PLN Progress Report.

Talking about my PLN seems odd and difficult because it's not something that is corporeal no a single thought. It's an intangible thing that is difficult to explain. I have been trying to expand my PLN as much as I can and to find the best way to streamline and keep it organized. Obviously the central hub of my PLN currently is EDM 310 be it the lab, blog, assignments or tweets. Even just Dr. strange who passed on his links from delicious could be consider the central point at the moment.

The three main tools for my pln right now are:
Symbaloo: I'm slowly moving things from my bookmark toolbar folders to it now that I understand how webmixes work and it has a few good suggestions
My RSS feed: I am trying to add blogs from educators to it, I still need to figure out how to keep my entertainment separate from my education on it though.
My browser: I use Firefox and various extensions. My twitter feed is always in bottom right of the screen ready to pop up and tells me when there are new tweets. My bookmark toolbar keeps track of blogs I comment on, websites I'm saving for projects, various websites, and the classes resources all right where I can see them somethings will stay there and be symbaloo since I don't like having a tab for symbaloo open all the time.



I follow a variety of educators on twitter and I am currently trying to add more and more math educators by finding ones that follow things like @media4math and @republicofmath. Twitter can be rough at some points and when things like a #mathchat get going it can be a bit overwhelming. Twitter does have some good resources though and I am even talking to a few educators because of it like @earlsamuelson.

I have emailed a few educators to get in touch with them including some of my teachers from junior high and high school. I work in the EDM lab or sometimes just hang out there to catch what other people are talking about and try and get to know more people from the class.

The next portion of my PLN would be our assignments because we read a variety of blogs for education and it's interesting to see what others have to say. It's expanding our horizons and by having us comment it is getting us in touch with people who are already educating around the globe.

My PLN is a constantly growing and evolving thing, it's still in its youthful state and has a good deal room for improvement. It's something that's hard to explain because it's seems very amorphous at the moment. It's your network and it is what it is, you can only explain the tools you are using to develop and organize it. I am constantly on the look out for new people and websites to follow and get in touch with so that when it comes time for me to start teaching I will have a solid foundation to hold me up should a storm ever come.