Just 8 Things

5.) Develop a Personal Learning Network (PLN)

One of terms bandied about with respect to professional development and teachers is the concept of the PLN, or Personal Learning Network. Although it includes your traditional learning network of friends, collegues, and acquantances with whom you share ideas, a PLN also incorporates web media and especially social networking with things such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, wikis etc. What makes it so powerful is now you can be connected not only locally, but globally with colleagues who share with you common interests and ideas, but also in diverse settings and with different challenges. The breadth of specialized knowledge, relevant to you, available is what makes a PLN so special. Developing a PLN can take many forms. The first, if you've started reading blogs, you're already familiar with. Seeking a collection of relevant and interesting blogs that offer useful advice is a good first step in developing a PLN. Creating your own blog, and then keeping it regularly updated, takes time and patience, but can be part of the process as well. When writing your thoughts and ideas you change the participatory pathway so that you are contributing, as well as taking, from the flow of ideas. Whether or not someone reads your blog is almost beside the point: putting your ideas and thoughts in a public forum for critique carries many of the same benefits of recording a journal. If writing a blog seems like too much, the vast majority of blogs also offer the ability to comment and give feedback to the author. Use this feature.

Blogs themselves, as previously mentioned, are not the entire story when it comes to PLN's. When it comes to social networking, I'm going to start with Twitter.

6.) Join Twitter - http://twitter.com/, Sign up for an account, Follow me at http://www.twitter.com/neufeld by clicking the Follow button on my page, go to Twitter4Teachers and look for some other helpful people to add to your PLN. That's really all there is to it, if you'd rather stop reading.

When it comes to PLN, it's hard to explain why, exactly, twitter is so useful. When collecting useful blogs for advice, it was like dipping into a stream of knowledge. When I first tried twitter, I 'followed' a few people, but didn't see much benefit or point. People 'tweeted' about what they were having for dinner or other irrelevant bits of personal material. Then I found a couple of sites that listed teachers who tweet. Rather than a gentle stream of knowledge, it was akin to looking down the end of a fire hose and wondering where the water was, and then having it blast into your face. The person I have to credit for this introduction is Grant Potter who taught a pro-d course on Twitter I attended.

Frankly, if you do nothing else, join Twitter. It's relatively new, and given that I don't know if something newer and better will come along, but I do know I've accumulated more useful resources in a few months of Twitter than I accumulated in years of searching and using things like Google. Twitter is ultimately a very simple tool for cooperation. I must also say, for awhile, you will believe that it's the stupidest and most useless thing on the Internet. That's normal and common. Just keep at it, and you will be assimilated.

First, some links to give an overview: Nine Reasons to Twitter in School, an article trying to explain why it's not a waste of time, Can we use Twitter for Educational Activities, 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the College Classroom, Twitter in Plain English, The Twitter Song, and even primary schools in England are considering teaching twitter and wikipedia as essential new tools.

So, what exactly is Twitter? It's a form of microblogging ("micro" = small, "blogging" = we already covered). Even if you haven't text-messaged anyone yourself, you are probably vaguely aware that your students do that. Twitter is simply a method by which you can send text messages (140 characters max). The difference between regular text messaging and Twitter, is that you're not text messaging any particular person, and you can message not only from your phone, but also your computer, and a record of your messages (called "tweets") are kept in your Twitter profile online (making twitter a searchable database as well as a texting service). If anyone "follows" your Twitter profile, they will automatically be messaged when ever you send a new tweet, and vice verse. As well, you're not limited to text, but can send links, photos, audio clips.

Although it sounds much more restrictive than regular blogging, the restrictive nature usually makes microblogging more topical, and more useful. I mean really, how many people are still reading this email/blog? I've gone on and on, and in a typical busy school year who really has the time to read all of that, let alone write it? Twitter forces people to be succint, and communicate only the most critical bits.

This is, of course, if you are following what I consider 'good tweeters'. Twitter itself doesn't seem to really help this, as the question it offers at the top of the entry box is "What are you doing?". As an example of such, I did find a twitter user who tweeted he was excited about having prawns for dinner, then he tweeted about how many prawns he ate, and how good they tasted, and lastly he tweeted about how sick he felt, and how he shouldn't have eaten those prawns. Unless you're his Mom, I rather suspect this isn't all that interesting to anybody. If you're not finding interesting stuff on Twitter, stop following The Prawn People.

There are a few people I follow who do offer tidbits of their life, like Adam Savage and Grant Imahara from the Mythbusters. Their life sometimes seems a tad more interesting than mine, and they often tweet pictures from the set and updates on what new episode they're working on.

Beyond those, however, I follow a number of people. Here are some of those that I've found most valuable.

http://www.twitter.com/grantpotter - Useful Web 2.0 resources, commentary
http://twitter.com/sanmccarron - Science teaching resources
http://twitter.com/ChemEdLinks - Chemistry and Web 2.0 resources
http://twitter.com/MySMARTSpaces - SmartBoard resources, UK based

Which brings me to:

7.) Find some Twitter friends to follow!

Best place to start is Twitter4Teachers, which lists teachers that tweet by subject area. As well, I have found 515 Scientific Twitter Friends useful too. Once you begin, you will find there is a rapidly expanding kit of resources for the tweeting teacher, particularly as we ‘follow’ each other. As a group of colleagues, when I find a useful link, tool, or idea, the only real method I currently have to share it is to email the entire faculty. This clutters up your inboxes, and is probably considered spam by many. If, however, my colleagues and I were all part of a Twitter group, I could tweet the link, tool or idea, where it’s easily ignored by those that aren’t interested, but picked up by those that are, cutting across barriers such as time, space, and (most formidable of all), department.

8.) Develop your tweeting skills

If you've started using Twitter, and want more to explore, work your way through the Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher.

There is a lot I haven't covered, how to personalize your page, useful Twitter tools, etc, but if you've started you'll find a plethora of links to help you.

Cheers,

Ron Neufeld
Canada's Best Boarding School