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This is the official site for managing the COMPLETE list of twitter education chats. It is managed by a group of educator tweeps who care about keeping one up to date list of chats which everyone can use.

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Learning in a Networked World: For Our Students & for Ourselves

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Our Students & for Ourselves Will Richardson

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Computer Using Educators of British Columbia

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Will Richardson - Learning in a Networked World: For Our Students & for Ourselves

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Learning in a Networked World: For Our Students & for Ourselves Will Richardson, Chief Learning Officer, Powerful Learning Practice If we have access and the skills to take advantage of it, the Web gives us an easy connection to the people and resources needed to learn whatever we want to learn, when we want to learn it.

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Editor's Note:This post was co-authored by Aaron Sams, Managing Director of FlippedClass.com and founding member of the Flipped Learning Network.
So you're a parent, a student, or an administrator, and you just found out that a teacher in your school has flipped their class. What impact does that have on you? How should you respond? How can you support it? Where can you go for more information?

Parents

Your child's experience in a flipped classroom is probably different than your educational experience has been. Acknowledging this fact is probably the most important step in being able to help your student. Before you start to hear chatter about how the teacher "isn't teaching any more," arm yourselves with the following information:

Flipping will increase student-teacher interaction.

One of the beauties of the flipped classroom is that it gives the teacher more individual time with each student. That means your son or daughter will get more one-on-one time with his or her teacher. There is something powerful about moving the teacher away from the front of the room, something that changes the dynamics of the class. Spending lots of quality time with each child helps teachers know students better both cognitively and relationally.

Flipping will bring added value to homework.

How many times have your children come home with homework they were unable to understand? You sat with them at the dinner table and tried to help them, but you couldn't. Or maybe you had learned something when you were in school, and your child has informed you that you "do it wrong." Another beauty of the flipped classroom is that you too can watch the videos with your kids. You can learn how the teacher presents a topic, and you will be better equipped to help your son or daughter. Additionally, viewing video content is a task that all students can complete, and all parents can help support. Concerned about equitable access to technology at home? Check out our earlier post about technology.

Your child will be able to pause and rewind the teacher.

All kids learn at different speeds, and frankly, teachers talk too fast. Wouldn't it be great if your son or daughter could pause and rewind the teacher? Well, they can in a flipped classroom.

Students

Your teacher has flipped your class. What do you need to know?

Don't just watch the video. Learn and interact.

Watching a video, or for that matter a lecture, can be a passive exercise which doesn't require a whole lot from you. As you watch a flipped video, find a quiet place free from distractions, turn off Facebook and Instagram, take notes, write down questions, and make time to learn from the content. Your teacher doesn't expect you to come away having learned everything perfectly, but she does expect you to come to class with some knowledge and background.

You will get more attention from your teacher.

You and your teacher will get more time to talk about things individually. He will be constantly moving around the room working with different students, including you. Be prepared to discuss what you are learning with your teacher. He has your best interests at heart and wants you to succeed. That is why he's implementing the flipped classroom.

You need to be engaged in your learning.

The flipped class may be an adjustment for you, because you'll need to take an active role in your learning. Being passive won't work. At first, this might be difficult, but the overall effect will be that you'll learn how to learn for yourself -- which is an extremely valuable skill to have as you mature.

Here's what to do if you're struggling.

The power of the flipped classroom model is that class time is reimagined. Instead of your teacher standing in front and lecturing at you, there is now more time for different things to happen in class. There is more time for you to get help on hard concepts, and more time for working with your peers to apply what you've learned. Make sure that you take advantage of the extra time in class to learn from your teacher and your peers, and to learn on your own.

Administrators

How can you support teachers who are flipping their classes?

Give them time and encouragement.

Trying anything new can be difficult, and a flipped classroom is no different. Teachers may need time to work together to plan lessons or create content -- give them collaborative time if you have that ability. Parents may be unfamiliar with the model -- field those phone calls and shield your teachers from unnecessary questions. When teachers face challenges or difficulty, encourage them. Let them know that you're there as a sounding board to help them overcome any issues they encounter.

