Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Chapter 1


This blog is my response to a part in Chapter 1 “Understanding the Power of PLNs”. This section dealt with the positive aspects of personal learning networks and what they can offer education. It also dealt with different social media sites and how they can impact a students leaning. The part that I’m going to talk about is Positive Network Effects. The book lists seven positive effects total but, I’m only going to talk about two that interested me.
            The first effect that really stood out to me was that students are responsible for their own learning. To me this means that students are teaching themselves how to use the technologies and then using them to explore their interests. The best way to learn something is to actually do it yourself. Students have unlimited access to the web and can use that to discover whatever they want. Now that I’m in college and have been using things like PowerPoint and the internet since grade school it seems like sometimes teachers don’t give students enough credit in what they can figure out on their own. Most of the time a student can go on a website and figure out how to use it without a tutorial from the teacher. Sometimes educational websites might be hard to maneuver completely but, for the most part students are becoming more and more independent with their school work.
            The next part that caught my attention was classrooms becoming more engaging. Students and teachers alike have access to anything they could imagine on the web. It gives me some relief becoming a teacher knowing there are so many blogs and websites out there giving advice. I will also have access to different crafts and activities to keep my classroom fun. Students also have access to the whole internet leading to different view points of ideas which causes much more discussion in classrooms. This may cause some problems in the classroom though. Students may have access to ways of cheating on homework and plagiarizing and leading them to not get a full education and essentially cheating themselves. I’ve defiantly taken the easy way out of an assignment before and with the internet causing so many temptations, it’s hard to resist sometimes.
            This chapter had lots of good points I’ve never thought of before. Learning about teacher’s blogs makes me excited to make fun crafts and activities in my classroom. 

5 comments:

  1. I agree with you, I also believe that technology has made it much easier for teachers. The internet has become very beneficial to educators and gives great tips for classroom activities.

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  2. Students being responsible to learn on their own also stood out to me while reading this chapter. I think you were absolutely right when you said teachers don't sometimes give us enough credit about what we can do on our own. Many of us have the ability to learn things without a teacher.

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  3. Couldnt agree more with what you have to say about technology in schools. I agree also that the best way to learn something is just doing it yourself.

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  4. I agree that teachers don't give students enough credit, and that we can usually figure things out on our own.

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  5. The idea of the students being responsible for their education also stood out to me.

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