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EDTC 6433- Participating in an Online Community

Participating in an Online Community

Using various social media platforms in order to learn more about various aspects of teaching and education is my favorite form of professional development.  I believe that learning from other teachers is one of the best things that we can do to strengthen our pedagogy and to open our mind to new ideas.  The phrases "iron sharpens iron" certainly also applies to the world of teaching.  Also, when you get to choose your own "PD", it makes your learning much more meaningful and applicable to your own teaching.  

It is hard to choose just one online community experience, because using social media for teaching has become part of my daily life.  I initially just began being interested in other teacher's ideas on things such as Pinterest, blog posts, and instagram.  This inspired me to create my own teacher instagram account and also start blogging about teacher-related topics as well.  It is still very hard to keep up with, but you can take a look here to see what I've gotten started so far.  As I became more familiar with the online educational community, I began to participate in other online learning events such as twitter chats and teacher facebook groups.  I am currently involved in two facebook groups: Fearless First Grade Teachers (Education to the Core), and SeeSaw Teachers.  Having thousands of teacher's experience and expertise at your fingertips is so amazing, and something that makes me fortunate to be teaching in a time when technology and communication is so rich.  

I think my favorite form of online PD, however, is twitter.  I didn't use twitter a whole lot prior to using it for educational purposes, but after my first twitter chat, I was hooked.  The audience in most educational twitter chats are so diverse- ranging from first year teachers to veterans, education students to superintendents and all in between, educators from all over the world, and differing educational philosophies.  Being able to learn and communicate with such a wide range of educators makes your conversations and learning experiences so much more rich.  Below, I've included some screenshots of some of my tweets during a twitter chat.  


I am TwoTravelingTeachers.  This was from a #WATeachLead Chat.  

This was from a #satchatwc chat.  

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