PLN Journal #1- March 24th, 2019

I am very intrigued by the concept of the PLN Journal. I look forward to see how my journal entries
progress over the course of the class. I follow the Virginia Library Association on Facebook. This
"statewide organization whose purpose is to develop, promote, and improve library and information
services and the profession of librarianship" (Virginia Library Association Facebook Page). This page
is very valuable to hear from librarians around the USA talk about various topics. The page also
posts about ideas such as the VLA Award. A recent post was talking about how this award is a great
way to say thank you to library advocates. The page also posts information about public speakers,
such as Dav Pikey. This individual spoke about the importance of school libraries and reading. I am
currently looking for more library pages to follow.
I use Pinterest for ideas on better organizational skills, programs, and much more. This is a great
tool with information on a multitude of topics. I look forward to learning about other tools to use and
generate wonderful ideas from!
PLN Journal #2 Date: March 31st, 2019
This week in class we did a showcase discussion on Open Houses. We had to create a presentation
about the school for the school to present at their Open House. I used the high school that I
graduated from to create the presentation. I used the online presentation tool called mysimpleshow.
This is a free tool where you write a script for the video, and a voice automatically reads it for you.
The video also uses highlighted words such as “school” to create images to have in the video. You
can also record your own voice to use for the video. There is an option to have a paid subscription
with more features, but the basic use was perfect for this assignment. It was very easy to use, and I
could also upload the video to YouTube, download it, or send links to people if I needed to. I really
enjoyed making the video!
PLN Journal #3 -Date: April 7th, 2019
The Maker Space discussion for this week really caused me to think about traditional learning vs
using technology to teach students. I know of one maker space in the Pemi Dorm at PSU; it is a
space that has painting supplies, paper, and much more traditional project supplies. The students
love working in this space because it is an area designed in their living area for them to go work on
projects. While thinking about this, I also thought of other spaces at school. We have the library,
where there is a presentation room to record presentations with a green screen, computer sections,
as well as areas for students to create projects scattered throughout the library. The library is more
based on modern learning I think. I would like to see a more traditional space for students to work on
projects. I think I would like to look into more about the process of obtaining grants for Maker
Spaces. I have some experience in grant writing; and I would like to learn more.
The show case project was a bit more challenging for me. I wrote down items that I thought would be
beneficial in a maker space for the middle school aged students. I saw that some classmates made
maps of their spaces. I think I would like to do this next time. I think it would help me to visualize the
space better. I also think I could have organized my materials list better.

PLN Journal #:4 Date: April 13th, 2019

This week in class we worked in groups to discuss online collaborative programs. I researched the
program “Write the World”. I really enjoyed researching this site, and it gave me some great ideas for
my lesson plan idea. The lesson plan idea that I came up with was a group blogging post and
reading other groups blog posts each week using Google Blogger. I think that this week went really
well in learning about collaborative programs for students and developing ideas on how to implement
them in a class. I also liked how we had to research the program and teach ourselves how to access
the site. I think that I would like to continue brainstorming ideas about collaborative lesson plans. I
think that this would be very beneficial in my future career working with teachers and students.

PLN Journal #5 Date: April 21st, 2019

I really enjoyed this week’s assignments and discussion post. The topic of this week’s discussion
was “The article describes several methods/ideas to encourage professional development for
promoting technology integration. How could you use these methods/ideas to integrate
technology? Be specific”. I felt that this was a great way to get me started on how I would develop
my PD for teachers and Chromebooks. I felt that I was properly prepared for the assignment this
week. I felt that I learned a lot about how the role of the librarian can help out teacher PD. We can do
so much in this area, and since many teachers may come to us with questions about online
applications, it is only fitting that we teach some of the PD presentations.

PLN Journal #6 Date: April 28th, 2019

This week in class, we collaborated with other members of our group to create a collaborative
scenario for this week’s showcase. This really caused me to think about what is important and
allowed me to be creative in how I wanted to reach out to students. I also liked hearing from my
peers about their thoughts. I think that this was a great assignment for the week, and allowed us to
create some wonderful lesson plan ideas. While I was creating this assignment, I was thinking about
teacher professional development, and how letting teachers choose what workshop they wanted to
go to allowed for better learning. That is why I decided to let students choose what app they wanted
to use for the project. I feel that allowing students to choose what they feel works well for them will
allow for students to learn more, increase participation, and help the project reach the learning goals.
At the end of the day, these students will grow up and go down their own paths. It is important to
help them create a list of tools/coping skills that they can use to best suit their needs. I really enjoyed
this week’s assignments and I think I learned a lot!

PLN Journal #7 Date: May 5th, 2019

This week in class we looked into OERs. OER stands for open educational resources. I had a vague
idea of what they were prior to this week, but I really did not know how vast the databases for OERs
are! What I was most impressed by was the open textbooks for students. I did not know that these
existed, and I am very happy that they do! For this week’s showcase, I decided to go with option one
because I wanted to research what was available for OER for teachers. I learned a lot for sure! I
loved that there was accessibility services on some of the OERs for students that may have
disabilities. There is also a variety of resources for many subjects for many different reading levels. I
also learned that there is OER for music, videos, and images. The only OER website that I was
aware of prior to this week was Creative Commons. I have a few lesson plans that I created with a
group of other students on Creative Commons. I think it is so wonderful that the internet has allowed
for little to no cost of sharing OERs with teachers around the world. Materials for classes is
expensive, and this is a great way to ensure equal education for all. I am very excited to learn more
about what teachers can accomplish with OERs!