These are precarious and turbulent times. In a normal world, educators can go into their respective working spaces, collaborate with colleagues in person, share stories, visit some neighboring schools in their area, and even attend a conference face-to-face. However, many of these ideas seem foreign at present. Social media can be pervasive and detrimental if left unchecked. However, with discipline and focus, pandemic or not, it allows us to connect with other educators around the globe, imbibe in our niche passions, learn alongside each other, enhance our perspectives and more. These connections pay dividends in our professional and personal growth, allow us to feel more connected to a community, and can help us in times of need for feedback, mentoring, ideas, resources, student mentor experiences, future employment and more. In sum, I think the pandemic has highlighted how important it is to stay globally connected when more local and face-to-face connections become impossible at times. Below, I aim to illuminate how I stay professionally connected to my COETAIL colleagues and beyond. COETAIL Connections One of the easiest ways that I stay connected to my COETAIL colleagues is through Twitter. Sharing my posts/reflections of my learning through the #COETAIL and #COETAIL13 hashtags has helped me connect with not only my fellow Online 13 tribe further, but also past and future cohort members. Being part of the COETAIL Online 13 Twitter list makes it easy to see what others in my "13" tribe are posting, too! Another way that I've stayed connected and collaborated with my COETAIL crew beyond our respective blogs, is through backchanneling on WhatsApp. In courses two and three, I had the privilege to work on collaborative group projects with three other awesome educators in this cohort (Check them out on Twitter: Megan, Danielle and David). To read more about what we collaborated on, check out this blog post on our course two project, and this one for our course three project. WhatsApp allowed us to determine times to video conference together, quickly check in with each other for feedback and more. This casual backchannel platform carried on beyond this project, further strengthening our bonds. We would check in on each other during heated times through the pandemic, share educational resources, and even reach out for support other group members with regards to the unfolding war in the Ukraine. Presenting at Conferences Global conference presentations are yet another way that I stay connected and collaborate with others. Not only is this a nice way to give back to the community, but, as an added plus, presenters often get free all access passes to these events. This, "give a little, receive a lot in return", strategy fills my bucket tenfold as I can learn from and connect with so many wonderful educators across the globe. CogCon 2021 My school is owned by a bigger organization that owns many schools around the world. Each year, they host a united professional learning event called "CogCon". This year, I put my hand up to present in the educational technology strand. This collaborative opportunity allowed me to build closer connections within two other great educators in my organizational professional network (Check them out on Twitter: Tim and Adam), as well as empower many other educators attending the conference globally who attended our session. Click here to see the reach our presentation had! I also documented some of the journey of how Tim and I collaborated on this presentation, here. My relationships with Tim and Adam continued to grow throughout the year as we collaborated further on other projects such as guest speakers for inquiry projects with students and action team inquiries on developing and strengthening aspects of our digital citizenship curriculum. 21CLHK & Toddle TIES Two other international conferences that I presented at this year that allowed me to share my knowledge on various topics, as well as learn from other great educators around the globe, were 21CLHK (21st Century Learning Hong Kong) and, more recently, Toddle's "The Inquiry Educator's Summit" (TIES). Both of these experiences gave me further opportunities to stretch my perspective, develop my professional growth and grow my professional learning network (PLN). Here are two Twitter feeds for both, showing the greater extent of my interactions: #21CLHK & #ToddleTIES. Attached below are some images from these events that I participated in: #PYPchat As an International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) educator, #PYPchat on Twitter gives me the opportunity to learn from and share with others innovative ideas regularly. When I have the time, I do like to participate in the synchronous chats, too. This hashtag has helped forge many of great professional friendships and collaborations over the years. One way I gave back through this community recently was being asked to be a guest speaker for a "Making the PYP Happen Workshop" in the region, offering a mini-workshop of what agency could look like. If interested, here is a link to show my Twitter engagement through this hashtag. I've attached a couple of photos below as well: #PubPdAsia & #AppleEDUchat
Two other hashtags and communities that run regular chats on education and that I've grown tremendously from are #PubPdAsia and #AppleEDUchat. Being honest, I haven't participated in either as much as I'd normally like to, but it's been a busy and trying year. For balance, I couldn't juggle them all and something needed to give a little. I'm particularly looking forward to when we can move to more face-to-face gatherings, which is one of the things I really like about #PubPdAsia. You get to network and meet up with educators in your area having chats on various educational topics over liquid refreshments in a pub in your area! How about you? How do you stay connected? What experiences have helped you grow your PLN over the past year that stretch your perspective, get you collaborating with others and add value to growth as an educator? I'm not sure about you, but I'm really looking forward to a day when face-to-face professional learning conferences are more of the norm again!
1 Comment
4/20/2022 12:53:07 am
Love the numerous opportunities you have seized through this journey. And YES! As you note, it is so important to stay connected in a variety of formats.
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