My Twitter PLN

Twitter has been a major part of my professional learning network (PLN) for several years. I use Twitter only for professional development; I save my personal social media posts for Facebook and Instagram.  Over time, I've cultivated a very rich resource where I know that I can almost instantly find information I'm looking for about lessons, tools, or projects.  Additionally, I know I can reach out on Twitter to get answers to my questions or issues as well as find support and encouragement.  I have made connections with educators from around the world, many of whom I have been able to meet in real life.  It's such an exciting thing to meet someone in real life that I've known only on Twitter and make that connection!

I use Tweetdeck to organize my Twitter topics and the first five columns and things I learn from them are: 

• #gafesummit - This is the official hashtag of the Google Apps for Education Summits.  These are held throughout the world almost every weekend, so it's a very active hashtag where people are tweeting out what they're learning and sharing links to session resources.  I do a lot of side work as a part of these teams and it's inspiring to see what people are learning.  Recently, I was able to learn some great tips about using Google Calendar when a presenter at a session shared his resources.
• #smartee - I am a SMART Exemplary Educator and this group uses the hashtag to communicate about how we are using SMART products in our classroom, to share lessons and ideas, and to support each other.  I love this hashtag because it's such a global group and I always love to learn how education works in other parts of the world.  People often post links to lessons they created and shared so that others can use them in their own classrooms.
• #geniushour - This past year I started implementing Genius Hour in my classroom and checked this hashtag regularly to see how other teachers are running their classroom projects.  Many teachers share their students' GH projects on this hashtag and I often share those with my students so they can see what other kids are doing.
• #GoogleClassroom - I use Google Classroom daily and since it's a realtively new product, ther are often updates and new features. I follow the conversation on this hashtag to learn about what I can do with Google Classroom.  Just this morning I saw that someone shared a link to her blog where she has created an excellent resource for those just getting started with GAFE and Classroom which I plan to share with the my staff.
• #onenewthing - At GAFE Summits,  teachers are challenged to choose just one new thing they learned to try in their classrooms, and then tweet it out using this hashtag. I love this hashtag because people tweet out short, specific tools or ideas they are implementing.  It's inspiring because I often learn about tools I didn't know about and can then look for ways to use them myself.  I recently saw several people post about using Seesaw with primary kids and was interested to check it out for myself as I wasn't familiar with it.