Professional Learning Network!
What is a Professional Learning Network?
A professional learning network (PLN) is a system of people, ideas, spaces, and resources that support and facilitate ongoing learning and professional growth! PLN's can be customized to your specific needs, such as grade level and content area. PLN's are meant to expose you to other educators in order to find new ideas, bounce ideas back and fourth, and even challenge ideas! It is a great way to to incorporate informal learning anytime and anywhere in order to improve your practice.
My PLN
Majority of PLN's are associated with social media; the most popular platform is Twitter. I created my own PLN using a twitter account: @MichelleRBogdan. I participated my my first live twitter chat! The chat was #edtechchat. I chose this chat because since I am not actively teaching yet, I thought this technology focused chat would give me the best opportunity to follow along and contribute given that I am taking this tech class now.
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| TweetDeck Screen |
Surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. I was worried I would get lost fast, but I was mistaken! I used TweetDeck as my platform for the chat. It was organized with multiple columns on one screen. This helped me follow along the live tweets as well contribute my own tweets and see any notifications related to them.
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| Introductions |
The creator of the chat started off by asking everyone to introduce themselves; so I jumped ! This was awesome because I got to see how many newbies were participating for the first time as well, so I didn't feel so alone or like an outsider. I also noticed that so many different types of educators were present; this is good for collaborating across disciplines as well as finding new strategies to use in your own discipline.
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| Q1 |
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| A1 |
During the chat I found out that it was a mystical creature association. The creator names a mystical creature, and we name a tool.
The creator posted question 1, and the chat exploded with different answers.
There were so many different and creative answers that I enjoyed reading.
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| Q2 |
One of our goals as educators is to get students to a achieve a certain goal or outcome. For leprechauns, it is a pot of gold. I was able to use some of my newly found knowledge from our class to participate.
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| A2 |
Everyone gave what resources they use most in their classrooms that are the most beneficial to them and their students . I saw some tools that I already hear of such as google chrome, twitter, and blogging. People also mentioned many tools I haven't heard of before. Some tools that I investigated further into were socrative, plickler, and goformative. They are all fun and interactive games/quizzes that can be used as a form of formative assessment. Check them out!
The rest of the chat went the same way with questions and answers, discussions and connections, and sharing information and resources. If I ever feel like I am stuck in the classroom and need some new ideas or inspiration, I can find a fitting chat and learn from other educators. On the other hand, if I come up with something creative that really works for my students, I can share my information in these chats and get some feedback. Overall, I'm a big fan of these live chats and see myself using them when I am actually teaching my own classes.
Resources
During the live twitter chat, I found a resource that I was excited about. @angieguccione introduced me to google classrooms. I love google docs to begin with, so I was extra excited to see I can create my own google classroom personalized for my individual classes. It makes it easier for teachers and students to connect and learn.
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| Google Classrooms |
- Easy setup
- Saves time and paper
- Better organization
- Enhanced communication and feedback
- Works with different apps you use
- Affordable and secure
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| @edutopia |
I also found a twitter account that I really liked: Edutopia-@edutopia. Edutopia is an account that wants to provide inspiration and information about what works in education. This account stood out to me because as I scrolled through my twitter feed they always tweet information, ideas, and resources on an array of topics! They tweet about topics such as reflection, nurturing environments, English language learners, student motivation, and literacy. It is always something new and interesting that sparks my attention and makes me want to dig deeper. It is definitely worth checking out.
Follow me on twitter! @MichelleRBogdan
It looks like your adventure into Twitter was successful! The beauty of the chats is that even if you miss one that is "live" the content is still available and people are still happy to hear from you if you comment/like their content.
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