By Jennifer Heckel
Kindergarten Teacher- Calvary Christian Academy Philadelphia

Contact Info:
jheckel@ccphilly.org
Twitter: @heckey25

To view this presentation online, please visit: www.haikudeck.com/p/cnZb1Kg0Bc

"To be better educators, we must first be better learners" (Tom Whitby, 2015)

We must constantly focus on learning in order to survive in our profession. Why is this so important? Because who we are as teachers has a powerful influence in our students' learning.

What do we need to learn, though? Not only must we learn about current trends, state standards, and the expectations placed on us in this day and age, but to be a successful teacher you constantly must learn about yourself as a person and learn about your students and the world in which they live.

So, the question is, how do most teachers learn? Through professional development.

Basically, the definition of professional development can be summed up as the development of a person in his or her professional role. In basic terms, that means growing and learning as an educator through various means.

Most teachers think of professional development as workshops or short courses offered by schools to teach new information or reinforce current trends in education.

Typically, professional development days are long and rather passive in nature, with the teacher doing most of the listening while a speaker talks.

If you only view professional development as being some kind of traditional whole group training provided by your school, you are missing out on the fun part!

In our modern world, professional development actually can be an active, dynamic process that can take place anywhere, anytime through the Internet. With the Internet, we no longer are bound by four walls and a guest speaker in front of us to tell us what we should learn. In fact, the more actively you take part in designing your own PD, the more evident the results will be in your teaching practice.

The goal of this presentation is not to completely change our whole professional development system, but to rather open your eyes as educators to the vast amount of resources available to you through technology.

The key to being a lifelong learner is to redefine your idea of professional development. It cannot be viewed as a one-size-fits-all once a year activity. Rather, taking an active role in your own professional development can help you grow as an educator more than you can ever imagine!

My challenge to all educators is to start using technology to learn.

We live in a technologically-advanced world whether we like it or not. Our homes, cars, and workplaces all are run by various forms of technology. We fill our pockets and purses with technology each day before we walk out the door.

While technology is not the solution to all problems, it has caused our society to advance in ways we never could have imagined a few short years ago.

Since there is so much technology available and so many opinions about what to use, where can you even begin as an educator when it comes to using technology to learn and grow?

Start small!

The first step to using technology for professional development is to create your own "Personal Learning Network" (PLN) online.

While this formal title is rather new, the concept is one with which all educators are familiar. All teachers already have connections they have made with fellow co-workers and mentor teachers where they share ideas, advice, and resources. The only difference with a PLN is that the focus is now on using social media and technology.

There is no era in human history that has witnessed as huge an influx of human knowledge being collected and accessible from a single place as it is now. Using the internet, teachers can create their own PLN to communicate, collaborate, and create with connected colleagues anywhere in the world at anytime. Participating educators worldwide can make requests, share resources, or give practical tips. Each individual educator then becomes a potential source of information.

Because social media has become more prominent in our culture, it is a natural place to start when developing your own PLN. After all, most people are connected for personal reasons through social media, so why not use the same tools that you are familiar with for professional reasons?

When most people hear the word "Twitter" or "Tweet", they think of the worst of the internet: meaningless phrases, unrecognizable abbreviations, and endless useless information about what someone is doing at the current moment.

So, why would educators be interested in Twitter?

In addition to the celebrities and athletes on twitter are hundreds of truly leading innovators in the field of education connected online who provide their thoughts and current research . Following their tweets gives you an insight into their vision and work, which can be more beneficial than sitting through a workshop or conference.

Twitter operates on the idea that you can "follow" anyone who has an account. Once you're following someone, you'll see their tweets on a news feed when you open your Twitter. Likewise, whoever follows you will see your tweets. The more people you follow, the more information that will be on your opening page. So choose wisely to keep it organized and to keep it from being too overwhelming!

