EDU5506EA SU20 Final Reflection

Final Reflections

Well, my online PLN (Personal Learning Network) course is nearly over. We learned more about blogging, Web 2.0 features, RSS feeds, and podcasting. We examined our own PLNs. The task now is to take this learning and form a plan. The plan to grow my learning network and how this will contribute to other administrative colleagues. This made me think deeply. In fact, I have thought about it all week. 

I think that in order to grow my PLN, I will need to follow even more educators and administrators across the country, or even world, on social media platforms. While my Twitter is nearly all educational persons, they are limited. Many do "Follow Fridays" where they post great educators and administrators they follow. I will need to follow these links. And I as I move into an administrative position (hopefully soon!), I probably should not be so heavy in my own subject, but seek to understand the most up-to-date skills, pedagogies, and philosophies of other subject areas. 

Another way to grow my PLN is to follow the people I go to see at conferences. I have not done much of that before now. I can follow on Twitter, Instagram, and other social media. I can follow their blogs. I have discovered that many of them have blogs! I can listen to their podcasts. Oh, so many podcasts! I have fallen into a rabbit hole of podcasts. 

With that said, in order to contribute to my colleagues, I do not need to be passive in these various forms of networking. I have Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, but I rarely post or even comment on other posts. As a professor once told me, I need to use my voice. Good advice that I am slowly learning to use. Perhaps this class was the kickstart to adding my voice to the body of learning in my subject area, as well as schooling, in general. 

Changes, Changes, Changes

Good morning, my beautiful people!

As time changes, so do I. I started this blog many years ago and abandoned it. Picked it up. Abandoned it. As I am currently taking an online professional development course, I am again revisiting. I am considering how to best utilize this resource to reach students, parents, the community, and maybe even other educators and administrators! Most of my online communication with students now occurs through Google Classroom, but that is not an effective way of communicating with parents and the community, or other educators and administrators. Eventually, I will not have my own students in Google Classroom either; my students will be all of the students in the school, one day in the future.

With that said, I suppose there are some housekeeping things I need to attend to before continuing to use things resource for too long. The blog list needs to be updated. There are several blogs that I followed that are no longer kept. I need to remove those and replace them with blogs that I follow that are still updated.

The second is changing my blog's name. I have a few names I am considering, but I will leave it for now. The title still fits, although one day it may not. :)

The third is I think the theme needs to be updated as well. I will be looking through to see what fits me now.

I guess that is all for now!

Smiles,
Mrs. Bodine