PLN- A goal for the future

flickr photo shared by fdecomite under a Creative Commons ( BY ) license

Hi,

This was the part of the COETAIL final course that I have been dreading and it is also the part of the over all course that I knew I was going to struggle with the most- my community engagement. I don’t think there is much point in trying to gloss over this and portray it as a success so I am going to use this blog to reflect on some of my positive steps and set some realistic targets for the future.

Firstly to confirm my lurker status either professionally or personal here is an example of my facebook activity log

Communicating over the internet and maintaining connections of people who I will not be seeing face to face is, as you can see, not my strong suit. Just ask any of my friends who live in another country. This is not something I am proud of and something that I am trying to improve but it is definitely a case of a lot done more to do!

When I look at my twitter activity, I can be happy with some of the connections i have made and the lists that i have joined. I have made some contributions but can acknowledge that these have been inconsistent and not maintained to a good level. I might make twitter my focus for a week and then I go back to “lurker” stage for a while.

However, I have learned a lot from Twitter and have used it this week to try and establish global connections for my final project so I am making some progress.

One area where I do think my PLN and spreading the “COETAIL” ideas is within my own school community. I have taken on a leadership role this year and am the Math coordinator for the primary school. This has been a very challenging position time wise as I am also maintaining my class teacher role but it has allowed me to make more professional connections across different year groups and departments in my school. This has allowed me to spread some of the COETAIL ideas including spreading the use of e-portfolio’s around the school and continuing to ask for Twitter to be made available within the school network.

When it comes to my online PLN, I know that there is a lot of work and developing to done. From completing the course I have enjoyed the blogging aspect a lot more than I thought I would and will definitely be maintaining my blog after the course has finished. I also like commenting on blogs from other COETAILers especially ones in cohorts coming after ours to provide some advice and assistance when needed. I hope in the future to continue to improve and build my presence and connections on Twitter and use this and Seesaw to establish connections between my classroom and the rest of the world.

Goals for the future development of PLN.

1. Maintain COETAIL blog (minimum 1 post per 6 weeks)
2. Maintain involvement in coetail community (minimum 2 comments per 6 weeks)
3. Improve involvement in Twitter (1 tweet and 1 re-tweet per week)
4. Improve connections on Twitter (Follow at least 1 more person per week)
5. Improve global connections to Seesaw (connect blog to three classrooms by the end of the year)

I will reflect on these goals in a blog post one year from now and hopefully there will be a strong improvement.

Cheers

Paul