Social Bookmarking

  Social Bookmarking provides an avenue for sharing articles and websites that relate to a certain topic that is addressed.  Once a topic is identified, professionals, friends, any individual in the group can easily share and identify important passages in the article and create notes for others to read.
  I love the idea of social bookmarking in the classroom.  I could see it fitting in anywhere, but particularly when trying to site text evidence and provide reasons for a persuasive article.  Students can easily highlight articles to show where information was located, and make notes as to how it supports their point of view.  This would be easy to share with an instructor, or to refer back to as a paper was being written.
  I would enjoy utilizing this website when reading articles for staff meetings.  We are often asked to read information and be prepared to discuss.  If this could take place prior to the meeting, staff members could easily voice their thoughts in order to prepare for discussion.
  Social bookmarking has many positive possibilities that can be utilized in the class.

Personal Learning Networks

Personal Learning Networks, or PLNs, are groups of individuals that individuals connect with online to share common interests with the intent to discover or collaborate.   PLNs can provide members with ideas such as lessons, research, or ideas that one can implement in any area of life.  Following blogs, Pinterest as well as interest groups or professionals on Twitter serve as arenas of learning for educators. PLNs can serve easily professional development allowing an educator to ask questions and receiving a rapid response.  As described in “Your Personal Learning Network Made Easy,”  it is discussed that it does take time to build your community, however once the time is invested in connecting, the rewards are great.  It is also acknowledged that a majority of learning takes place on line and PLNs provide an avenue for that.

An Edutopia article suggests that PLNs are virtual lockers for students.  Students who are researching topics in school create personal web pages or wikis.  When learning about a subject, students can easily get real time research responses to questions that they have and acquire answers as well as share findings with classmates and teachers.  When students have their own iGoogle, the article suggests that it provides an organization method for information collected that has been researched.  Students can investigate what they want to know.  PLNs can serve as a specialized instruction for students and teachers.

Your Personal Learning Network Made Easy

http://onceateacher.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/pln-your-personal-learning-network-made-easy/

Personal Learning Networks Are Virtual Lockers For School Kids

http://www.edutopia.org/pln-web-pages

Personal Learning Networks

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-08-15-personal-learning-networks-mentorship_n.htm