In teaching, as in any other profession, networking is imperative to succeed. To network is to "interact with other people to exchange information and develop contacts, especially to further one's career," (as defined by Google). The education world is constantly changing and adapting to challenges and educators must keep up. One way to keep up with the ever changing profession we chose, is through Personal Learning Networks. One way to create your very own PLN is by interacting with people around you in class or the schools where you observe. Another way to create a PLN is through online social networks, such as Blogger, Facebook, or Twitter.
Personally, I especially enjoy the Twitterverse. Twitter is my favorite way of networking because there is a limit to how many characters that can be in a tweet. This allows the user to scroll through and catch a quick glimpse of a wide variety of information. Tweets often include links to blogs, videos, or online articles. The tweet itself provides the user a short summary of what he will read or watch if clicking on the link. Another nifty thing about Twitter is picking and choosing who you want to follow. I have had a Twitter since 2009, but just recently I created a new account specifically for educational purposes. A few accounts I decided to follow include Education Nation (@educationnation), Edutopia (@edutopia), US News Education (@usnewseducation), and EDM310 (@edm310_usa). These accounts provide interesting reading material and tips for educators all over the globe. Twitter is also handy because the user can find more people to follow through who he follows already.
Hello Ellen, I completely agree with both of these topics. Networking is truly imperative to succeeding in most any profession, and it is no different with teaching. Unlike some other jobs, we will not network just to help ourselves. These networks will provide knowledge for both ourselves and our students. I had also never thought about Twitter's limited characters as a summary. What a wonderful insight into the Twitterverse! I am rather new to it myself. I also read through some of your other posts also, and you have great writing skills. Maybe you could have gone a little deeper into PLNs through some of the links Dr. Strange provided us, we have all just scratched the surface of learning about forming and utilizing PLNs. Good job.
ReplyDelete--Heather Howton
PLNs are more than just Twitter. Did you look at the resources that are in the blog post instructions?
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