I still remember my first year as a teacher. It was one of the most exciting, challenging and frustrating experiences of my life. I survived my first year and realized that I was beginning to make a difference in the lives of several young people. It convinced me that my career should follow a path in education.
One of the people that helped me survive my first year of teaching was an elderly teacher named Joe, who worked across the hall. Joe always welcomed me to wander into his classroom at the end of the day to vent my frustrations and seek his advice. He always had time for me, constantly offered encouragement and wisdom from his 30 years in teaching. Looking back, I realize Joe was part of my personal learning network that enabled me to become a competent teacher.
We all have our personal learning networks of colleagues in our school, mentors from previous jobs, or family members who work in education. These people offer advice, a sympathetic ear, or new ideas enabling us to continue to improve in our craft.
The challenges in education continue to mount with so much expected of us on a daily basis. Teachers work hard satisfying an ever-increasing number of administrative requests and increasingly complex demands from the dozens of students we see on a daily basis. To meet these, we all must be continual learners, acquiring new skills, trying new approaches and contributing to our schools collective success. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find time for the casual chats with people face-to-face that may be part of our personal learning network. However, social networking tools and the Internet allows us to develop a unique 21st-century personal learning network.
Over the last several months I have become convinced that Twitter is a powerful professional learning tool. Twitter is not about pumping out marketing information to the masses like a web site or email. Twitter gives individuals the choice to read information that meets his or her immediate needs. This is empowering professional development where you can listen to experts anywhere in the world. You can ask questions and receive advice from talented educators. Whether you are reading short messages from a leading author or reading blogs from other 3rd grade teachers, there is a wealth of knowledge to be gained.
We all enjoy reading books by popular authors such as Dan Pink (@DanielPink) or Stephen Covey (@StephenRCovey), Ken Robinson (@SirKenRobinson) or watch TED Talks (@TED_TALKS). We are eager to attend presentations by education thought leaders like Heidi Hayes Jacob (@HeidiHayesJacob), Steve Barkley (@stevebarkley) or Diane Ravitch (@DianeRavitch). These talented authors not only write books periodically but they use twitter and they write and offer advice every day. If you’re interested in what they have to offer you can tune in and listen to their advice. Every moment hundreds of teachers are writing and sharing advice about their effective teaching. Any teacher can seek out these individuals and listen to their advice.
Will Richardson, (@willrich45) and Rob Mancabelli (@RobMancabelli) have created a new book; Personal Learning Networks available from Solution Tree in May.
Twitter may be in the popular media as a way to follow entertainment personalities or it can be used by companies to market their products. But, you control and decide who to follow and pay attention to.
You can create your own personal learning network and listen to educators who will help to make you a better teacher. Join twitter, create your network and follow learning forward New York (@LFNewYork) where you will learn about cutting-edge practices in professional development. BTW, I tweet under @RDJLeader