Model flipping in your own practice.

If you're an administrator who is interested in bringing flipped learning to your school, model it in your staff meetings. Rather than bringing your entire faculty to the library on a Thursday afternoon for a staff meeting to tell them about a new policy, prep them with a video explaining any new information, and invite them to spend the meeting time working on ways to improve instruction at the school. Maximize the face-to-face time you have with your teachers.

Provide training.

If you want to support flipped learning, make sure it's being done well by providing training. Send your teachers to a local workshop or conference, or bring in trainers for staff development. Have expert teachers in your school train other interested teachers. Whatever you choose to do, ensure that the model is implemented with fidelity and care to give the students the best possible experience in the best possible flipped classroom.

Students, parents, and administrators: What advice do you have for other students, parents, or administrators? What are some successful ways that your school has implemented the flipped classroom model, and how have you helped support it?

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Supporting Flipped Classrooms | Edutopia

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Editor's Note:This post was co-authored by Aaron Sams, Managing Director of FlippedClass.com and founding member of the Flipped Learning Network. So you're a parent, a student, or an administrator, and you just found out that a teacher in your school has flipped their class. What impact does that have on you?

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There's little consensus about the best way to prepare teachers for today's schools. Education reformers and academics continue to punch and counterpunch as they circle the ring, trying to gain the advantage in what has become one of education's most hotly contested policy fights.

The contestants don't dispute whether good teaching makes a difference in student performance. Study after study has shown that students -- whatever their backgrounds and innate abilities may be -- achieve more when they have high-quality teachers.

No, the feisty think tank folks are feinting and jabbing over how best to produce a high-quality teacher.

Advocates on one side believe teachers should prepare for their classroom careers in the traditional way: attending schools of education where they learn a lot about teaching technique (but often spend too little time learning academic content). The other side favors fast track alternative certification programs that emphasize a prospective teacher's knowledge of the content he or she will teach.

So they bob and weave, round after bruising round, hurling false dichotomies.

Punch: Teachers must be trained in pedagogy.

Counterpunch: Teaching has no body of knowledge, so why waste time and resources on teacher education?

Punch: It's one thing to know your subject matter, but something quite different to teach it to children and adolescents.

Counterpunch: Can't we simply recruit new teachers from a pool of recent graduates or mid-career switchers who know their subjects? They're smart -- they'll figure out how to teach once they're in the job.

These skirmishes -- which usually take place in education journals and magazines -- must seem pointless, and would be laughable if they didn't often spill over into politically charged decision-making environments.

Common sense tells us that effective teachers have to know not only what they're teaching but also how to teach it in a roomful of students with wide-ranging backgrounds and abilities. So the real question becomes, How do we make that happen? An important part of the answer is something neither side is talking much about: teaching apprenticeships.

Why not? We suspect it's because too many policy makers, school administrators, and university officials are concerned that apprenticeships would overturn teaching's occupational applecart. More investments would need to be made in master teachers who, in turn, would have more say-so in the design of university-led teacher education and school districts' novice teacher-support programs. Resources that pay for central-office supervisors and campus-bound university professors might need to be diverted to where the action is -- the schools and classrooms of master teachers.

That would be a very good thing.

Other nations, especially those with whom we compete economically, are not divided over teacher policy, as the United States is. They prepare all teachers more extensively. They offer novices significant apprenticeships with master teachers. They also provide more opportunities for professional development and joint planning time with accomplished veterans, and generally pay teachers more in relation to other highly skilled occupations.

In Germany, for example, teachers are expected to earn two academic majors and complete a two-year teaching internship in which college- and school-based faculties observe and evaluate at least twenty-five lessons. Meanwhile, in Japan, first-year teachers have a reduced teaching load and work closely with mentor or master teachers, receiving considerable in-school and outside training. In many countries, novice teachers are never left to sink or swim on their own.

