Reflecting on my PLN: Twitter

Evidence of Growth  It takes time to build your social network. As a professional, I have struggled with overthinking tweets, due to my professional attitude and wanting to make sure I portrayed myself correctly. However once I built more connections and reached out to multiple people and organization I began to feel much more comfortable. Before you know it, you begin to follow more people and gain more followers. Its extremely exciting to see all the growth!

Check out my numbers! I started by only following 4 people and having 0 followers, and now my numbers are increasing! Although they are still relatively low, I am gradually making meaningful connections!

Making meaningful connections  It is important to make meaningful connections that will be effective for professional development. I take my time exploring different organizations and people to make sure they are aligned with my personal beliefs or what I am wanting to get out of the resource. There is so much out there, that it is necessary to step back and take a good look at who you want to follow. It is hard to know what to search right off the bat, but I find that once you have found one meaningful connection looking into who they follow or who follows them puts me in the right direction!

@doug_gleddie I have decided to follow Doug because I have had him as a professor at the UofA, and he has already taught me so much. As you can see he is interested in quality physical education which connects perfectly with my minor and my passions. Following Doug will help me connect will give me guidance once I enter into my first school. It is also extremely beneficial to maintain a professional relationship with him, as I have already worked/learned from him.

@PEgeeks I decided to follow PE geeks as a wake to connect with like minded individuals. PE geeks is a way for me to connect with professionals from all over the world who are all passionate about physical education. This is a great connection for me to have in order have have support when teaching physical education. Even though I am extremely passionate about physical education, there is so much information out there and so many talented individuals who can help me on my journey.

@ukedchat Lastly, I wanted to explain my connection with ukedchat. I connected with this user in order to help and support me on my future endeavor. I am moving to England to teach in January and I believe that connecting with others via social media will help facilitate a smooth transition. Not only am I going to be a new teacher, but beginning my journey in a foreign country is going to be a challenge. I believe that is is going to be extremely worth my while to put supports in place before I arrive in the UK. Using twitter, can allow me to achieve this.

Contributions - An example of a reply I sent to someone I am following. - This shows me connecting with who is now one of my followers! Yay!

Contributions continued..  I am still working on becoming more active on my twitter account. As of now I have been mostly reading rather than responding or engaging in discussion. This is a goal that I have set for myself, as I believe you don’t get the true experience if you are not contributing as well! I plan to get more and more involved in the future!

Citations  All pictures on this presentation are screenshots that I took from twitter.