Professional Learning Network

 Professional Learning Network

I have used Twitter since I was in high school. I mainly have just used Twitter as a social media platform to connect with my friends. I also tend to see a lot of news updates on Twitter as well. I knew that Twitter was used as a resource for teachers, but I had not used it for that purpose myself. The main social media platforms that I use for resources and ideas for teaching are Facebook and Pinterest. On facebook, I am in a good amount of groups for teaching. I am in a few early childhood groups, a few special education teacher groups, a few special education preschool groups, and a couple ESL/ELL teacher groups. In these groups teachers can post questions, resources, activities, etc. Teachers can talk and collaborate with each other and can even bounce ideas off of each other. I really like being apart of these groups because they really are helpful!

I made a separate twitter account for this professional learning network so it was all education related and not personal. My twitter handle is @miss__oconnor. I knew I had to start by following some accounts that would be helpful to me. I started my search by searching "preschool". I found a few accounts that I could follow but what I found was a lot of preschool schools twitter pages were coming up. This wasn't exactly what I was looking for but I could also find accounts by looking at accounts they follow. I ending up finding some great accounts to follow that in the future I can look back on and use some resources. 

One resource that I found that really stood out to me was from @TCEA and it was about differentiating instruction strategies. I like how this chart is organized and it is not visually overwhelming to me. There are so many strategies listed that make it easy to use. Some of my favorites that are listed are choice boards, self-directed learning, learning through play, and class rules. 

Image source: Twitter

When it came to live chats I was a bit intimidated. There was so much going on and I wasn't sure which one I should participate in. I did participate in our class slow chat and then a #teachpos live chat. I really enjoyed the slow chat for our class because it gave me a chance to get to know some of my classmates better. I liked the slow chat because it was relaxed and you could answer whenever! Overall, this slow class chat was my favorite because you normally don't get to learn too much about your classmates when the class is 100% online. 

Image source: personal photo

The #Teachpos live chat was about building a positive mindset under stress for educators. 

Even today I was on twitter just searching on twitter I came across a Bipolar disorder live chat. The icebreaker for the chat was about thinking about an experience or feeling that you could not articulate to someone else. Even though this was about mental health and not really tied to education it made me think about my young ELL learners and my young non-verbal students. I know that they probably feel this way that they cannot put their thoughts into the correct English words to be understood or even put their thoughts into words at all to communicate wants and needs. I know that I have reflected on this before and that it would be so frustrating to not be able to communicate. This just brings me back to differentiations and letting students communicate and even show understanding of content in different ways, since not all students are the same. 

Image source: personal photo

Overall, I learned that Twitter is another great platform for teachers! There are many active accounts, live chats, different topics, that teachers can learn from.