PLNs (or, Ways to Improve Your Practice in Just 280 Characters)

One great resource for teachers is the development of a Professional Learning Network (or PLN, because we all know education loves itself a good acronym). This is essentially a set of connections teachers make related to their practice-it is a tool for both sharing and acquiring ideas, tools, and resources. One’s PLN may be composed of colleagues who they work with directly, conferences, presentations, or other PD experiences, or online resources like educational websites or social media spaces. A PLN is a way for a teacher to connect with other educators or educational stakeholders to learn, share, and collaborate. One major benefit of the explosion of technology is that limitations on who/what can be part of a PLN have really been eliminated; thanks to the internet and social media, teachers can connect with others across the country, or even the world, in an instant, so that ideas and resources can quite literally span the globe. 

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One social media app that has been particularly beneficial in the formation of PLNs is Twitter. While I have been using Twitter for over a decade, I had not really untapped its potential as an educational resource tool. So, rather than stick with my same old handle, I actually created a new Twitter account to use strictly for things related to my educational career- @ablazek_edu (I know, I know…0/10 for creativity). After creating my new profile, I set about following some of the more prominent educators or scholars I already knew (Edutopia, Matt Miller, Alice Keeler, and Cult of Pedagogy, to name a few). After culling through some additional suggestions, and building out my follows, I spent some time sharing ideas, participated in my first Twitter chat, and found some pretty cool resources. Here’s a recap of my first weeks on professional Twitter:

Twitter Chat

I ended up being ‘suggested’ the account Teacher2Teacher, and happened upon one of their chats, called (fittingly) #T2Tchat. The chat included several questions for teachers to answer; in following this account, I realize that they will often find questions teachers have asked on Twitter, and pitch them out to the greater educational community. I am not sure if any of the questions in this particular chat were originally generated by teachers, but I thought it was a cool idea either way. I’ve included screenshots of three questions from the chat, as well as my answers to two of them. 

There was no set theme to the chat itself, but I would say the questions I’ve included looked more into non-instructional areas, such as teacher wellness or home-school connection. For each of the questions, I was able to share an idea I use in my own practice, while also getting to see ideas from other teachers who had answered the same questions. I thought this was really helpful in getting me to see the possibilities of a PLN and Twitter in general; rather than looking at this as solely for ‘what can I do in the classroom?’, these questions were looking more at what I can do to make myself a more well-rounded educator overall, and what goes into that beyond just what I do within lessons. I thought all three questions I included were important for different reasons:

-Q5 (family communication)-something that I feel I am always trying to get better at, and finding ways to be consistent, and reach out to multiple families at once are a great bonus on top of more individual communication.

-Q6 (refilling your cup)-I have come to realize more and more how easily this can get overlooked, but also how vital it is to preventing frustration and/or burnout. Having little tricks that can be easily completed in any day is so important (I didn’t include a personal reply to this one, but this was a question that I really liked reading through answers to).

-Q7 (supporting colleagues)-again, something we all would do if/when we could, but can also get lost in the hectic nature of our jobs. Having something that might seem counterintuitive (for me, sharing planning space), has actually helped me both professionally and personally, because of the consistent availability and support my colleagues and I have been able to offer each other.

I look forward to being able to participate in future Twitter chats-my hope is to find a couple that are either reading or writing-centric, because those are two areas that I feel like I could always use more insight into.

Resource

One of the websites I have used in the past, and one of the first Twitter accounts I followed, was Edutopia. I think it is a great resource that gives a variety of information for many different purposes, and found that Twitter was a great way to get a quick update on new articles being posted on the site. One that caught my eye, which is in the screenshot below, discussed methods of discussion in which EVERY student could get involved. Here is the original tweet. A link to the full online article can be found here.

This article jumped out at me because I believe that A) student discussion is one of the most effective methods of learning, and B) getting every student involved in a discussion is a very important, but very difficult goal to achieve. I hoped that the article from Edutopia would give some insight into some discussion methods I was unfamiliar with, or some strategies that I could integrate into my existing lessons. The common theme of the discussion strategies in the article seemed to be that there must be tasks provided for each student to complete; this will help to avoid having students just ‘let everyone else do it’, because without their own contributions, their peers will be stuck. While two of the strategies were meant to be ‘silent’ discussions, I could easily see them modified to include verbal discussion as well. For example, the article discusses silent discussions, where students respond to questions and then pass to a peer, who responds to what has been written. This could be modified to a small-group activity (say, three students per group), where students answer, respond to both peers, and then end up with their original answer/responses, and then participate in a discussion with their group about their overall impressions, what they learned, final ideas, etc. I also really like the final activity, which is a poster rotation and group discussion, and look forward to trying it with my classes during our current novel study on Space Case. We are focusing on suspense techniques, and could see that working well with having student groups start with an individual chapter, pick out a technique they see, cite evidence, and then analyze the author’s purpose in using said technique on other groups’ posters.

Overall, my first foray into teacher Twitter was one I would call successful. Honestly, my biggest question is just if I can stay consistent with checking it, connecting from the standpoint of both giving and receiving ideas, and then over time be able to find more and more voices as part of my PLN. I’m hoping it will be more active than my personal Twitter account, which has been up and down, and down, and down…and is now basically just used to see reactions to crazy, breaking news stories. But this time, it will be different!

PS, for anyone on Twitter looking for some lighthearted ways to refill your own cup, check out Teacher Problems, Secret Headteacher, or Bored Teachers-all good ways to remember that there are hundreds of us in the exact same position as you, and that at the end of the day, we really are all in it together.