Why shouldn't American teachers learn a lot about the content they plan to teach, then concentrate on gaining a prerequisite set of teaching skills (either in college or in an intensive after-college preparation program)? Then, once they have this combination of knowledge and skills, let them apply and expand on what they've learned under the tutelage of a master teacher. It makes sense, but, for the most part, we just don't do it that way in the United States.

Credit: Thomas Reis

Needed: Focused Prep Time

Let's ask some master teachers -- individuals who practice their profession with great success every day in America's public school classrooms -- what they think about high-quality teacher preparation.

Members of the Teacher Leaders Network -- a virtual community of 340 experienced, highly accomplished educators who teach in more than twenty states -- voluntarily participate in daily online discussions where they explore and debate what works in education and what doesn't. These experts, many of whom are state and local educators of the year, teachers with National Board Certification, Milken Award winners, and recipients of other teaching honors, have wisdom and insights to share that seldom surface in national education-policy debates.

Gail Richardson, a board-certified teacher at North Forsyth High School, in Cumming, Georgia, began teaching in a private school after earning degrees in English and French and maintaining a 4.0 grade point average throughout her undergraduate career.

"I was a train wreck as a teacher," she says. "I understood French very well, but I had no idea how to teach it. I also had no idea how to relate to teenagers from a position of authority. Needless to say, my classroom was completely out of control. They ran all over me. I was a terrible teacher. I look back at it now and realize what a deep disservice I did to those kids, and I am ashamed. But at the time I was doing my best, with no training and no mentor. I was so naive about school politics and how to work with parents. The only reason they didn't fire me was because they couldn't find anyone else to do my job."

Carol Midgett, leadership-program coordinator at the North Carolina Partnership for Improving Mathematics and Science and also a board-certified teacher who entered teaching through alternative certification, says she learned that "without focused, formal preparation, the challenge to succeed is much greater and the chances for survival are limited."

Even when teachers benefit from high-quality preservice teacher education, more preparation is needed. Brenda Dyck, a middle school teacher in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, offers some ideas.

"I needed to know a lot more about how to pace myself through curriculum and deal with dicey parental issues in my school," she says. "I also needed to learn how to design instruction to meet the needs of all the different students in my classroom and develop more real assessments -- not just pen-and-paper tests -- for my students that capture what they know but also how they know it."

Higher standards and greater expectations are driving reforms in teacher education across the United States, and more of the 1,200 plus colleges and universities that prepare teachers are doing a better job than they have in the past. But most education schools are not sufficiently funded to deeply prepare teachers in clinical settings such as those engineering, nursing, and pharmacy programs utilize.

Even when new teachers are well prepared, they are often assigned to the most challenging schools and classes and given the more demanding extracurricular duties. Many novices have considerable difficulty in on-the-job learning, especially in settings where students have challenging academic, social, and emotional needs, or where novices have no time to watch or learn from seasoned, expert colleagues. Subsequently, many of our nation's most challenging schools are rife with teacher turnover; half of all novices leave the profession within the first five years.

Often, school districts and teacher unions claim to offer on-the-job support for novice teachers, but these support programs are often superficial and unhelpful, as two Oregon teachers attest.

"I felt like I was thrown into teaching without any contact with other teachers or supervisors for my first year of teaching," says one teacher. "I have still never had anyone observe me teach."

Another teacher asserts, "I think our school could definitely be more helpful to their new teachers by giving more feedback on classroom management and how to deal with a host of cultural concerns and all the diverse students that most of us haven't dealt with our entire lives."

Some critics of teacher education argue that mid-career switchers often have other teaching experiences in their personal or professional lives that reduce the need for formal pedagogical training. Linda Kelly, a board-certified teacher who changed careers and entered high school teaching in Virginia, says she values her experiences teaching young people in Sunday school, in youth organizations, and as a private piano teacher. But working with students who typically had few problems and were from advantaged families, she adds, "did not prepare me for public school teaching and the need to reach every student and to work with students whose daily lives sound like a soap opera."

