Blogs on Professional Learning Network (PLN)

The school year is under way, and your lessons have been great. One day after school you decide to stay late and get some extra work done when, all of a sudden, the piece of tech you are using stops working! OMG! After several minutes of crying and hyperventilating, you have no idea what to do next. Tech support is the logical choice, but that could take too long before someone can actually assist you. They are always so busy helping others with their problems that it could be days before they get to yours. Well, here are four troubleshooting commandments that might help you with your problem before you have to call the Help Desk.

Late August or early September is a make-it-or-break-it time for educators. The non-stop, brutal schedule that is a school year starts with all the finesse of trampling elephants, and doesn’t relent for the next nine months (not coincidentally, the same amount of time it takes to gestate a baby). That makes starting the year right important -- and there are few more critical pieces to an educator's success than collaboration.

I had the honor of attending and presenting at the #140edu conference put on this week by Jeff Pulver and Chris Lehmann. It was the perfect kick-off to what the U.S. Department of Education has deemed Connected Educator Month. The conference schedule read like a who's who of educators who use technology and social media to spread ideas and engage and empower young people. We were also blessed with a generous amount of student voices through both panels and individual speakers. Rather than go into detail about the conference itself, I decided to look through my own tweets and pull out gems from both days. Below are some quotes, ideas and nuggets.

#Satchat is a great example of the power of social media to improve education, and the benefit of expanding an educator's Personal Learning Network (PLN). The premise behind this Twitter chat/hashtag came about when Scott Rocco (@ScottRRocco) and I (@bcurrie5) connected on Twitter in February 2012. Both of us had a passion for education and knew other school leaders around the globe who shared our enthusiasm. What we would soon realize is that this passion was not restricted to local or national educators, but had a global reach.