Blog Post One: Building and Refining your PLN

First, on my RSS feed, I followed a few people from the History/Social Studies and English fields. I followed more than three people, because I love both subjects and some blogs were too good to pass up. The Catholic English Teacher blog gave some in-depth analyses on different Shakespeare Plays, as well as discussed Catholic books as well. As a Catholic school girl growing up, I found the Catholic discussions intriguing. The second blog I am following, is an ESL blog about a primary teacher in France, who has to teach his students English. The blog also has podcasts included. This also ties in with another one of my classes, which is also why I chose to follow this blog.
English Teacher X is also another blog I chose to follow. It's a humorous take on grammar, but it's more for older audiences. English Teacher Melanie also has podcasts on her blog, as well as resources for students. She's also an ESL teacher. That blog also ties into my other class as well. Learning from My Mistakes as an English Teacher is the last English blog I am following, but it's interesting the teacher not only discusses the students assignments, but their mistakes and the way he engages (or doesn't connect some days) with his students. The US History Teacher blog has videos and facts about important events in history, which is definitely interesting to me and useful to anyone who has research to do. The other history blog I am following is called History is Elementary. The blog is great for history and history teachers. There are pictures and facts about not only important events in U.S. history, but important events in World History as well.

On Twitter, I chose to follow a few people, organizations in the same areas, in addition to film. I am following Geoff Barton, a writer of textbooks and he is an English teacher, as well. I am also following the OED (the Oxford English Dictionary), which was the bulky book I had to carry around in High School. I hated it then, but fell in love with it in college. I am also following the Oral History Society, since a lot of our history was passed down orally, especially with different cultures. I am also following US Capitol History, which is the history of the US Capitol.  I am following the Oxford Dictionaries, which publishes all of the Oxford Dictionaries. I am also following Film History in pictures, which shows pictures of film history (and film history needs to be preserved.)

This semester, I have been slowly using the RSS feed. Actually, it's easier to get news all at once there instead of going through my hundred bookmarks on Firefox and Chrome. I haven't used it that much, but the few times I did, all of the important news links showed up on one page instead of me clicking around and having ten tabs open on my screen. However, I would like to use the RSS feed more and cut down on my habit of attempting to multitask (since we all know multitasking doesn't really exist.)

I've been an avid Twitter user for awhile now. I have old professors added and family members currently added. I would say I use it too much, but since I see accounts that have 20,000 tweets, then I guess I don't? But as I mentioned previously, I would like to improve on my RSS feed skills and use it more often. I literally added all of my favorite websites on there and don't use it as much as I should.