For educators, Twitter offers endless resources such as the ability to connect with other educators, follow educational advancements, or keep track of new education policies. Every day new teachers are putting their thoughts, experiences, and innovative ideas on Twitter for others to learn from.
For a professional learning community, or PLC, these teachers' voices are a great source to draw guidance from. A lot of educators connect through Twitter and even host web chats open to other teachers so that teachers across the United States, and even the world, can learn and collaborate with one another. Besides web chats, educational professionals often post links to useful information, lesson plans, or other materials that teacher can use. Besides following fellow teachers on Twitter, there are many educational companies such as Edutopia or Scholastic that offer great links. There are also people and companies to follow that focus on a specific field such as STEM or ESL. The members of any PLC have the opportunity to follow professionals in their specific field with resources beyond what might be available in a given school district.
Professional Learning Communities aim to support one another, enhance the learning experience of students, and find solutions to problems that arise. Twitter helps the members of a PLC to connect to one another by helping the members be current with what is going on in the classrooms of the other members between meetings.
Twitter is also a great way for teachers to keep up with many different subjects and be knowledgeable on a broad range of subjects. Often times, teachers find links and posts on Twitter that they did not know they were looking for, but end up being extremely helpful.
Twitter can be used to strengthen the PLC in your school or to create a virtual PLC with professionals from all over the world. The best way to use Twitter to develop a useful PLC is to take the time to find and follow other users with similar interests and explore the links that they share. Of course, belonging a useful and collaborative PLC means that each member, including yourself, must participate and contribute. By using your own creativity and sharing what you are doing with your own students, you can help other teachers develop their PLC as well.I have only recently started to use Twitter, and I have found the best way to start to build a PLC is to find an educator that you have shared interests with, follow him or her, and then check out who else that person follows. You can also look online for lists of great educational resources online to follow.
Recently I have found all kinds of useful links on my Twitter feed which I plan to put to good use in the future. Edutopia has posted information about how to teach your students to have meaningful conversation and fun winter science experiments. Another account that I follow, Go Overseas, has provided me a ton of information about teaching ESL in the United States and other countries. Through this account, I have found a number of ESL teachers working abroad that offer invaluable information such as tips and tricks for how to move abroad and teach culturally relevant lessons.
Twitter has allowed me to connect with a number of credible resources and people that I would not have found by just searching the internet. After researching PLC's more, I found that I had practically already created one on Twitter without even knowing it!
[Untitled image of Twitter logo]. Retrieved December 9, 2014 from http://www.southernfriedscience.com/?p=12120
[Unittled image of Twitter Infographic]. Retrieved December 9, 2014 http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/educational-hashtags-on-twitter_b30141
