8 Digital Tools to Enhance Your PLN

Every connected educator needs to find tools to help with search, content delivery, communication, and digital curation. I regularly experiment with different tools to improve my work flow and help me get the most out of my personal learning network (PLN).

The basic foundation of my PLN is Twitter, and so these tools are companions to Twitter and help me get the most out of it. They also help me contribute better content, because I want to learn from my PLN, but I also want to add value and share content that needs to be shared.

Here are 10 tips for leveraging the power of personal and professional learning!

1. Twitter advanced search--Instead of performing a normal Google search, I will often use Twitter to search for information on a particular topic. Google dominates search, and its advanced search features are impressive. But I also really like advanced Twitter search. It has a variety of operators from which to query, and you don't even have to be logged in to Twitter to use it.

Search by Words. In the advanced Twitter search interface, it is possible to be drill-down more precisely to get the results you really desire.

10 inspiring images to promote a #GrowthMindset

We know the importance of developing a growth mindset for ourselves and for our students. It's really the essence of learning. Carol Dweck's book Mindset is a fantastic contribution for parents, educators, and just about everyone.

We need to constantly remind ourselves and our students that mistakes are part of the learning process. No one is perfect and perfection is not even the goal. The goal is to learn and grow be the best version of 'you' possible. The only way to journey toward reaching potential is to persevere through mistakes and embrace failures as opportunities. It's important to model this mindset for students. When we make a mistake, we should own it and not view it as a failure.

What if we had Genius Hour for teachers?

Photo credit: https://flic.kr/p/e77s5P

We currently have time built into our weekly schedule for teacher collaboration, and that's a good thing. But all good things need to be reinvented, or at least reinvigorated to make them better. We need to be creative to make the use of time and resources as valuable as possible. Our weekly collaboration time grew out of the Professional Learning Communities movement, and our school has benefited from the PLC structure. But I see a new vision for collaboration and growth emerging.

What if we had Genius Hour for teachers, a time for professionals to work on projects they have passion for. I've seen this idea tossed around on various Twitter chats, and it's reportedly been done in forward-thinking schools. The idea is to empower people to use part of their productive work time to pursue projects they believe are most meaningful for them and for their students.