Why You Should Build A Twitter PLN

A Twitter Professional Learning Network (PLN) can do great things for your professional learning. A few years ago, I didn’t understand the impact that building a network of fellow educators online could have on my professional practice as a leader. I focused primarily on face to face networking. What a difference two years can make. My Twitter PLN has taught me more than I could have ever imagined.

For those educators who may be reluctant create an account, I suggest that you dive in and create an account if you don’t have one. If you have an account already, engage with fellow educators on Twitter. Retweet, favorite, or comment on the content posted by others. Once you see how easy it is to engage with fellow educators, it becomes less intimidating. I remember taking part in my first Twitter chat. The speed of the chat was blazing fast. It was difficult to keep up with how quickly the tweets were scrolling through my feed. I felt like I had just been part of a lightning fast conversation that had just passed me by.

I spent the next half an hour catching up on chat replies. I then researched and found TweetDeck.com. TweetDeck was amazing. I could slow the chat down when I needed and speed it up to be real time when I finished reading the previous tweets and was ready to join the chat in real time. TweetDeck also allowed me to create columns to follow other hashtags.

After I was comfortable and had taken part in my first few chats, I then took part in multiple chats over the course of a night. This experience was so enriching because I learned from other educators who were doing some amazing work across the globe. These people were posting great content and had so much to share about the work they were doing in their schools and classrooms. I now log in to Twitter daily to interact with the many educators who I follow. I challenge you to follow other educators and develop your Twitter PLN. You will discover that you are doing some amazing things you should share with the world.

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