To follow someone, you search for them using the "@" sign followed by their user name. Likewise, you can connect with or respond to someone directly in a tweet by using "@___________" (put their username in the blank).

To find a specific resource or topic, hashtags are used in Twitter. A hashtag is a unique keyword preceded by a # sign that allows you to focus your discussions on specific topics, like science education or project-based learning. Here are some hashtags that can help educators find specific resources:
- #kinderchat (Mondays 9pm)
-#4thchat (Monday 8 pm)
-#sschat (Mondays 7pm)
-#edchat (Tuesday 12 noon)
-#scichat (Tuesday 9 pm)
-#ntchat (Wednesday 9 pm)
-#artsed (Thursday 7 pm)
-#elemchat (Saturday 5 pm)
-#1stchat (Sunday 7 pm)

To view a comprehensive list of Education Chats to follow on Twitter, please go to: https://sites.google.com/site/twittereducationchats/education-chat-official...

Remember to follow topics and not just people. Also, be patient while you build your PLN on Twitter. It takes time to build an online network!

RSS is an acronym which stands for "Really Simple Syndication". RSS is a simple and effective way of keeping in touch when new information is added to a website without having to visit the website to check for new updates.

You first need to pick an RSS feed reader, such as feedly.com, and create an account. Then, you simply subscribe to your favorite websites or blogs. Whenever new information is added to the website or blog, it automatically will be sent to your RSS reader where you can read it at your convenience.

Scoop.it can be classified as a part social networking and part content curation tool. Basically, the idea is that you create different boards based on topics that you choose. Each topic is housed on its own page to organize information easily.

After you create a topic, Scoop.it gives you suggested content on that topic. They call these different articles or pieces of content "Scoops". When you find a Scoop that you like, you can "Scoop.it" onto your board and it stays there for easy retrieval.

You can also add insights and reactions to the Scoops when you add it to your board. In addition, there is a special bookmarking tool that Scoop.it uses that allows you to easily add any content you find on the web to any board that you already created, whether you have Scoop.it open or not.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, is a global community of passionate thinkers who seek a better understanding of the world. Run by a non-profit organization, the goal of TED is to spread ideas, usually through the form of small videos less than 18 minutes in length, in order to positively effect attitudes, lives, and ultimately, the world around us.

Today, there are videos on almost all topics in more than 100 different languages.

While not all videos are perfect, they are designed to help you think more deeply. My advice is to broaden your horizon and watch some videos that are not about learning or thinking. Consider then how you could apply the ideas presented in education.

Pinterest is a social network that allows users to pin content onto digital online bulletin boards. While you might be familiar with this for personal reasons, there are many opportunities for educators to learn and grow together!

One way that Pinterest can be used as a PLN is by curating content online. You can create resource boards for fellow teachers or even for your students to access at home. You can find and pin images, videos, or stories for future lesson plans. You can also do a basic search of others' boards to find on-topic information.

Another great way to use Pinterest is as an organizational tool. You can save links to topic or subject boards to keep resources together, create unit boards or theme boards, or add comments so it is easy to remember why it was pinned in the first place.

Pinterest is also a great tool to collaborate with others. You can create a board and ask for feedback from others in order to improve your ideas, open boards to the community so that you can connect and collaborate with parents and students, and find other educators with similar interests and follow their boards.

Even your students can use Pinterest for things like group projects and an easy way to publish work online.

As you can see, Pinterest is a very valuable resource and one that can be used in a variety of ways to help you grow and learn as an educator!

Google+ is Google's version of a social network. While Google is mostly known for its search and collaborative tools such as Google Drive, Google Plus offers educators some great ways to connect and learn with other educators that you cannot find on other platforms.

A few nice features of Google+ are that it is visually driven (good pictures guide you through the content in each post), has a mobile app to make it easy to access information anywhere, and contains communities where you can join and connect with other like-minded people.

This website provides a great list of educational communities that you can use to build your PLN right away:
http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/10-google-plus-communities-every...