Category Archives: Social Network

A Very Special #SpedChat


It hardly seems like it’s been over eight months since Deven Black and I hosted the first #SpedChat discussion of special education issues on Twitter.  Since then, the weekly Tuesday night chat (8:30pm EST/EDT; please join us!) has developed a core community of educators and parents, given birth to a wiki of special ed resources [...]

Educon 2.3: Focus Question 3


Moving forward, we hoped that this focus question would get our attendees thinking about where to go with all this once they returned home: What steps / structures can be taken / created to foster improved classroom practice through PLN interactions? I didn’t see any common themes emerge from these answers (but see below and [...]

Educon 2.3: Focus Question 2


What examples do we have of personal learning networks leading to a change in classroom practice? One group in our Educon conversation managed to group all the responses to this focus question into four main categories: Conversations The proliferation of Twitter-based hashtag chats was mentioned in our presentation, and that resonated with our attendees.  #Spedchat [...]

Educon 2.3: Focus Question 1


One question we presented to our Educon conversation attendees was: What are the major barriers (beyond technical fluency) for social-network based PLN’s to become vehicles for transformative professional development? Lots of great thoughts on this, and of the three focus questions, probably the easiest to answer.  After all, if there weren’t so many barriers, everyone [...]

Educon 2.3: From #chat to #do


This past Sunday, I had the distinct privilege of co-facilitating a conversation at Educon 2.3 at Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia.  Dr. Eric Brunsell and I spoke about our* research on how teachers use Twitter, and challenged workshop attendees to consider how to take the benefits, both tangible and intangible, of participating in an online [...]