Saturday, July 28, 2012

Tool 2: Personal Learning Networks

          Personal learning networks (PLN) are a great resource for any teacher, new or old, to communicate with other educators in the field.  It provides a window full of ideas and perspectives to aid professionals through their adventures in their occupation.   Visiting blogs could easily entertain anyone for hours, there are so many great educators who interact and help each other through this mean.  I am currently following some members from my campus and district, another great source to help me with my new position.
          As to posting comments, I had a really hard time with this simple task.   The thought of having my comments open for the public makes me nervous!  I tried on several occasions to make a comment but it took me forever to get the courage to write something.  I feel the need to really analyze my thoughts before being imprinted on the web forever.  
          I am truly amazed by the strong technological community of Spring Branch.  I love the fact that different types of technology sources are being shared so it can be use in classrooms across the district to assist teachers, students and families in our district.  I was aware of Diigo but not through my old district. I came across this great tool when conducting research for my graduate course.  It’s great that every teacher in our district is aware of this terrific resource and others thanks to this professional development.  You never know when you might need it!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Tool 1: Getting Started

        In the past I've had opportunities to create webpage so creating a blog was not difficult.  I noticed the Google recently changed the layout of the dashboard and personally I think the older one is more user-friendly.   When it came to creating a voki, it was a bit frustrating since it took me two creations to realize that if the character had a graduation cap it would not provide you with a code but it saved your avatar in Voki Classroom which requires you to have an account.  This experience of creating a character and cutting and pasting a code to your website reminded me when my space was popular and to be able to have a stylish page, codes of the icons and page design needed to be entered to your profile to change its look.