The following post comes from Jeremy Macdonald, a 5th Grade & Instructional Technology teacher at Mills Elementary in the Klamath Falls City Schools district in Klamath Falls Oregon.
Many of us who participate or contribute to a Professional Learning Network (PLN) do so outside of our own school community, often as an activity that doesn't involve many (if any) of our building or district colleagues. While a PLN can take many different forms, the most popular seems to be taking place in Twitter.
Several of my colleagues often question the time I spend "on" Twitter. The most common comment is, "When do you have time to do this? Nobody needs to know what I had for breakfast anyway." And my response is almost always the same, "It's not about being on Twitter all the time or sharing today's breakfast, it's about have place to go when I need ideas, resources, and conversations around what's going on in education." My response typically has little effect on their opinion, but that doesn't keep me from trying.
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I am by admission not an early Twitter adopter. But after getting a formal training on Twitter for a job, my eyes were opened! I couldn't believe how much I learned from my Twitter network!
Here are a few things you can do to start or possibly expand your social media learning experience:
The event announced the Digital Media and Learning competition and introduced the idea of “Badges for Lifelong Learning.” Mark Surman, executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, provided an explanation of what badges were all about. Inspired to some extent by the merit badges many remember from their scouting days, digital badges capture an accomplishment, skill, quality, or interest. Digital badges are already in use in many online environments – I was recently “awarded” a badge for being a proficient reviewer of hotels on the website TripAdvisor – but this practice is still fragmented, with no way for individuals to pull this evidence of skill or accomplishment into one place and make it available to employers or others.
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Here are your Thursday morning announcements!
A judge ruled yesterday that the New York State Board of Regents erred in its interpretation of a new law on teacher evaluations. The state teachers’ union sued the board in June arguing that the Regents made last minute changes that increased the role of student test scores in teacher evaluations beyond what a 2010 law permitted. Justice Michael C. Lynch of State Supreme Court in Albany sided with the union, but the board plans to appeal, according to the New York Times.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan held his first-ever Twitter Town Hall yesterday, answering questions submitted by people via the social-networking site. Duncan discussed waivers to No Child Left Behind, how much testing is too much, and the country’s dropout rate. Check out Education Week’s summary of the key highlights from the Q&A session.
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Phi Delta Kappa and Gallup Poll released findings today from their study investigating the public's attitude toward the public schools. Researchers asked about 1,000 people questions about education issues including quality of teachers, charter schools, voucher programs and more. The study found Americans have great appreciation for and trust in public school teachers, but less so for teacher unions at our nation’s schools in general. Some of the key findings include:- Nearly three in four Americans have trust and confidence in public school teachers and believe theyshould have flexibility in how they teach curriculum.
- Two of three Americans would like a child of theirs to become a public school teacher.
- Nearly 70 percent of Americans said they generally hear negative, rather than positive, stories about schools in the media.
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