PLN

It is amazing how nowadays educators can use social media to create an environment to connect to other practitioners, ask questions, wonder, read, share and support one another in their quest for high quality education. 

I guess I did not realize that I have already had an “informal” PLN. I have been using the web for quite some time to search for interesting ways to present my lessons and to gather information about new approaches to teaching literacy. Definitely, Pinterest has been my number one go to place, YouTube and Google are my other most common website visits. I use them to boost my pedagogy with my struggling readers and make lessons more robust. I now, however, understand the powerful tool I have been tinkering with. 

When I think back about how I used to search and gather information about a particular issue in my practice I would look to educational books, publishing, or informal conversations with teachers. Now I find Pinterest pins, or Google. I have found tons of ideas to make my instructional material more appealing to my learners from anchor charts, bookmarks, PowerPoints, and other engaging activities. I have shared some of my findings with people in my building, but now that I have created my official “PLN” I’m planning to do it over cyberspace.