I recently read two articles: "Don't eat lunch alone"
they are so practical and useful for us teachers in training!
I thought 9 great reasons...was wonderful; each reason is explained in one or two paragraphs so its nice and concise yet very informative. Not yet have I made connections that I feel comfortable using for my teaching benefit so I think that using Twitter to get honest feedback from collegues is amazing!!! I have not done student teaching yet although I am participating in a local high school several times a week, doing observations and helping out in the afterschool program, so I need all of the advice I can get. Networking in this manner, where the character number is limited, provides honest (hopefully!) and direct feedback to whatever question I may pose. I really look forward to using Twitter as an idea's workshop like Laura Walker suggested. Having access to other teachers' ideas about lessons can only assist me to broaden how I perceive and present lessons once I have a classroom of my own.
While I enjoyed Laura Walker's blog, it did not provide information about how to go about finding teachers to follow; this is where Richard Byrne's article comes in. He actually posted two power points to his blog which include practical advice, almost step by step, to follow teachers! This is the type of information I need since I for some reason am not very computer savvy. (Although, I must say that I am beginning to feel like a pro with blogging!!) The focus of this article was developing a personal learning network which I think is an amazing idea. How better to settle into teaching than with support of people who are already doing it?! It takes me a bit to open up to people enough to ask for help with certain things, I feel that this tool would work amazingly well for me, especially while I am trying to gain some confidence in a school as a new teacher.
