Professional Learning Network

Professional Learning Network (PLN)

In the education world, it is important to create connections and maintain relationships within a virtual space to form a Professional Learning Network (PLN). Through a PLN, teachers can keep up with educational trends, share resources, and further connections through mutual platforms. Below is an image of my PLN, thus far, with the 4 major groups of association within my education world.

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Made on Canva

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Twitter

A recent social media forum I have created and used to expand my PLN is Twitter. After creating my handle, I started to explore some resources and pages of interest to me like healthy eating, teaching, and all things Chicago. As I became acclimated with the app and how to use it, I found a great resource that aligns with my teaching philosophy and gives great ideas and resources for the classroom. @SocialEmotionalLearning tackles social/emotional and behavioral issues that are present in every classroom like trouble focusing, escalated emotions, and low mental health. This account creates visuals with ideas, provides links to helpful resources, shares powerful and inspiring quotes, and supplies data on the importance of social emotional learning (SEL). 

Twitter Chat

An intriguing part of Twitter is its accessibility to community and building relationships. One way to do this is to participate in Twitter chats that act as a virtual conversation about a specific topic. I have joined a few different Twitter chats, but the one that was most interesting was #UDLchat. It is focused on all things Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and this chat was specifically focused on ways teachers are supporting students with goal setting and being successful learners in general. Attached is a Wakelet with the tweets from the #UDLchat I joined on October 5, 2022 but I will also be sharing my tweets in the chat. To warm-up and get acclimated with the chat, participants were asked to introduce themselves. After, we started to hone in on more related questions, it was so interesting to see the range of responses. Below, I have shared the questions in the chat and my responses:

Question 1: How do you guide appropriate goal setting? What tools do you use with learners?

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Question 2: What are some ways you support learners in planning and strategy development?

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Question 3: Managing information and resources can be difficult. What are some strategies that you use as a learner to prioritize and organize information for a learning task?

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Question 4: Progress monitoring is something we do as educators. What are some ways that you can support learners monitoring their own progress?

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Chat Reflection

• It was interesting to me how the questions ranged from work with students to organization as a teacher. This made me shift my thinking multiple times during the chat.
• The answers of the other chat participants gave me ideas to try in my own learning and provided research/resources.
• The sense of community and support that happened during the chat was such a great feeling that was beyond the point of the chat but was just as big of a take-away.

Resources

"social media twitter GIF" [Digital Image]. (2015). Retrieved https://media.giphy.com/media/10zI52A8mrfwNG/giphy.gif.

#UDLchat Wakelet collection. October 5, 2022. https://wakelet.com/wake/SEkIsiyIuX9TblEjYFCxN?utm_source=hootsuite&utm_medium=twitter&utm_term=b47c0d76-ad18-46d9-9843-2dc7aeca7c23&utm_content=&utm_campaign=cast%20--%20Show%20screenshots%20of%20participation.