Thinking About Professional Learning Networks

Sometimes things don't work. That's just a fact of life. It's unfortunate when it happens and in a classroom, we strive to help students who are having difficulty with what we've assigned. Differentiating is an important part of being a teacher; changing the lesson or the expectations for a certain individual, or a group, to better fit their needs. For example, if you assigned an oral presentation to your class, you can't expect the child who is hearing impaired to reflect on his peers presentations in the same way the rest of his classmates are going to. It's obvious that sometimes you have to give some students a boost in order to put them on a level playing field with their peers. But it's not always obvious how to do this.

Having a Professional Learning Network (or PLN) is important for many teachers in overcoming this struggle. PLNs are places that you can go to ask teachers about how they have overcome the same issues you're struggling with. There is generally someone who has been teaching longer who has found a foolproof way to deal with your question. There is usually a new teacher friend who has an innovative idea they have in their back pocket that might be untested, but sounds promising. There is even sometimes a parent who has seen a great solution to your problem. PLNs help teachers connect with these people and pick their brains for their super ideas.

One fantastic resource that I know for certain I will use is Facebook. I have many friends who are either pre-service or very new teachers. I am sure that if I ever run into an issue in my classroom that I need help with, I can just post a status asking my teacher friends for ideas. I am also a member of a group on Facebook that includes people who went through the education program with me. This is a more concentrated group of teachers and by posting specifically in that group, I am sure I will at the very least get encouragement and someone who can point me in the right direction.

I also looked at Edutopia which is a website where teachers can talk about different ideas that worked and mention things to avoid. They can post lessons that were a hit in the classroom, ideas for management, and just generally talk about what's new and different in education. It's definitely a place I will visit when I am in need of help.

Edmodo is also a resource I will likely invest in. It is structured in a very similar way to Facebook, but instead of "friending" people and posting things for everyone to see, you join groups and post things for only those individual groups to see. It is very helpful for compartmentalizing things so that , for example, a question you have about Shakespeare can be posed to teachers within the group "Teaching the Classics" and not to the group "Outdoor Education".