Using PLNs

What impact might a teacher’s participation in a PLN have on their students/classroom?

When a teacher participates in a PLN outside of the classroom, they are able to bring more ideas and skills to practice into the classroom. By sharing ideas and information with teachers across the world, educators are able to find new strategies to help them further their teaching. For example, if one teacher was having trouble trying to help a student understand a certain concept in math, they could go online to their PLN, and ask other educators for help. From this, the teacher can then get new ideas for how to help the child, and how to make sure the child understands the concept. Without the use of a PLN, helping that child would take a lot longer, and would be a lot more difficult to find strategies on how to help. Therefore, the impact of PLN in the classroom can give teachers new ways of thinking and teaching their lessons, so that students can better understand new topics, and can move onto harder topics with more ease.

What have you learned about building a PLN so far?

So far as a PLN I have learned that everything is right there for me to use. I have realized that if I ever needed any sort of help within the classroom, I would be able to call upon other teachers and ask them for advice. I also like how right now I am learning how to get in touch with other teachers, so that I am more prepared to do it when I have my own classroom. By listening and reading other experiences or problems that other teachers have, I can see how each educator is there to support and back up one another. This is important for me to see at this stage in my learning because I am better prepared to make PLN’s and to have those connections. I have also learned that since we are all organized teachers, that the chats are always very organized and efficient. This allows new PLN users like myself to integrate slowly, but efficiently into PLNs. By being able to watch a Twitter chat go on, I am able to see how to ask and answer questions, and how my questions will be received and heard by other people who are there and willing to help as best as they can.

What questions do you still have about PLNs?

Some questions that I still have about PLNs begins with, what other platforms are there to use besides Twitter? While I understand that Twitter is the most efficient and the largest place to take part in PLNs, I just wanted to know if there were any other large platforms for PLN users. My next question would be, how long does it take to build a large, and strong, PLN? I know that overtime I will have built a large enough PLN system so that I can call on teachers when I need them, but I am unsure of how long it is going to take before I can easily ask for advice on something, and I will quickly get helpful responses. My final question would be, since a lot of the Twitter chats are focused mainly on broad topics, how do you ask for specific help on something? Going back to my earlier example, if one of my students was having trouble with a specific math concept, how can I ask for help from other educators when most of the Twitter chats are focused around preplanned questions?