Learning With Social Media

As a teacher on social media, I would not consider myself very involved with other educators. After reading a poster with the seven degrees of connectedness, I would say I am at stage 1: Lurker. I would like to be more involved on social media, but I typically am reading through what other teachers have to share and learn new ideas and activities I can use ion my own classroom. I would like to be more involved in professional learning networks (PLNs) not only for myself to learn and engage in new things but for other educators who may need extra support. 

Social Benefits

I have recently learned from Torrey Trust, an Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, that PLNs support educators in four different ways: social, effective, cognitive, and identity. Effective and cognitive supports are most relevant to me. I am always finding myself reflecting on my own teaching styles and always wanting to learn new things to try in my classroom. I like to try new things with my students and it does not always go as planned but I learn and try again. For example, last year during the pandemic school year, my grade level team and I were struggling with creating guided groups because we had students both in person and online. So, I decided to have my in person students log on to the same Google Meet as the online students, and I created groups through the Google Meet. It was very hectic and chaotic but the students loved to try something new and it was an experience to definitely reflect on and try again. 

PLNs

I decided to go out of my comfort zone and engage in a Twitter chat. Dr. Matthew X. Joseph is an educator on Twitter who shares beneficial information to other educators. I recently read a blog post of his where he explains how as educators we need to teach students how to think rather than what to think. When we teach students how to think, they will learn to think critically. When thinking critically, students will be using skills such as communication, problem solving, and collaboration. Dr. Matthew X. Joseph, explains different ways we can teach students to become critical thinkers. We need to ask open-ended questions to student for them to better understand how to use the concepts being learned rather than only knowing how to use it in certain aspects. He also mentions allowing productive struggle in the classroom. Productive struggle is how students learn through their mistakes and experiences. They will remember better when they are experiencing the struggle on their own rather than having things ready for the students. There are many more great ideas Dr. Matthew X. Joseph mentions in his blog that is worth reading. 

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