In part one of this post, I was thinking and reflecting: How did I get to this point in my professional growth using Twitter for PD? And wow...I have learned a lot from my PLN in the last year.
March 2013. I was lucky enough to be one of fourteen teachers in my school to be given an iPad2 to use for work. And that is when I remembered something from that "Twitter for PD" session way back in 2011. Didn't that presenter say that I could learn from others on Twitter? It was time to get online and figure out how I could actually do it.
Getting my own iPad to use at school prompted me to start using the student iPad cart. My student teacher, @supnals, developed an amazing lesson that introduced fifth graders to David Hockney and his iPhone drawings. The students used Wixie to draw and save their work. I started posting some of their work on Twitter. Looking back, I see that I really didn't understand the power of the hashtag. That definitely would have helped me connect with other educators more quickly.
Difficulties with the shared iPads prompted me to go online and find educators to help me. I found Tony Vincent 's website, and started following him on Twitter. The information he posted helped me with many questions I had, especially deciding which app to use to mirror my iPad. Reflector App has been a terrific answer for mirroring in my art classroom. I love being able to demo on the iPad and reflect student work as well.
I needed to find more people to follow. I looked at the educators I was following: who were they following and interacting with? That's a great way to build your PLN. What's a PLN? At a session I attended at EdCampNYC in November, Tom Whitby (@tomwhitby) said a PLN is your Personal Learning Network. See what he wrote about getting a PLN here.
Attending EdCampNYC and EdCampNJ last November was a terrific way to meet new people, learn new things and grow my PLN. And I wouldn't have known about either EdCamp without Twitter. It was fun to meet new people and follow them. And it was great to meet Tweeps in person you are following!
Connections = professional growth.
Professional growth = learning.
Learning = happy teacher.