I think using Personal Learning Networks is almost crucial to life as a teacher today. The world is online, so why not have at least some resource online for either students, other teachers, parents, or employers to have access to? For the primary grades, obviously that might not be as possible but for intermediate and middle grades I think it would be super effective to use as a portfolio to document learning on an individual basis for each student, as Luke mentioned in class. I remember in grade 5, we all got Delta Learns accounts (SD. 37, Delta) which I believe were wordpress blogs. I don’t remember what they were for, all I remember is posting a picture of my new glasses. With the new curriculum having such a massive focus on inquiry, I think having these resources for students to use for their documentation process would be incredibly useful in the classroom. it acts as something the teacher can use to check for understanding of learning and to use as evidence, something for students to remember what they’ve done in previous lessons, and it gives the parents something they can check in on to see what their children are learning.
For ourselves as teachers, I think having a class blog for students to reference, especially in intermediate and middle years, would help students stay on top of their work and have notes or lessons to reference while doing projects, assignments, homework etc. I remember a few of my High School teachers had websites like this, that definitely came in handy when struggling with homework, or studying for exams. We talked about online resumes or portfolios to have as teachers that we can use to show potential employers almost as a marketing tactic. I’ll put a link to mine below.
https://sites.google.com/uvic.ca/bensheppardreideportfolio/home
