So after creating my first Personal Learning Network (PLN), I have to say that there are both advantages and disadvantages to creating a PLN. My PLN consisted of subscribing to various RSS feeds using Feedly, subscribing to Twitter and following various posters, using Classroom 2.0 Ning, and various other forms of social media. After using these different applications and sites over the last few weeks, I can definitely say that I have very clear observations about both as to which I think are useful tool for the modern educator as well as which ones I think should be left in the dust.
So the first tool that I played around with was RSS Feeds. I have been a user of RSS feeds for almost a decade now, but I was always using them in a less than normal methods (I had always used RSS style website builders, like Wordpress, to make my own customizable personal websites over the years). RSS feeds are particularly useful for news or blog sites that have a constant level of information being put on them. But putting them on an RSS feed style website means that a person can easily subscribe to those feeds and get the most up-to-date news from those feeds. They can also take these feed subscriptions and put them all into one place, which is what I did using a website called Feedly. Feedly allows you to put all of your RSS feed subscriptions in one easy place for you to refer to for all of your news information. This was a tool that I actually liked. It put a lot of the RSS feeds that I was particularly interested in into one place. I subscribed to various educational feeds as well as TED Talks feeds (which I was particularly interested in seeing more of on a weekly basis). So now instead of checking multiple news websites, I was able to get relevant information and news that I am particularly interested all in one easily acceptable place. By using this you avoid looking at a bunch of fluff articles that you are uninterested on mainstream news sites. So Feedly is definitely a site that I will be using in the future to contain all of my relevant information.
While I like Feedly and the RSS subscriptions to cater to my news needs, I also realized that while the topics are interesting that I just did not have the time in my week to read every one that I wanted to. But this is one thing that I liked about creating a Twitter account. I had a Twitter account many years ago as a personal account, but I never really liked it because I never really saw the point in only being able to post a short amount of words or phrases in a "tweet". To some extent, I still do not get the hype. However having the same RSS subscriptions that I had on my Feedly put onto my Twitter account was great. I would get a short, abbreviated post about various topics via my Twitter that I could easily check on multiple times a day without it taking too much time. I followed @TEDTalks, @SanDiegoCounty, @UTNorth, and of course @TheEllenShow since Ellen Degeneres is always amazing and hilarious! While I liked to see the posts from the various followings and such, I did not get into following specific #hashtags in particular. I tweeted several times and made my own hashtags, but I did not find myself following any particular ones. I put out several tweets and responses to several other posts. However the only real reaction I got to most of them was people "liking" them with the heart symbol. I never really got to experience much conversation. While I know Twitter can be used as a conversation and marketing tool, I still found the most use of it from an educational standpoint in order to subscribe to various bits of information.
The website tool that I definitely disliked the most was Classroom 2.0 Ning. I found this website to be outdated and completely confusing. You go to the homepage, and it is not clear exactly what the purpose of the site is supposed to be. It says that it is a social network on the homepage, but since there are links to videos, product ads, upcoming events, forum links, award banners, etc. (seriously...the list could go on!). I went on multiple times to try to get involved and experienced in this tool, and I ultimately believe that it is just messy and outdated. It is used by too many learning settings and even various languages, so it is just muddy looking and difficult to use. I can easily say that I learned nothing from this site because it was so difficult to effectively understand it or to become fully engaged in it. I read several group posts from a Teacher Education group, and the information was interesting but outdated as it was posted back in 2010. Because of the information being so stale, I could not take the information seriously and with credibility. Therefore I believe that this tool is too outdated, messy and unused to consider ever utilizing it in a modern PLN.
Overall I liked creating and using my PLN. I believe that I will continue to add to and learn from my PLN as both a college student and as an educator. I would definitely recommend being cautious using Twitter for social uses other than subscribing to other posts. As a professional, we need to make sure that we have a minimal and completely professional appearance when it comes to our profiles on social media. I should not create a professional Twitter account and then post inappropriate presidential debate posts using that account or showing anything that could get me in trouble with my position as an educator. This goes for all social media, such as Facebook. we as educators need to be professional and responsible for anything that we do online to not only protect ourselves, but our students and faculties as well. Overall I believe having a PLN can definitely be a very useful tool for any professional trying to stay more connected to social news and media.
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