PLN, Twitter, Diigo, and Other "Connections"

What a week, where to begin? Okay, we will start from the beginning, maybe it will all become clearer than mud when I am writing about it; or maybe not. 

If you are like me, you are asking yourself, "What is a PLN?" As we all do, when I see an acronym, I go through the list in my head: PN, LPN, CEN, CSN, RN - and then, oh yeah, I remember I am in Education, NOT nursing. I am back at square one, "What is a PLN?" Well, thankfully I have many resources, and I discovered that a PLN is a Personal Learning Network. Still not clicking? Maybe this will help (I too am a visual learner):

Some of the networks I chose to add to my PLN were: Classroom 2.0 , Goodreads , and Teachers.net. 

Okay, so now that I almost understand what a PLN is, I embark on the next adventure, starting my PLN on Twitter. If I thought discovering what a PLN was was a task, maneuvering my way through Twitter was another adventure. My head felt like it was going to explode, it was on extreme overload - Tweetdeck, hashtags (what is a hashtag), @ who? So after clicking from how-to pages back to Twitter home page and back again, and well back again and again and again, I took a break, cleared my head, and then went back to try yet again. This time, I took my time, and while I still am not sure I know how to engage in, view, or find a "chat", I at least have found some people people and groups to "follow". As an educator, I decided to keep my Twitter account professional and chose to follow other educators, speakers, and groups that would help me to enrich my professional tool box and enhance my teaching and student learning. To see who I am following, follow me @mrsklearns2day at twitter.com. 

While I am still navigating through my third task for the week, Diigo, I already know that the neat and organized format of this social bookmarking tool is going to make my life much easier. What is Diigo and social bookmarking? I wondered the same thing as I was used to simply "clicking" the star to yellow to save a page, only to have to remember where I saved it and how to find it again. With Diigo, the remember and search (and wasted time) is eliminated. Diigo also allows you to find and bookmark items on one source and then view them again on another source. 

Well, I am off to dive more into Diigo and expand my knowledge (and confusion) of the Twitter world. Be sure to keep track of my progress from an Unconnected Student to a Connected Educator!