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Starting a PLN on Twitter: A Quick Guide For Teachers

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What is a PLN - Marc-André Lalande's take

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You may have heard colleagues talk about their PLNs-their personal learning networks-or you may have one of your own. But just what is a personal learning network, and why is it so helpful for educators?

What is a PLN?

A personal learning network consists of the people, places, and things that help you learn. By definition, every lifelong learner has a PLN, whether the person realizes it or not. Also, every person who has a PLN is a lifelong learner. Let's imagine, for example, that you are a relatively new teacher. Your PLN might look like the following:

Why is a PLN important?

Having an active personal learning network is important for a number of reasons:

1. Lifelong learning: A PLN helps you learn and grow. Your professional and personal development is important for you and your students. If you are an active, lifelong learner, you'll naturally model that process for your students.

2. Community: All learning is social. When we learn something new, we want to share it with others. Having a PLN connects you with others, helping you share discoveries, triumphs, and troubles.

3. PD shift: Professional development has been shifting for some time now, from daylong sessions with speakers and room filled with teachers to a more individualized approach. A PLN helps you get a little professional development every day rather than all in one marathon session.

4. Conversation: Having a PLN puts you in the center of the educational conversation, letting you shape new trends and reform efforts.

How can I develop a PLN?

Start with what you have. Draw a cluster, putting yourself at the center and writing down all the people, places, and things that help you learn. Think about the following possibilities:

Colleagues at your school or from previous experiences

Students, from whom you learn every day

Friends and family members

Professional organizations such as the Association of Middle Level Educators, the National Council of Teachers of English, and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics

Newsletters such as the Thoughtful Learning Newsletter

Social media such as Twitter (using hashtags such as #edchat, #scichat, #sschat), Edweb, LinkedIn, and Nings (Check out Jim Burke's English Companion.)

Programs such as NOVA or Mythbusters (science teachers), historical documentaries (history teachers), or Masterpiece Theater (ELA teachers)

Books such as Inquire: A Guide to 21st Century Learning

Conferences and other professional-development opportunities

Museums, fairs, reenactments, and other educational experiences

Then look for gaps. Do you wish you had a teacher mentor who could help you with classroom management? Do you wish you had a former professor who could keep you abreast of the latest developments in education? Do you wish you could explore the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois, or the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC? Whatever you wish, go out and make it happen. Find a connection. Make a friend. Start a correspondence.

Invite others along. Your PLN will overlap the personal learning networks of others. The more people you connect with, the richer everyone becomes.

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Blog post: What does your PLN look like?

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You may have heard colleagues talk about their PLNs-their personal learning networks-or you may have one of your own. But just what is a personal learning network, and why is it so helpful for educators? What is a PLN? A personal learning network consists of the people, places, and things that help you learn.

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ISTE Standards for Coaches

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The ISTE Coaching Standards help define the role of the edtech coach and guide coaches in ensuring that learning with technology is high impact and equitable.

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Tips for building a professional learning community online, whether you seek personal relationships or just want to follow other teachers.

Professional networks are essential to growing and maintaining one's passion in any line of work. As teachers, we have traditionally found professional learning networks (PLNs) in our buildings, but in the digital age there are no boundaries: PLNs can exist on any social media platform, which creates endless possibilities for sharing, mentorship, and growth as teachers.

It's now entirely possible to have a PLN that spreads out across this country and even around the world-people whose voices you've never heard and whose faces you've never seen. Although these digital relationships may not be personally close, they can be immensely powerful in terms of influencing pedagogy. And the fact that there isn't always a personal relationship creates a nice amount of autonomy for both parties in these relationships-when you aren't face to face on a regular basis, it's easier to take the ideas you want from your network and make them your own, or to leave the network when you're ready.

Building a Digital PLN

How can teachers create digital PLNs that are meaningful and powerful? Choosing a digital medium and connecting with other professionals can be overwhelming. It's important to remember that, unlike with personal mentoring relationships, a PLN really doesn't require a personal connection. You follow someone on Twitter who provides you with links to resources, inspiration, and advice through their tweets-they may not even realize how they're helping you. And you can follow multiple role models for different purposes (e.g., one for subject-specific resources, another for general classroom management).

The first thing to consider when dipping your toe into a digital PLN is what you want out of it. Is a personal, reciprocal relationship important to you? Or are you happy quietly following a person or group online without much interaction? Are you seeking others to vent with and to share best practices and resources, or inspiration from innovative, cutting-edge teachers? You'll also need to consider how you enjoy interacting online-do you lean toward visual, auditory, or textual learning and communication? This process may take some trial and error, but you'll know once you've got the right fit.

