Building a PLN is not easy and requires a lot of research. But it is well worth it because in the process you gain a wealth of tools for your teacher toolbox and a wealth of knowledge about technology. Below I share with you the different types of networking tools you’ll find in my PLN and descriptions of each.
Networking Tools You’ll Find in My PLN
Blogs/News
I was never the type of person to follow a blog before embarking on this PLN journey, but now under the “Blogs I Follow” page you’ll see how many blogs I am keeping up with. Thanks to exploring different educator blogs, I learned how to create my own blog (something I had never done before!) which you’ll find here and am now all the more tech savvy because of it. Because of this blog, I will now be able to reflect on my teaching practice more often as I post what I’m doing in my classroom to share with my colleagues.
As I reflect on my practice, solicit ideas for how to improve it, and read about the effective strategies my colleagues are using on their blogs, my practice can only improve. As my instruction improves, my hope is that my students’ content mastery will too. Moreover, the teaching practices I’m learning about through the blogs I follow relate to incorporating 21st century skills into lessons. By incorporating these teachers’ strategies into my own practice, I will likely “create 21st century citizens [in my own classroom] that parrot less and think more” (Prensky, 212, 3).
Social Bookmarking
Under the “My Social Media” page, you’ll find all of the social networking sites I use. As I reiterate on that page, I am not a social media user in my personal life, and truthfully I was a bit apprehensive to use it even in a professional capacity, but I stepped outside my comfort zone for the betterment of my classroom practice. I had to learn how to navigate these social media sites by watching youtube tutorials, and now I’m all the more tech savvy because of it.
On Pinterest, I have found lesson plan ideas posted by other teachers. On Twitter, I have found mini-PDs on how to dissect NGSS standards and on what phenomena to use in units. Through these forums, I have, therefore, gotten ideas for my unit plans. Because these ideas come from professional organizations and expert teachers, these lessons and unit plans will hopefully help my students better master the content.
Because I have now learned to use social media, I am more apt to incorporate social media into classroom instruction with my students. Blog posts like this one share ideas on how to use social media in the classroom in order to better develop 21st century skills in our students (Lepi, 2012).
Communicate and Collaborate
On this particular site, I created a “Contact” page through which people reading my blog can easily reach out to me with questions, advice, and resources. I also created a “Let’s Collaborate” page for people to post ideas and resources in the comments section and connect with each other. My “Let’s Collaborate!” page owes its inception to Kelly Ngo. Her blog site and other conversations I had with her inspired me to create this page.
Under the advice of Skip Via, I have decided to create a gmail account for PLN purposes (calderon.scienceteacher@gmail.com) (Via, 2010). Using this gmail account, which you’ll find on the “Let’s Collaborate” page, I’ll open up the lines of communication and connect with colleagues. Moreover, I am learning more about what Google has to offer as I explore this new gmail account and all of the different apps that Google provides with it.
You’ll notice that on the “Let’s Collaborate” page I also mention a number of GroupMe and What’s App groups I participate in through which my colleagues and I further communicate. I don’t normally like to participate in text chains because I am quite shy. Though it took me a little while to acclimate, I am now a solid contributor on these text chains, constantly asking questions, asking for resources, and sending links to my own resources.
The resources I am gathering from these conversations provide me with new and innovative ways to engage my students in the classroom and hopefully improve their learning outcomes. For example, I recently spoke to Rob Vogelpohl, a high school teacher in Bridgeport, about incorporating innovative learning stations into our unit plans (you can see our candid comments under the “Let’s Collaborate!” page). Lastly, thanks to these text and email chains, I am able to ask tech support related questions and get answers in real time, thereby improving my teacher readiness for technology integration.
Publish and Share
As I mentioned before, the purpose of a PLN is to create “beneficial symbiotic relationships involving give and take” (Watanabe-Crockett, 2017). In order to properly utilize a PLN, we have to both listen and contribute (Via, 2010). Because I recognize my responsibility to not only listen, but also contribute, you’ll find my own published posts about what I’m doing in my classroom (with links to resources) under the “My Blog” page. And in the comments section under the “Let’s Collaborate!” page, you’ll candidly find out how I’m collaborating with my colleagues and further sharing ideas with them.
As a second year teacher, I often feel like I have nothing to offer my more veteran colleagues because I myself am still learning. But over time and through this PLN experience, I have learned that veteran teachers can learn just as much from younger teachers than we can from them. Everyone’s voice is valuable in a professional learning community and everyone has something they can contribute. For this reason, I stepped outside my comfort zone and created this blog page (and in the process learned a lot of tech support) in order to share my experiences and the resources I’ve found helpful.
This blog allows me to engage in reflective practice which will inevitably improve my teaching. It also gives me a forum to pitch ideas and get feedback with the hopes of creating effective lessons for my students that will be the most engaging and help them best master the content.
By learning more about blogging, I am learning more about the educational technologies that are available to my students. While researching other educator blogs, I came across many blogs that explained how to incorporate student blogging into lessons as another way for students to express what they know (Lepi, 2012; Paccone, 2017).
Coming Soon!
As I move forward in my PLN journey, I plan on posting more blog posts, frequently checking my social media accounts to stay up to date, and inviting my colleagues to share more on the “Let’s Collaborate!” page. My long term plans for expansion include creating a discussion board formatted collaboration page to better facilitate discussion on this site and creating a facebook page in order to connect with educators who are on that forum but not others.
References
Clifford, M. (2013, January 17). 20 tips for creating a professional learning network [Blog]. Retrieved from http://www.gettingsmart.com/2013/01/20-tips-for-creating-a-professionallearning-network/
Lepi, K. (2012, September 24). 10 high school teacher blogs you should know about. Retrieved from https://www.scoop.it/t/adaptivelearnin/p/3995828351/2013/02/02/10-highschool-teacher-blogs-you-should-know-about-edudemic?
Paccone, P. (2017, December 28). Teachers Who Blog: The 20 Best of 2017. Retrieved from https://ww2.kqed.org/education/2017/12/28/teachers-who-blog-the-20-best-of-2017/
Prensky, M. (2012). Introduction. In From digital natives to digital wisdom: Hopeful essays for 21st century education (pp. 1–7). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Via, S. (2010, June 10). Personal learning networks for educators [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6WVEFE-oZA(approximate length: 5 minutes)
Watanabe-Crockett, L. (2017, October 12). 5 do’s and don’ts for building your professional learning network [Blog]. Retrieved from https://globaldigitalcitizen.org/professional-learningnetwork-practices
Ms. Calderon's Professional Learning Network 