Making Connections

This week we had John Evans come into our classroom and discuss the topics around PLN (Professional Learning Network) and sharing on the internet. This reminded me of a post I did on my previous blog.  I think you will enjoy!
Think back to your first day of high school.  If your childhood was anything like mine you remember being nervous about whether your new clothes were the right fashion and if you would have someone to sit with at lunch.  For the most part you just wanted to fit in.  By the end of the first week you had made a few new friends and by the end of the year your new friends had become the people you did everything with.  You had made new connections and ones you thought would last a lifetime.

Looking at your friends now, some may be from that group you had in grade 9, but most of them are new.  They may be people you met in University, or at a summer job.  If you are older then me they are likely people that you work with or have kids that are a similar age to yours.  Either way they are the people that surround you and support you now.  These people are important for you to be successful and happy in life.

But what about your teaching life? Who supports you here? It is obvious that your co-workers do but I want to look bigger.  I can say in my student teaching experience, the internet supports me in finding great resources and lesson ideas.  This support is not very personal, and this is why I have been on a mission to make the internet a personal support. Joining twitter and adding local educators, I have been able to share with them resources, readings, and ideas.  If I am struggling with a unit plan or lesson idea I can just reach to my phone tweet it and within minutes have a bunch of people tweeting ideas back to me.  It is awesome, you never feel alone in planning and you never should.  Many teachers before me have had the same problems that I am going to face.  Anything from classroom management issues, to what poster should I hang on the wall can be solved by collaboration with others.  Twitter also allows me to connect with organizations like MTS (Manitoba Teacher Society) who keep me up to date on PD opportunities and news stories related to education.  

Starting a blog, though it seems very one sided, is a great way to connect with people.  Once you start blogging, you start checking out other people's blogs and learn that there are a lot of people out there talking about issues that are of importance to you.  You find ideas, strategies and perspective you never would have thought of on your own.  The blogging community is very supportive and always willing to give advice.

If you are not wanting to go so world wide, starting profession learning networks(PLN) are great ways of sharing information between teachers that are teaching the same things in your division or province.  They allow teachers to collaborate and with collaboration you are able to use the creative minds of more people to create a lesson that students will love.  The whole 2 heads are better then 1 saying!! If you are looking for a PLN right now I suggest looking into www.classroom20.com . It is a great place to learn and share.

So get out there, join twitter, start a blog and develop a PLN, you will not regret it and your students will thank you for it!!
John also talked about Maple, which is a PLN he has developed for educators in Manitoba. If you are an educator in Manitoba I highly recommend you get in contact with John and get you the site!