In the week before students fill the seats in our classrooms, the staff that I work with has been spending a lot of time learning about how to become a professional learning community, or PLC. We focused on Rebecca DuFour's 3 big ideas about PLCs, which are 1) a focus on learning 2) embracing a collaborative culture, and 3) becoming results-oriented practitioners.
Perhaps, not coincidentally, these big ideas reminded me of why I created a professional learning network, or PLN. And I took the opportunity to share this with my staff. The concept of a PLC is relatively new to us, so the idea of a PLN was foreign. "What's the difference?" some asked.
"Scope," was my response. Where a PLC is a localized collection of stakeholders in education, a PLN is a global network of motivated educators who collaborate and share ideas digitally. With Twitter being a catalyst of developing PLNs, I explained the basic concept of tweeting and following educators.
Surprisingly, many of my colleagues were open to learning more about the idea. Some even asked how they would go about "getting connected" once they got back to their classroom. My principal invited me to help him create a Twitter account for our school @RimrockElem.
Immediately after we connected our school with Twitter, I used my account to tweet: I just helped my admin to set up a Twitter accnt for our school. Share how @RimrockElem can use Twitter to reach the community.
Within five minutes, three members of my PLN had retweeted my invitation to help educate my PLC about Twitter. From those three retweets, @RimrockElem was tweeted to over 10,000 connected educators. Isn't that what DuFour means by embracing a collaborative culture?
Perhaps, not coincidentally, these big ideas reminded me of why I created a professional learning network, or PLN. And I took the opportunity to share this with my staff. The concept of a PLC is relatively new to us, so the idea of a PLN was foreign. "What's the difference?" some asked.
"Scope," was my response. Where a PLC is a localized collection of stakeholders in education, a PLN is a global network of motivated educators who collaborate and share ideas digitally. With Twitter being a catalyst of developing PLNs, I explained the basic concept of tweeting and following educators.
Surprisingly, many of my colleagues were open to learning more about the idea. Some even asked how they would go about "getting connected" once they got back to their classroom. My principal invited me to help him create a Twitter account for our school @RimrockElem.
Immediately after we connected our school with Twitter, I used my account to tweet: I just helped my admin to set up a Twitter accnt for our school. Share how @RimrockElem can use Twitter to reach the community.
Within five minutes, three members of my PLN had retweeted my invitation to help educate my PLC about Twitter. From those three retweets, @RimrockElem was tweeted to over 10,000 connected educators. Isn't that what DuFour means by embracing a collaborative culture?
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