Chapter 1-3 Reflection

After reading Chapter 1 in the Personal Learning Network book I feel, like the authors, that technology plays such a vital role to us.  There are so many things you can do with technology that can help aid in teaching.  Richardson and Mancabeli state that Google is trying to scan and digitize every book in the universe (Richardson and Mancaabeli 16).  This would be awesome if this happens.  As of now we have an almost endless supply of information at our fingertips.  If this comes true there are so many sources and books that we can easily pull up from the internet to share with our students.  I also believe that because of the importance of technology we as teachers do need to rethink how our students learn like Richardson and Mancabeli state.  The only thing that scares me is when they say that if we have” access to the internet we have over 2 billion potential teachers” (pg 18).  The only reason that I say this is because it almost makes it sound like most teachers will teach from the internet.  But I believe they meant with the internet we have so much more people that can help us.

I liked reading Chapter 2.  I knew a little bit about networks before reading this book.  But after reading it gave me a lot more information.  The things that I have used for networking have been facebook and discussion boards.  After reading about twitter I am thinking about signing up for a twitter account.  I never did it before because most of the people I know use it to share mundane details about their everyday lives that have no relevance to me.  After reading about twitter I would like to use twitter to connect with other teachers to help share ideas with one another.  The following website is a website I found that you can use to help connect with other teachers via twitter ( http://www.twitterteachers.com/). I like how Richardson and Mancabeli say that once you start having lots of networking they start to seep into each other.  Having a few of them I can definitely see how they interact with each other.  I use links that I have saved in my delicious account all the time on my facebook page and vice versa.  The bottom line is the effectiveness of these networks depends on how you use them.

I have always believed that computers are a huge part of our lives and are important to our students as well.  With networking we can impact and aid our students learning.  I feel that one of the most important parts of networking a classroom is the feeling of collaboration you can get.  By using this in your classroom you can take collaboration far beyond the classroom.  I always just assumed students could collaborate at home.  I never thought about continuing it into the summer time like Richardson and Mancabelli.  I can’t wait to use things like Skype in my classroom to network with my students and to use it to have them network with others. I have already found a good resource to use with Skype located at http://education.skype.com/ I really enjoyed this chapter because it gave me all kinds of ideas to use in my classroom when I get the chance.  I think the most powerful thing that Richardson and Mancabelli said came in chapter 3 when they said, “It starts with you (pg 81).  The  bottom line is that it is one thing to talk and say how good these things are and it is one thing to actually implement these things and that is why the bottom line is that it comes down to us as teachers.