The Value of a PLN

A professional/personal/powerful learning network, as many call it, is of tremendous value to all educators, especially administrators.  Today’s schools are begging for a lead learner to step up and navigate the rapid changing waters of education.  Yesterday evening from my couch at home I tweeted four administrators that have provided me priceless wisdom, resources, encouragement, support, feedback, and scrutiny over the last couple years.  Eric Sheninger, Dwight Carter, Craig Vroom, Bobby Dodd were the ones I chose to include in my tweet.  I’ve personally met two of these administrators, Craig and Bobby, at Edcamp events in the Columbus, OH area.  I have not met Dwight or Eric face to face but have connected with both of them numerous times through Twitter.

Below you’ll see a screenshot of the conversation that emerged in a matter of minutes via Twitter.  Within 15 minutes I was provided quality resources by leveraging my PLN for resources.  You’ll also see that I included Remind in my original tweet and they also came to my rescue and provided me with quality links, one being authored by Eric Sheninger.

RemindTweets

Working in isolation is now a choice all educators make.  It’s a choice to neglect the power of a PLN and refuse to make it’s presence part of your practice.  Working in isolation is the enemy of innovation.  Why not leverage the power of so many influential voices?  If you’re leading a school, you can’t afford not to.  Chances are your thoughts and your solutions are not unique and someone has already tried them.

I want to separate the resources provided to me yesterday to make them accessible to other readers interested in the same topic.  If you haven’t caught on yet, my intention yesterday was to gather resources about how administrators are using text message-based communication with their staffs.  I’ve been a long time user of Remind and Celly in my own classroom, but I was curious about how those tools are used to increase communication from administration to staff.  Remind has just released a beta version of their chat which offers users the ability to establish office hours to allow 2-way communication via text message.  I won’t go into further details as I’d prefer you check them out for yourself!RemindOfficeHours

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2015/03/remind-adds-chat-to-their-mobile.html#.VVH6Z_lViko

Resources

One thought on “The Value of a PLN

  1. Great post Derek! Have you thought about posting this over on WVEdChat.org? Feel free to do so if you’d like.

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