Friday, October 9, 2009

Week 6 Online Identity Reflections

This week has been a crazy adventure for me. Over the course of the last week, I have had several presentations both at UCF and in my own school. My aunt passed away, my sister is getting married tomorrow, and I have been working like a nut trying to finish the wedding cakes. With this being said, being required to reflectively consider my own online identity has been a challenge. According to the link in my class assignment, my online identity is considered "Digitally Distinct". I created my online profile through Google http://www.google.com/profiles/mrsguzman21 .

Establishing an online profile and updating my About me profile on Blogger, I found to be quite easy. Trying to determine which information to divulge to the world while maintaining my personality without being too stingy with my personal information, is tricky. I want to provide my pertinent details to make myself digitally distinct, but I don't want everyone knowing everything about my life at the same time. As I was considering my audience, I decided that making my profile educator friendly, something that I myself as parent would not be afraid to open on my computer with my students.

As I was reading through Chapter 2 of the Future of Reputation, I was intrigued by the idea of a being both a Diarist and a Journalist. I wondered how blogs came to be, so I was very interested in The Blogfather also known as Glenn Reynolds. He argues that “technology has made it possible for individuals to become not merely pamphleteers, but vital sources of news and opinion that rival large metropolitan publishers in audience and influence." (Solove 16) To apply the same mindset to education, blogging also will prove to be of great significance to the changes and revolutions taking place in educational technology. Being able to blog reflectively about the success and failures of how technology is being used in my classroom, school, and county is one way to hopefully improve my own classroom instruction in the long run.

Personal Learning Plan

This semester I was introduced to a new concept. Perhaps not entirely new, but one with a name. I had never thought of my personal/educational/instructional goals being part of my "PLP" or Personal Learning Plan. However, now that I know what they can be called, I think I will stick with PLP. So with that being said, I'd like to share how I am working on developing my PLP this semester and hopefully into the future.

1. Create Wikis within my school/department to collaborate on lesson plans and unit building, professional development, and technology tricks or ideas.

2. Reflect weekly on classroom experiences and previews of the current week in my classroom by maintaining and publishing blogs at tigerlanguagearts.blogspot.com.

3. Enhance classroom writing projects by incorporating online publishing avenues directly with my students. (i.e. National Writing Archives through the NCTE)

4. Begin to Create Podcasts that provide lessons directly to my students through Audacity and iTunes. While creating Podcasts also subscribing to fellow teachers, classrooms, and instructors will also enable me to better prepare for content lessons, professional development and other situations.

~Katie

2 comments:

  1. I forgot to answer how I will achieve my PLP and how I will know it. Well, to answer those questions, I will research each of the goals and then determine best how to reach each one. From that point, determining how each resource is used and the frequency of use, will help me understand whether or not I need to refocus my PLP.

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  2. I'm fascinated by how your goal of "blog[ging] reflectively about the success and failures of how technology is being used in my classroom" might square with your concerns about "divulging to the world" too much information. Are teaching "failures" made public a concern? Should they be? Or is it healthy to model iterative improvement and growth in the public sphere?

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