Growing Your PLN with Tweet Chats

People are always touting the value of having a personal learning network, or PLN. Whether it be a Facebook group, the College Board communities, an email listserve, or a physical group like the Western New York Writing Project, it is easier than ever to expand your professional network and find people and places that offer insights and resources for good teaching.

Many people celebrate Twitter as being vital to their PLN due to the easy access it provides to teachers from all over the world. If you have a Twitter account and don't quite know what to do with it or are looking to find other professional uses for it, read on.

Most subject areas have people who have stepped up to organize weekly content area chats. These real time chats occur at a preselected time and usually are organized around an overarching theme, question, or topic. For instance, this past week digital writing guru Troy Hicks hosted #nctechat (National Council of the Teachers of English) and led participants in a discussion of questions leading up to Digital Learning Day this February 6th. Teachers discussed their first brush with technology, ways this experience changed them and possible reasons why this first experience was so powerful. The conversation evolved over a series of questions and teachers ultimately traded ideas about tech tools they might try personally or in the classroom in 2014.

Teachers all over the country are using this tool to connect and share. Here are a few weekly chats you might be interested in:

#ntchat - New teacher chat (Wednesdays, 8-9 PM EST)
#engchat - English teacher chat (Mondays 7-8 PM EST)
#sschat - Social Studies chat (Mondays 7-8 PM EST)
#satchat - School leader chat (Saturdays 7:30 AM EST)
#edchat - general discussion of education and policy (Tuesdays 12-1 PM EST and 7-8PM EST)
#blendchat - blended learning pedagogy chat
#gtchat - chat for teachers of the gifted and talented (Fridays 7PM)
#4thchat - one of the many Twitter chats for specific grade levels (Mondays 8PM)

That is just a bit more than a handful. For an amazingly exhaustive listing of other offerings, check out this spreadsheet created by Cybraryman with the collaboration of countless others.