There are a variety of social platforms you can use to create a PLN: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Teachers Pay Teachers, Pinterest.

Once you've determined your purpose and the platform that's right for you, start seeking people to connect with and follow. I strongly suggest creating a professional account if you already have social media accounts. This will help you identify as a teacher seeking a PLN. Your username should reflect your purpose. For example, my teacher accounts use the name Teacherevolution, and my bio on these accounts clearly states my professional interests: English and literacy, secondary education, 21s-century learning, and inquiry-based learning. Many social media programs allow you to select interests or topics of interest to you, which will help you connect with other teachers.

Growing the PLN

The beautiful thing about social media programs is that once you start following or friending certain types of users (e.g., math teachers), the program will suggest other users with similar profiles. Moreover, when you begin following and interacting with certain types of users, you'll also see comments and posts from other, similar users-and thus your personal PLN will begin to bloom.

This is the point where you need to make a decision about how invested you want to be in your digital PLN and what role you'll play online. Are you strictly seeking resources and inspiration? Or do you also want to share your own ideas, practices, and resources with others? Many teachers on digital platforms start out as recipients of ideas and resources. As they begin to interact online and become comfortable doing so, they also begin sharing their own experience and resources, and before they know it, they've become an inspiration to others.

The more time you spend commenting and interacting on your social network, the stronger your digital relationships will become. This is when mentorship can get more personal and actual relationships can develop. Many teachers like the anonymity of digital PLNs and this isn't for them, while others seek out small digital networks with a specific purpose like sharing resources and ideas about a particular grade level or subject.

Digital PLNs can seem complex at first, and they are multidimensional and dynamic. Social media platforms allow these relationships to grow on a variety of levels and for a wide variety of purposes. Regardless of an individual teacher's personal preferences, the possibilities for professional growth are enormous.

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Leveraging Social Media to Build a Digital PLN

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Tips for building a professional learning community online, whether you seek personal relationships or just want to follow other teachers. Professional networks are essential to growing and maintaining one's passion in any line of work.

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21st Century Learning

How to Build Your PLN on Twitter

Looking to create or expand an online personal learning network? This illustrated guide can help.

Today, more and more school leaders and educators are creating Twitter accounts in order to access the overwhelming amount of free professional development that Twitter has to offer. For this article, we are going to focus on using Twitter chats to interact with your professional learning network (PLN) and to take advantage of all that free PD.

According to teacher and blogger Kathleen Morris, Twitter is an excellent way to access thousands of individuals "around the world with rich backgrounds and experiences that can contribute to your professional growth." A PLN on Twitter is made up of the individuals that you choose to follow and the individuals who choose to follow you on. In the simplest terms, this is your PLN.

After signing up for a free account on Twitter, the first thing you want to do is build your PLN. There are two basic principles when building your PLN:

1. If you only follow 10 individuals on Twitter, you will only see the tweets of those 10 individuals.

2. If only 10 individuals follow you on Twitter, only these 10 individuals will see your tweets.

Please note: You must have at least 10 followers on Twitter before you can take part in Twitter chats. This is a way that Twitter protects against spam.

A great way to start building your PLN is to search for hashtags of Twitter chats that might be of interest to you. You can do this by searching in the Twitter search box. An example search for an assistant principal might be #apchat (an assistant principals' chat), whereas an example search for an educator might be #edchat (a chat on all education subjects). Other examples of searches could include #scichat (a science teachers' chat) and #artsed (an art teachers' chat). Searching for these hashtags and others allows you to find individuals on Twitter who are interested in the Twitter chats that you are interested in. You can find a detailed list of Twitter chat hashtags listed by time zone and day of the week here.

Twitter Chats
Once you build your PLN, you can start participating in professional development via Twitter chats. Most times, a Twitter chat consists of one moderator (generally an expert in the field) asking questions while participants answer the questions and also communicate with others involved in the chat. Other times, a group debate may take place in which everyone may share their opinion regarding the particular topic. In both cases, you are interacting with your PLN.

An important component of participating in Twitter chats is knowing when they are regularly held. You will want to note the scheduled days and times of chats you are interested in. (You can refer to the link provided earlier in the article to get you started).

