Using Twitter to create a Professional Learning Network (PLN)

2. TWITTER –
A NEW VISION
FOR OLD PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT

3. WHAT IS A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK?
 A Personal Learning Network or Professional Learning Network (PLN) is
sometimes also known as Professional Learning Community (Nelson, 2012)
 A self-directed network of professionals from various occupational fields
whose members hold common interests with the intent of sharing ideas
and resources, collaborating, and providing support with the purpose of
enhancing personal and professional learning (Davis, 2013)
 A network of teachers, educators and mentors who you can seek help
from, ask questions from, share ideas with and continue to learn from.
 The network may be in the same school as you, in the same city, country
or across the globe due to the use of digital technologies

5. WHAT IS A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK?
 Couros (2010) encapsulates
these various resources in his
“The Networked Teacher”
(Figure 1), where the diagram
“describes an individual’s
connectivity through
participation in social media
activities (e.g., blogging, wikis,
social networking), and the
arrows represent both the
consumption and production
of content”

6. BENEFITS OF A PLN FOR EDUCATORS
 A place to share the experience of learning and take advantage of the
excitement within the global learning environment (Elliot, 2010)
 Can provide access to resources, supportive relationships, increased
leadership capacity and development of a professional vision (Alderton,
Brusnell and Bariexca, 2011)

7. BENEFITS OF A PLN FOR EDUCATORS
 It can deliver continuous professional development for teachers, as it is
not a one-time event which is costly, disconnected from practice and not
focussed on improving instruction (Visser, Evering and Barratt, 2014)
 It can make a teacher more likely to advance in the profession due to
their global connections (Johnson, Levine, Smith and Smythe, 2009)
 The ease of which to start, connect and use a PLN via sites like Twitter,
Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Ning, Scribd, Delicious, Classroom 2.0 and
edublogs

9. WHY USE TWITTER?
302 million monthly active users and 500 million
Tweets sent per day (Twitter, 2015)
Twitter as an excellent tool to develop and maintain
a Professional Learning Network (Mulatiningsih,
Partridge, & Davis, 2013)
Virtual classroom of unlimited potential (Khan, 2012)
Can be used on multiple devices

10. WHY USE TWITTER?
 Millions of other teachers already connected with their own
PLNs where strangers can come together to create a
community built on communication and collaboration
dedicated to making learning and education the best it can
be (Ferguson, 2010)
 Twitter to a river: It is always flowing by. Sometimes I just want
to dip my toes in and I spend 10 minutes or so reading a few
tweets. Other times, I might want to wade in a bit and I will
follow a # conversation and be on for a little longer. Then
there are the times I want to dive in and swim. I'll spend an
hour or so delving into a deep conversation with one or
several people. (Johnson, 2013 )

11. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Step 1: Setup an account: this may
seem very simple; just go to
www.twitter.com, enter in your
details and you are away. However,
be sure to choose an account name,
or Twitter handle, that is professional,
unique to you, and one you will be
happy to keep for years to come.

12. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Step 2: Set up your professional
profile: other users will look at your
profile to establish your ‘credentials’
and decide whether to follow you.
Be sure to include information about
your education interests, classes/
subjects you teach and topics you
may wish to gain further information
about. Spend time thinking about
what you want to use the account
for and what you want to share
with the world

13. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Step 3: Start following: one of
the great benefits of Twitter
is the ease by which you can
find others with similar
interests to you and ‘follow’
them by connecting to the
writings.
In this way you can connect
to other educators without
actually having to converse
with them to begin with.

14. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Step 4: Gunton and Davis (2012) suggest the following when
delving into the world of Twitter – connect, communicate,
collaborate, create and consume.
 Step 5: Tweet better with tags: make better connections with
more users by incorporating a hashtag (#) to mark a keyword
or topic in a tweet, the ‘at’ symbol (@) to link to another user,
and a retweet to pass along a message or information
posted by another user to acknowledge them as the source.

15. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Step 6: Join a Twitter Chat: unlike a tweet which can be made and
viewed at any time of the day or night, a Twitter Chat is when a
conversation takes place in ‘real time’ between educators where ideas
and suggestions are made more in the form of a conversation. Twitter
Chats are usually scheduled and may last up to an hour. Popular
education chats include #edchat and #aussieED, however a simple
Internet search would find literally dozens of more.

16. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Step 7: Organise yourself: making use of a program like Tweetdeck
(https://tweetdeck.twitter.com) will help to organise your Twitter feed,
notifications, messages, activity and more.

18. SETTING UP AND USING A PLN ON TWITTER
 Manage your PLN:
 Manage your PLN actively – spend 5 to 10 minutes a day
 Don’t try to read everything – you just won’t have time!
 Don’t lurk; give back to others – PLNs function best when everyone contributes
 Post comments that are professional – hence the name Professional Learning
Network.
 Use mobile devices – these will provide greater and instantaneous access.
Innovative Professional Development (Perez, 2009)

20. CONCLUSION
Teachers must remain always willing to embrace new technologies into their
teaching pedagogy and continue to be lifelong learners, for “When an individual
becomes part of a learning network, the potential for growth in learning is
unlimited” Davis (2013)

21. REFERENCES:
 Alderton, E., Brunsell, E., & Bariexca, D. (2011). The end of isolation. The Journal of Online
Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 1-16.
 Couros, A. (2010). Developing personal learning networks for open and social learning. In G.
Veletsianos (Ed.), Emerging Technologies in Distance Education (pp. 109–128).
 Davis, T. (2013). Building and using a Personal/Professional learning network with social Media.
The Journal of Research in Business Education, 55(1), 1 – 13.
 Elliott, C. (2010). We are not alone: the power of Personal Learning Networks. Synergy, 7(1), 47-
50.
 Ferguson, H. (2010). Join the flock! Leading and Learning with Technology, 37(8), 12 – 15.
 Gunton, L., & Davis, K. (2012). Beyond broadcasting: Customer service, community and
information experience in the Twittersphere. Reference services review, 40(2), 224-227.
 Johnson, J. (2013). I finally get it … slice of life.
 Nelson, C. J. (2012). RIF or VIP? Having a PLN Can Help. Knowledge Quest, 41(2), 70-73.
 Perez, L. (2012). Innovative Professional Development: Expanding your professional learning
network. Knowledge Quest, 40(3), 20-22.
 Visser, R. D., Evering, L. C., & Barrett, D. E. (2014). # TwitterforTeachers: The Implications of
Twitter as a Self-Directed Professional Development Tool for K–12 Teachers. Journal of
Research on Technology in Education, 46(4), 396-413.