In a 2000 national survey that studied the experiences of new teachers, the National Center for Education Statistics found that less than 50 percent of the participants received mentoring, even monthly interaction, and what they receive is extremely uneven.

Most programs do not have a detailed process for selecting mentors, nor do they invest significant time or money into training mentors on what activities or supports are most effective in training new teachers. Some provide mentor training, but it is rarely focused on specific strategies. Furthermore, most programs provide their mentors with only a nominal stipend and little, if any, release time. For these reasons, quality and content of mentoring vary based on a given mentor's individual teaching style, interest, and personality.

Most school districts -- especially those that serve high-need populations and hire the most new teachers -- have little capacity to train and mentor novices uniformly and unilaterally. In the absence of well-considered, adequately funded programs, new teachers are thrust into a classroom, assigned a nominal teacher "mentor" who has a full teaching load of his or her own, and perhaps invited to attend a support group for novice teachers, where participants meet at the end of a school day and often sit in a circle and wonder why they don't get the professional support they need.

Credit: Thomas Reis

A More Hopeful Future

Both the research and the insights of accomplished teachers tell us that high-quality university-based teacher education is necessary but insufficient. Traditional teacher education can provide enough theory, knowledge, and strategies to allow novices to make basic sense of the challenging and complex work of teaching, but then we must have apprenticeships that go far beyond the few months of student teaching typically required of pre-service teachers.

In the apprenticeship envisioned, novices will have the time and space to learn a great deal from experts. In sharing a classroom, beginning teachers, working in cohorts, will learn specifically how to plan and critique lessons by watching their mentors teach and then having seasoned veterans watch their own teaching practices. Novices will learn how to use new technologies and find and use subject- and age-specific materials and resources that will engage their particular students. In doing so, new teachers will be able to stave off most of the classroom-management problems most novices face.

Because they are not fully responsible for a class of their own, novices will have the opportunity to engage in a semester-long case study of an individual student in which they have a chance to systematically figure out what helps that child learn and how to work effectively with the family. Their findings will then be presented to teachers and administrators. In addition, novices will learn how to construct an interdisciplinary curriculum, with specific time dedicated to connecting with other new teachers and experts in a virtually learning community such as the Teacher Leaders Network. We imagine, during their apprenticeship, they will build a portfolio that documents their growth and performance as new teachers and sets them on a course for advancement in the profession, including later applying to become a National Board Certified Teacher.

When we asked the members of the Teacher Leaders Network to brainstorm about an ideal teacher-preparation and teacher-induction program, here's what they imagined:

* A coherent system that offers both college-age teaching aspirants and mid-career switchers in-depth opportunities to learn to teach -- not separate university coursework and school district induction programs, but teacher academies where school and university faculty members team up to teach a range of topics, from research-based literacy strategies and learning theory to interdisciplinary concepts in the sciences and the humanities to managing a classroom filled with high-energy adolescents. Joint university-school budgets would leverage scarce resources and push education-school faculty and K-12 teachers to work more closely with each other.

* These courses and workshops would be grounded in what prospective and new teachers are experiencing in their internships and residencies. For example, at Chicago's Academy for Urban School Leadership, two interns are assigned to team-teach with a master teacher, and graduate-level teacher-education coursework is integrated with their daily teaching so they can immediately apply their new knowledge and skills.

* Every apprentice would learn how to teach in diverse communities and work effectively with parents and families. For example, Center X, at the University of California at Los Angeles (see "Two Programs That Work," in the sidebar below), requires its teacher-education students to intern in Los Angeles-area schools with racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse low-income student populations. The two-year program places future teachers in cohorts and offers unique experiences in both teaching and community activism.

