Professional Learning for Busy Educators

We often talk about the need to have students go out and change the world but what message does that send when we take our ball and go home rather than changing the educational communities we inhabit?

One great thing about Twitter chats is you don’t necessarily need to participate in order to benefit from the conversation. If you missed a particular chat but you’d like to see what others were sharing, you can always search for the chat info and see the ideas and resources shared. Along the same lines, if you are new to technology and aren’t comfortable participating right away, you can always hang back and simply watch the chat before jumping in yourself. Soon enough you’ll be contributing resources and ideas of your own!

Q. How do you take screen shots of articles and then post them on Twitter, with sections highlighted and the URL of the article included?

A. Annotating screen shots of text passages — and then posting the image and a link to the article on Twitter — is an effective way to make a point with the selected text. It also lets you get around the service’s 140-character limit. You can mark up the screen shot’s text in a few different ways on a mobile device or computer.

Ready to start off the 2018-2019 school year with a Professional Learning Network (PLN) of highly recommended educators from around the world? Crowd-sourced and set to go, we’ve curated a list of highly recommended educators to follow as shared by educators just like you! In a matter of 60 minutes this past week in the #whatisschool Twitter chat, we asked classroom teachers, administrators, tech coaches, librarians, and more to share individuals that positively influence and inform practice and that make a difference in education through their work and support within our PLN.

Twitter in Elementary school started for me five years ago during my time as an Elementary Assistant Principal. Our goal was to bring our school community closer together and open up classroom doors to develop stronger relationships. We had great success and feedback from our school community, and when I became Principal three years ago I knew we could do it bigger and better!

The VAST majority of my day is spent in classrooms and on campus, why not Tweet all the #eduawesome that's going on. I can be in a 1st grade classroom listening to a student read, check our @jseroadrunners feed and see something totally awesome going on in a different classroom. There have been countless times when I've changed my daily plan at school based on what's coming from our feed. Of course I'm super connected with my staff of twenty-six teachers and 520 students, but having them active on Twitter keeps me that much closer and tuned in! Parents at John Swett are no longer in the dark about what happened at school each day. From class, PE, Music, recess and lunch, parents can 'see' what activities are going on or be able to ask their child specific questions from the day!