Last month Patrice Gans had a great post Creating a Professional Learning Network here on the CSTA blog about creating a professional learning network using Twitter. I thought it might be worthwhile to add some suggestions of my own.
You may wonder how this works in practice and I ran into a great example recently. Mike Zamansky, a CS teacher and CSTA member from New York City (on Twitter @zamansky), tweeted a link to a blog post he wrote about a lesson in sorting he had taught. Carolyn Petite, a CS teacher from Ohio (on Twitter @cfhsPetite) replied to his tweet with two resources that she used. A follow up reply from Mike included two more resources. So in a short period of time two teachers had shared five different teaching resources with their followers and each other. I eventually captured these resources and some others I knew about on my blog post Resources For Teaching Sorts.
As you can see this sharing occurs across multiple channels though. Tweeter is great for sharing resource links and short discussions. Blogs are great for longer discussions and more in-depth information. (I have a list of computer science educators who blog BTW.) But that is not all.
If blogging and Twitter are not your style there are also email lists and even Facebook. The CSTA has a Facebook group where some great discussions take place on a regular basis. CSTA also runs an email discussion list for members. You can join the conversation there at http://listserv.acm.org/scripts/wa-ACMLPX.exe?SUBED1=csta-members&A=1.
These are friendly venues for asking questions, answering questions, sharing news and ideas and building relationships with one’s peers. Everyone’s ideas have value and are worth sharing. Especially yours!
Jump in the water is fine!
Alfred Thompson
At-large Member, CSTA