TWITTER – A NEW VISIONFOR OLD PROFESSIONALDEVELOPMENT

WHAT IS A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK? A Personal Learning Network or Professional Learning Network (PLN) is

sometimes also known as Professional Learning Community (Nelson, 2012)

A self-directed network of professionals from various occupational fields whose members hold common interests with the intent of sharing ideas and resources, collaborating, and providing support with the purpose of enhancing personal and professional learning (Davis, 2013)

A network of teachers, educators and mentors who you can seek help from, ask questions from, share ideas with and continue to learn from.

The network may be in the same school as you, in the same city, country or across the globe due to the use of digital technologies

WHAT IS A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK?

Couros (2010) encapsulates these various resources in his “The Networked Teacher” (Figure 1), where the diagram “describes an individual’s connectivity through participation in social media activities (e.g., blogging, wikis, social networking), and the arrows represent both the consumption and productionof content”

BENEFITS OF A PLN FOR EDUCATORS

A place to share the experience of learning and take advantage of the excitement within the global learning environment (Elliot, 2010)

Can provide access to resources, supportive relationships, increased leadership capacity and development of a professional vision (Alderton, Brusnell and Bariexca, 2011)

BENEFITS OF A PLN FOR EDUCATORS It can deliver continuous professional development for teachers, as it is

not a one-time event which is costly, disconnected from practice and not focussed on improving instruction (Visser, Evering and Barratt, 2014)

It can make a teacher more likely to advance in the profession due to their global connections (Johnson, Levine, Smith and Smythe, 2009)

The ease of which to start, connect and use a PLN via sites like Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Ning, Scribd, Delicious, Classroom 2.0 and edublogs

WHY USE TWITTER? 302 million monthly active users and 500 million

Tweets sent per day (Twitter, 2015)

Twitter as an excellent tool to develop and maintain a Professional Learning Network (Mulatiningsih, Partridge, & Davis, 2013)

Virtual classroom of unlimited potential (Khan, 2012)

Can be used on multiple devices

WHY USE TWITTER? Millions of other teachers already connected with their own

PLNs where strangers can come together to create a community built on communication and collaboration dedicated to making learning and education the best it can be (Ferguson, 2010)

Twitter to a river: It is always flowing by.  Sometimes I just want to dip my toes in and I spend 10 minutes or so reading a few tweets.  Other times, I might want to wade in a bit and I will follow a # conversation and be on for a little longer.  Then there are the times I want to dive in and swim.  I'll spend an hour or so delving into a deep conversation with one or several people. (Johnson, 2013 )

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER

Step 1: Setup an account: this may seem very simple; just go to www.twitter.com, enter in your details and you are away. However, be sure to choose an account name, or Twitter handle, that is professional,unique to you, and one you will behappy to keep for years to come.

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER

Step 2: Set up your professional profile: other users will look at your profile to establish your ‘credentials’ and decide whether to follow you. Be sure to include information aboutyour education interests, classes/subjects you teach and topics you may wish to gain further informationabout. Spend time thinking about what you want to use the account for and what you want to share with the world

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER

Step 3: Start following: one ofthe great benefits of Twitter is the ease by which you can find others with similar interests to you and ‘follow’them by connecting to the writings. In this way you can connect to other educators without actually having to converse with them to begin with.

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER Step 4: Gunton and Davis (2012) suggest the following

when delving into the world of Twitter – connect, communicate, collaborate, create and consume.

Step 5: Tweet better with tags: make better connections with more users by incorporating a hashtag (#) to mark a keyword or topic in a tweet, the ‘at’ symbol (@) to link to another user, and a retweet to pass along a message or information posted by another user to acknowledge them as the source.

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER

Step 6: Join a Twitter Chat: unlike a tweet which can be made and viewed at any time of the day or night, a Twitter Chat is when a conversation takes place in ‘real time’ between educators where ideas and suggestions are made more in the form of a conversation. Twitter Chats are usually scheduled and may last up to an hour. Popular education chats include #edchat and #aussieED, however a simple Internet search would find literally dozens of more.

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER Step 7: Organise yourself: making use of a program like Tweetdeck (

https://tweetdeck.twitter.com) will help to organise your Twitter feed, notifications, messages, activity and more.

SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER

Manage your PLN: Manage your PLN actively – spend 5 to 10 minutes a day Don’t try to read everything – you just won’t have time! Don’t lurk; give back to others – PLNs function best when everyone

contributes Post comments that are professional – hence the name Professional

Learning Network. Use mobile devices – these will provide greater and instantaneous access.

Innovative Professional Development (Perez, 2009)

CONCLUSION

Teachers must remain always willing to embrace new technologies into their teaching pedagogy and continue to be lifelong learners, for “When an individual becomes part of a learning network, the potential for growth in learning is unlimited” Davis (2013)

REFERENCES: Alderton, E., Brunsell, E., & Bariexca, D. (2011). The end of isolation. The Journal of

Online Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 1-16. Couros, A. (2010). Developing personal learning networks for open and social learning. In

G. Veletsianos (Ed.), Emerging Technologies in Distance Education (pp. 109–128). Davis, T. (2013). Building and using a Personal/Professional learning network with social

Media. The Journal of Research in Business Education, 55(1), 1 – 13. Elliott, C. (2010). We are not alone: the power of Personal Learning Networks. Synergy,

7(1), 47-50. Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock! Leading and Learning with Technology, 37(8), 12 – 15. Gunton, L., & Davis, K. (2012). Beyond broadcasting: Customer service, community and

information experience in the Twittersphere. Reference services review, 40(2), 224-227. Johnson, J. (2013). I finally get it … slice of life. Nelson, C. J. (2012). RIF or VIP? Having a PLN Can Help. Knowledge Quest, 41(2), 70-73. Perez, L. (2012). Innovative Professional Development: Expanding your professional

learning network. Knowledge Quest, 40(3), 20-22. Visser, R. D., Evering, L. C., & Barrett, D. E. (2014). # TwitterforTeachers: The

Implications of Twitter as a Self-Directed Professional Development Tool for K–12 Teachers. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 46(4), 396-413.