* Novices (whether they come directly from college or from other careers) would be appropriately teamed with and supervised by a cadre of highly experienced, trained experts (such as board-certified teachers) who would groom them to become the teachers they need to be. Various teaching roles and responsibilities in a school would mirror the varied degrees of knowledge, experience, preparation, and expertise of novices and veterans alike.

* To augment new-teacher support, Web-based collaboration tools and video-streaming technologies would be used to connect novices and experts in virtual communities unbounded by time or place. Working online, accomplished teachers would have 24/7 opportunities to not only cultivate their own leadership but also support the content-specific learning needs of novices and help solve their classroom-management and lesson-planning dilemmas.

We believe it is time for the policy pugilists to put down their gloves, listen to the words and wisdom of some our nation's best teachers, and help policy makers create and fund the kind of teaching apprenticeships that will make a difference for teachers and the students they serve.

Barnett Berry is founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality, and John Norton is an education writer and teacher networker with the center's Teacher Leaders Network initiative.

Two Programs That Work
Center X
The Center X program at the University of California at Los Angeles is a two-year program that prepares future educators for California's racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse children. In this postbaccalaureate program, Center X's teacher candidates, who already have a college major, must complete a program that includes at least four connected courses in literacy (with an emphasis on second-language learners).

The program's second-year residency is a paid teaching assignment that has many of the characteristics of an apprenticeship. For example, the culminating exam is an extensive research project that can focus on how a teacher intern has come to know how to assess student learning and work effectively in a low-income school community. UCLA offers a significant induction program for its graduates, providing a variety of opportunities to continue their learning. Since its inception in 1995, Center X has attracted racially and ethnically diverse candidates, and two-thirds of its current students are members of an ethnic minority. More than 1,200 teachers have graduated from the program, and an ongoing assessment reveals that only 10 percent of graduates leave teaching after three years, compared to more than half in most other urban schools.
The Academy for Urban School Leadership
Chicago's Academy for Urban School Leadership recognizes the importance of seriously preparing prospective teachers for the challenges they will face in urban school settings. Founded by prominent Windy City business and civic leaders, the AUSL offers a $30,000 salary and a tuition-free master's degree in teaching to talented recent college graduates and mid-career professionals who commit to teach in the city schools for five years. Recruits complete a twelve-month leadership-development and teacher-preparation program that includes graduate-level coursework and a ten-month teaching residency.

During their residency, AUSL students learn how to develop standards-based lessons and build assessments that allow them to more fully understand how students learn. They participate in daily grade-level team meetings and work with parents and families to build their personal leadership capacity. They are challenged to take on an increasing amount of responsibility, culminating in designing, preparing, and implementing curriculum units. And though the residents' "home school" is a well-designed, high-functioning inner city school, they have structured mini-internships in some of Chicago's most challenging neighborhood schools in order to prepare them for the teaching and leadership obstacles they will face once they begin teaching.

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Teacher Preparation: Learn from the Masters | Edutopia

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There's little consensus about the best way to prepare teachers for today's schools. Education reformers and academics continue to punch and counterpunch as they circle the ring, trying to gain the advantage in what has become one of education's most hotly contested policy fights.

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Welcome to our professional learning series on building a PLN.

This self-paced free course guides you step-by-step through the process of setting up your own PLN.

We have an optional PDF workbook t hat will help to keep you on track and focused as you work through the 7 steps of this course. Scroll down and click on the 'download' button under the document to save it to your computer.
The aim of this first step is to:

1. Unpack the definition of a PLN and "connected educator"

2. Help you understand why educators create their own PLNs and how they use them

What Is A PLN?

Back in 1998 when the internet was in its infancy, Daniel R. Tobin wrote an article about the term "Personal Learning Network" which was abbreviated to PLN. This term was used to describe a network of people and resources that support ongoing learning.

Whether or not Tobin actually coined the term PLN is up for debate. As Clint Lalonde has pointed out, others, such as Dori Digenti, also wrote about the term in the late 90s.