There are many benefits to participating in Twitter chats. Stephanie Leishman, a social media strategist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lists the four benefits of joining a Twitter chat as "Learning, Networking, Visibility, and Reputation." We would argue that learning and networking are the two largest benefits.

Examples of Twitter Chats
So, you're new to this educational Twitter world and don't know where to start or how to participate in a Twitter Chat. No problem! Take a moment to check out the screenshots below from #HCSDchat, a chat focused on homework. You'll notice that the moderator and participants in the chat are using the Q1:A1 format, where Q1 is question 1 and A1 is answer 1 to question 1, and so forth. Most Twitter chats follow this general format.

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How to Build Your PLN on Twitter -- THE Journal

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21st Century Learning Looking to create or expand an online personal learning network? This illustrated guide can help. Today, more and more school leaders and educators are creating Twitter accounts in order to access the overwhelming amount of free professional development that Twitter has to offer.

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Interview with educators about the importance of being "connected" in order to be an effective teachers and leaders. Video was created as part of Connected Educators Month

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When I was in 4 th grade, I had a pen pal who lived a vast 10 miles away. We wrote about our pets, what we liked to do, our favorite subjects, our favorite food. Perfect for a 4 th grader.

As I aged and technology began to outpace me tenfold, I moved through a DOS email system to AOL, from high levels of caution and alarm, to sensible guidelines and security measures. In today's world, it's hardly an effort for me to chat online regularly with my brother in Singapore if the timing is right. Accessibility, information, and knowledge have reached unfathomable capacity, such that oceans and time zones are no longer factors like 10 miles was to my 4 th grade self.

To create a PLN, your best bet is to join Twitter , and begin searching for topics that interest you. When I started, I searched for things like "Educational technology," "21 st Century Learning," and "Makerspaces." Once I found people contributing to those topic areas, I followed them, and their followers, and even some of THEIR followers. It doesn't take a lot of time to create an impressive list of folks you will be able to learn from. You have now officially started building your PLN!

To the folks who have alarm bells going off in their heads around security and safety: yes, you should absolutely be mindful of this. Definitely, scan the profiles of the people you would like to follow. Those who are truly participating in a professional way will have detailed profiles and a feed that represents their interests and knowledge base. The profiles you come across that have little substance are not worth your time, and, although they are likely benign, they should be avoided as you build your network.

Here's an example of how I used my PLN- and it made me a believer! On the way home from a conference, I wanted to get more information on the Ed Camp model for teacher in-services . I tweeted, " Does anyone out there use the Ed Camp model for their district's PD? Do you like it?" In minutes, a teacher from Connecticut tweeted back to me that he had just used it, and it was successful. He then sent me a link to the forms he used, and messaged me directly to give me more specific. Two more teachers chimed in, sharing their experiences with this model. Within an hour , I went from not knowing anything about Ed Camp to having a complete example and description in front of me, because of my PLN.

Personally, I am thrilled that communication has grown from the pen and paper pen pal in 4 th grade to talking live with my brother across the world. Professionally, I feel like I have walked into the world's largest library designed around me and my interests. Soon, you will learn that your PLN will be your first go-to for ideas and information, and you have a new way to share your gifts with the world!

Looking for more information on how to connect with great educators and organizations to establish mutually beneficial professional relationships for sharing ideas, troubleshooting, and inspiration? Enroll in Learners Edge course 5024: The Well-Connected Educator: Building a Personal Learning Network and access new ways to communicate, collaborate, and build community

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Personalized Learning Networks and the Power of Connected Educators

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When I was in 4 th grade, I had a pen pal who lived a vast 10 miles away. We wrote about our pets, what we liked to do, our favorite subjects, our favorite food. Perfect for a 4 th grader.

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Many teachers would agree that becoming a "connected educator" and developing a PLN (Personal/Professional/Personalized Learning Network) is the most powerful thing you can do to improve your teaching and provide better outcomes for your students.

This free self-paced course guides you through the process of building your PLN.
Click on a step below to get started:
You can start these activities in any order however beginning with Step One followed Step Two is a good place to start. Each step ends with a task which is designed to develop your skills, thinking, and connections.

Optional Workbook

This PDF workbook will help to keep you on track and focused as you work through the 7 steps. Scroll down and click on the 'download' button under the document to save it to your computer.

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Many teachers would agree that becoming a "connected educator" and developing a PLN (Personal/Professional/Personalized Learning Network) is the most powerful thing you can do to improve your teaching and provide better outcomes for your students. This free self-paced course guides you through the process of building your PLN.