Professional Learning Network

To Tweet or Not to Tweet? That is the Question

I started my Twitter account @julya60608 back in 2009! Yikes! I created it because that's what everybody was doing at the time. I used it for about a day or two and realized it was not my cup of tea. There was so much that goes with Tweeting that I felt it took too much of my time and I did not feel like I wanted to put the time and effort to learn everything that goes with it. I thought of it more of a platform to argue with people as opposed to learn from so I would log in once in a while to argue about politics in the past year since we were all in quarantine. I just learned to retweet not too long ago so I'm still learning about hashtags and twitter chats. I consider myself very tech savvy but when it comes to Twitter usage I am an amateur.

Image Source: Personal Twitter

Professional Learning Network

With this technology class we had to look deeper into the advantages of using Twitter for educational purposes such as in a PLN. Professional Learning Network better known as PLN, is a vibrant, ever-changing group of connections to which teachers go to both share and learn. These groups reflect our values, passions, and areas of expertise. There are many advantages for PLNs, one is that teachers are able to learn something they are interested in professionally in order to help their students. PLN is 24/7 so you can literaly learn at any time that is convenient for you and you are learning from educators all over the globe not just from your school or district. Using Twitter for PLN turned out to be very informative especially in the age of remote learning because this is all new to all of us as teachers and students.

Social Media for Educators | IDeaS from the Sandbox

Image Source: Wordpress

Twitting in an Educational Platform

Using my Twitter handle I was able to find various educational tweets to follow such as @edutopia which had many interesting articles about teaching and education. One tweet that I felt the urge to reply to was about whether students should have cameras on or off during remote learning. As remote teachers during this pandemic this choice/requirement is something that we deal with everyday with our students. On one hand we want the camera on because we want to see our students and see their reactions with certain topics and to know that they actually are there listening to us and we are not just talking to empty rooms. On the other hand we don't know what that student's home situation is like and we should not be forcing them to show us their place of residence. Also when dealing with mental health issues, some students are not capable of having other people look at them on a screen and feel confident within themselves. This assignment has allowed me the opportunity to use a different platform for my educational networking and it is something that I will continue to follow and participate in.