Digeni said,

The PLN consists of relationships between individuals where the goal is enhancement of mutual learning. The currency of the PLN is learning in the form of feedback, insights, documentation, new contacts, or new business opportunities. It is based on reciprocity and a level of trust that each party is actively seeking value-added information for the other.

The term has evolved and is now sometimes referred to as a Professional Learning Network - taking into account that fact that most "connected educators" use their PLN for professional growth and interaction.

As Tom Whitby has pointed out, there can even be a hybrid of the personal or professional learning network - the Personalized Learning Network.

...the shift in nuance maintains that participants are both personal and professional learners. A PLN is a tool that uses social media and technology to collect, communicate, collaborate and create with connected colleagues anywhere at any time. Participating educators, worldwide, make requests and share resources.

Are PLNs Exclusive To Education?

PLNs don't just exist in the education world. They are important in all aspects of the business world, various vocations, and hobbies.

We contacted Daniel R. Tobin to ask him about how he came up with the term Personal Learning Network. We wanted to find out if he coined the term in relation to a particular industry or field.

Daniel told us,

It came from my own experience.

As I was thinking about how I had learned to do the various jobs I had over the course of my career, I realized that I had built an extensive network of people who had helped me learn. These included managers and colleagues and people I had met while doing research for my books, speaking at conferences, attending workshops, etc.

As I started writing about corporate training and development, I realized that what I had learned from my PLN was greater and more important than what I had learned from my formal education.

Interestingly, many teachers who are active online have remarked that they've learned a great deal more from their PLN than from any professional development session they've attended.

Are PLNs Something New?

All teachers know successful teaching and learning does not occur in a vacuum. Teachers have always relied on others for guidance, ideas, inspiration, support, and new perspectives. Naturally, some teachers are more active in their interactions than others.

Traditionally, all this interaction might take place in one school community. Teachers might have rarely connected with educators from other locations - apart from an occasional conference or professional development opportunity.

Technology changed all this.

Like in many other industries, educators now have access to people from all corners of the globe 24/7. This may largely be through social media but other platforms as well, such as blogs, online communities, and news sites.

So many barriers have been removed - geography, culture, language, timezones, travel, costs, logistics.

Embracing new networks and building a PLN doesn't mean throwing out your old connections. Of course, it will always be valuable to talk to the teachers next door and down the hall. But imagine the possibilities of building on that network in diverse ways!

Video: What is A PLN?

Want to learn more about what is a PLN? This is Marc-André Lalande's take on the matter in less than two minutes.

Being A Connected Educator

A connected educator is someone who collaborates online and uses a range of tools to build their own PLN.

Watch the following five minute video to learn more about being a connected educator. It shows interviews with educators who explain the importance of being "connected" in order to be effective teachers and leaders.

Why Create A PLN?

There are many reasons why all teachers should develop a PLN.

Here are eight benefits of having a PLN:

1. You are in charge of your own professional development. PD is no longer something that you have to "sit and get".

2. You can explore your own interests, needs, and passions (or your students'). You might have a student who is struggling with reading, or you might have heard of makerspaces and decide you want to learn more about that, maybe you have a student who wants to research global warming, or perhaps you want to find a better system for running a sports day at your school. You can turn to your PLN for advice and support with all these sorts of things.

3. 24/7 learning offers the flexibility to learn and connect at a time that suits you. You don't have to wait for a PD or conference. And 24/7 learning certainly doesn't mean you have to be constantly online either - you decide how much time you want to invest and when.

4. You can learn and connect in a way that you enjoy. This might be via videos, podcasts, text, social media, Skype, blogging ... the list goes on.

5. There can be light and shade to your PLN. You can engage in a general chat about education (or anything) to debrief, laugh, or unwind. Or, you can engage in deep discussion, debate, and reflection that can really challenge and transform your thinking and teaching. The choice is yours and there will probably be a time and place for both.

