Post #3: PLN 365

This weekend’s EdTechTeam Summit featuring Google for Education in Las Vegas marks the one year anniversary of establishing my own PLN (Personal/Professional Learning Network).  It was here that some colleagues and I unlocked so much of the untapped potential that our Chromebooks had been holding onto for months! Exploring the collaborative features of G Suite along with how to help make our teaching lives more efficient and effective were huge takeaways after a weekend of learning.

The following weeks and months were filled with plan periods converting Word documents to Docs, introducing G Suite to our students via Classroom, and mindfully integrating tech more effectively and intentionally into our classrooms.  Little did I know that the biggest takeaway from the conference would be the magic of a PLN.

In Rushton Hurley’s Making Your Teaching Something Special, he states that “Isolation is the cancer of the educational system.”  I’ve been grateful to have had many mentors to look up to within my building to start my teaching career, so I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever felt isolated; however, one year after beginning to learn from a PLN, I am astonished as to how much more was out there that I would have missed out on.  It is hard to imagine my current classroom without all of the new ideas that we’ve obtained through our PLN!

It has been exactly one year since I began to use my Twitter account to learn, rather than just strictly for entertainment, and the flow of my classroom has changed drastically because of it!  It’s hard to believe all of the change that occurred in only a year, but I am forever grateful for it! I’d love to challenge every educator to start to develop a PLN on some sort of social media platform where they can connect with like-minded people to learn and grow with together.  It may seem uncomfortable at first, but your students will benefit exponentially from it, and at the end of the day, we owe it to them to continue to grow ourselves!

Thanks to all who are sharing and helping to spread these wonderful ideas to bring into our classrooms! I’ve learned so much in a year and I’m excited to see how much we’ll continue to grow in another 365 days!

Things we love that were NOT in my classroom 366 days ago:

• G Suite--Docs, Slides, Forms, and Google Classroom
• Google Cardboard
• Google Expeditions
• Flexible Seating
• Flipgrid
• Seesaw
• KnowledgeHook
• Flippity
• PearDeck
• Quick, Draw!
• Tynker