J. Ouellette | UBC-MET | ePortfolio
Group Project: Twitter PLN
ETEC 510Â | ARTIFACT TWO
Twitter is arguably one of the best self-learning tools imaginable for teachers. In my opinion, there is no better way to network and easily contact people in your interests areas, 24:7.
I know this now, having this project to thank for that.
This collaborative inquiry gave me the time to link theoretical frameworks, like that of Garrison, Anderson, & Archer's Community of Inquiry framework (2000; in Garrison & Arbaugh, 2007). Essentially, the theory suggests that online learning works best when there is a social, cognitive and teacher presence. Twitter easily checks all three of these descriptors. For more theoretical links and connections my group and I made, be sure to have a look at our proposal below...
(Hsueh, J., LeBlanc, P., Lund, J., Ouellette, J., & Vanstone, J., 2015a)
Moreover, this collaborative inquiry project afforded me the luxury to work with more highly intelligent MET cohorts, one of whom was extremely passionate and knowledgeable within the medium.
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Ultimately, this project gave me the time to grow my own professional learning network (PLN) on Twitter, get a chance to moderate a Twitter synchronous chat, and further develop my "tweeting" skill sets. Before starting this course, I rarely used this powerful tool, but now use it all the time.
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For example, I'm currently part of putting together a robotics program at my school. Within 48 hours, I was able to use Twitter to connect with passionate and experienced educators with relative ease. My use of a few hashtags even procured great leads on suppliers and competitions in my area!
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The website my group members and I created below has been very effective and useful for the purpose we created it for. I have used it as a baseline for several professional development sessions I have led at my school and I know that my cohorts have done the same. Perhaps its differentiated, tutorial-like, design could benefit you?!
(Hsueh, J., LeBlanc, P., Lund, J., Ouellette, J., & Vanstone, J., 2015b)