6. You can stay current on research and best practice, regardless of whether this information is being discussed in your own school, district (or even country!).

7. A PLN allows for broad brainstorming or fine tuning. You might know very little about a certain topic and ask your PLN for any/all entry points into exploring the concept. At the other end of the spectrum, you may have already done a lot of work on a topic and use your PLN to fine tune your ideas and resources.

8. Globally connected students need globally connected teachers. Having your own PLN is a key way to also help your students connect with others and start developing their own networks. We know this is important to enrich student learning and help students thrive in the changing labor market.

Feel free to use the following graphic on your blog or share it with your colleagues.

Four Big Ideas Around The Connected Educator

Silvia Tolisana (aka Langwitches) has written about four big ideas that surface when thinking about connected educators.

I think about the isolation of a teacher within their classroom walls and how connectedness to a global network of experts and peers could expose and add multiple perspectives to their world view and professional practice.

I am amazed every time by the transformative nature of teaching and learning, when harnessing the power of a network to crowdsource authentic data, resources, connections and collaborators.

Last, but not least, the idea of being able to model for our students what connected learning in an interconnected world means is a moral imperative for educators who are charged to prepare our kids for their future.

You can unpack these concepts further by reading Silvia's post.

Building Your Own PLN

The great thing about a PLN is that it's personal!

You make all the choices:

1. What tools you use!

2. Who you connect with!

3. How you want to learn!

4. When you want to learn!

The idea of this series is to guide you through the process of building your own PLN and give you a taste of the opportunities that are out there.

Remember, we each have our own preference of what online tools work best for us.

Throughout the seven part series, we've included popular tools for building a PLN to help get you started.

Conclusion

A PLN is a network of people and resources that support ongoing learning.

We believe all teachers could benefit from having a PLN.

You might be in a fantastic school but in some ways, schools can become echo chambers for the same beliefs and viewpoints. It can be easy to go with the status quo and fail to really question things or bring in new ideas. A simple conversation with someone from a very different community can be so eye opening.

PLNs are all about sharing, collaborating, and learning from each other. So here's your chance to ask a question, comment, and get involved!

We'd like you to add your voice and ideas to our ongoing conversation about PLNs by undertaking one or more of these challenges:

1. PLN Definition: Watch the video What Is A PLN? Leave a comment on this post to explain what a PLN means to you. You might like to share your thoughts on "lurking". What are the pros and cons of this approach? Or, you might like to explain what you think PLN stands for - personal, professional, personalized ... or something else?

2. PLN Benefits: Choose one or more of the eight benefits of having a PLN that's listed above to explore in a comment. Tell us why this is a benefit that resonates with you.

3. Connected Educators: Watch the Connected Educators video. Leave a comment on this post to explain why it's important to be a connected educator and how a PLN can help you. You might like to give an example of one person in the education community that you'd like to follow and learn from or with. This could be a thought leader, or just someone you find interesting.

4. Go Deeper: Write a blog post to explain what you have learned about PLNs. Perhaps your post could be a way to educate or persuade others on the benefits of PLNs. Or you might like to summarize some of the information from this study on PLNs for teachers. Leave a comment with a link to the post so we can have a look at how you went.

Also feel free to leave a comment to ask any questions or share your tips.

How to leave a comment: Scroll down to find the comment box. Write your comment, then enter your name and email address (email addresses are not published). Enter the anti-spam word. Press submit and we will moderate your comment ASAP.
The following information on PLNs was adapted from an original Teacher Challenge post by Australian teacher, Michael Graffin. This resource was updated by Kathleen Morris in 2018. You can check out Michael's original post - What The heck Is A PLN.

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Welcome to our professional learning series on building a PLN. This self-paced free course guides you step-by-step through the process of setting up your own PLN. We have an optional PDF workbook t hat will help to keep you on track and focused as you work through the 7 steps of this course.