What PLP Has Meant To Me
Posted by ejallen on May 3, 2009
Just this past Tuesday, we had our culminating celebration for our PLP cohort, The Archdiocese of Philadelphia Cohort. The cohort included teams from all 20 of our high schools.
Prior to September 30, I was not a web 2.0 guy. I had never tweeted, blogged, facebooked, wiki’d, or ninged. I will admit to being one of those teachers who saw no benefit in social networking. But then PLP happened. I met Will Richardson, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, and Clarence Fisher. At the opening meeting, they had us all sign up on twitter, join the wiki, and join our PLP ning site. And then the fun, and the learning began.
As I ventured into our ning site, the discussions became lively, Many of us found ourselves pushing boundaries and questioning convention. As the ning grew, the conversations grew as well. Then there is twitter.
Like so many others, I started with twitter, not understanding how this could possibly be useful. started to follow a few people that Will, Sheryl, and Clarence were following. Then following some of those whose @name appeared after that RT thing. (Which took me a while to understand was just a retweet!) As I read what was being posted, I was humbled. Feeling way behind despite my years in education, I kept reading, found out the value of reading blogs, and joined some other nings. Clicked on as many ustream broadcasts as I could and tweeted as many things as I could to get use to this new found personal learning network. Thanks to all I have met on twitter for teaching me and sharing.
And now the PLP year is over. But not really. Our school team has set up a ning for our faculty. I have a wiki for my class. I have this blog. And I now have a pretty good understanding of twitter! Here is our PLP wiki.
But most importantly, PLP has opened my eyes to the possibilities for our students. There is so much to learn, so much to share, and so much to change.
Thanks to Will, Sheryl, and Clarence for their leadership, push backs, take aways, and encouragement. And thanks to all of the cohort members. We have established a community that will continue, to share, continue to grow, and continue to learn. The journey has begun. Thanks PLP!
May 29th, 2009 at 4:10 am
I read your post with interest. I’m part of a PLP team in Melbourne, Australia, and we are still in the process of our journey. I can relate to your story, and I can also say that I’ve learned a lot about Web 2.0 applications in a very short space of time. Which doesn’t mean I know a lot, but that I’m trying everything out. Currently I’m organising a year 7 class within a ning, and learning on the fly. I’m looking forward to watching your presentations when I get around to it. You’ll never believe how I found you – not through PLP. I signed up for blip and received a tweet from Kent Manning. I was checking out his profile and looking through his followers, and that’s how I found you! Very indirect, but interesting.
[Reply]
May 29th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Tania, thanks for the comment and for visiting my blog! And I wish you well on your PLP journey. See you on twitter!
[Reply]