This week in my course work I have been learning about online PLN's. For our portfolio at the end of these two courses we need to create learning statements. One of my learning statements is that I am learning to participate in and appreciate what it means to be part of an online Professional Learning Network (global network community). This relates to program capacity 5: assess, evaluate, use and participate in new media interactions in education. Up until this week I have not seen the value in going online, reading and commenting about what others say about education and technology. Or even putting ideas or questions out there to the education community. Don't get me wrong, what people have to say and put out there online is important there are some interesting opinions and theories out there, but I did not see how it would help me, or why I should spend time searching for them. I also didn't think I could contribute to it or had worth while ideas to share. Though I believe in being a life long learner, I did not see how spending time on the internet reading others opinions was useful. I realize this is very ironic. I am an educator, I tell my students to be open minded about learning, yet I have been very against things like twitter. But as I am 'forced' to try new things in this course and leave my comfort zone, I have been forced to confront my own assumptions once more and my own 'road blocks' to my own learning. We were encouraged to ask an online learning community about technology related to a specific curriculum goal, so I went on to Classroom 2.0 and put out a query, low and behold someone responded and gave me some great ideas. Where does this leave me - needing to re-evaluate my thoughts/assumptions on technology and education and learn to keep an open mind - make my technology box bigger.
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