J. Ouellette | UBC-MET | ePortfolio
Group Project: Twitter PLN
ETEC 510 | 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.
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.
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!
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)