think many elementary students would really like creating a meme!
Another type of content on Adobe Spark is a page.  Students could create a page that tells a story with both pictures and words.  They could also make a book report.  It would make an excellent presentation that students could share with the class.  The final type of content is a video.  Students can start from scratch or use templates.  They can create a presentation with both audio and video.  In the video below, a teacher explains how she used Abobe Spark video content in her 4th-grade classroom:

 I hope these resources will be beneficial for other educators and "spark" some creativity into the classroom.  :-)