Teachers and Social Media - Also it's time for bed

 Saturday night... here I am writing my second blog post of the week. Everyone in my house is already sleeping soundly in their beds. This blog post is the only thing standing in my way of that... 

Tonight I read through, "Categorising teachers’ use of social media for their professional learning: A self-generating professional learning paradigm" To learn a little bit more about how teachers are using social media for their professional learning. I think especially with COVID we all saw how online resources really took off. Many teachers were having to come up with ways to teach online. Thankfully all the online resources it's created increased accessibility for teachers to go online and connect. The article suggests all the following social networking sites, "Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, TeachersPayTeachers, Twitter, Google Plus provide environments to profile oneself and one's professional life, to express ideas, to share resources, and to connect with colleagues unconstrained by time or place. As a result, notions of professional development are changing, not only for teachers but also for many skilled workers and professionals" (Prestridge, 2019). There are so many places to share ideas and what is working in their own classrooms. I think it's a wonderful thing! I'm not a teacher, but there have been so many times when I've gone on TeacherssPayTeachers, Pinterest, and even Tiktok to find ideas for my program. I've been able to find some really neat things!

I think it's pretty clear why teachers are heading to social media for their professional learning. WHo else is the best to learn from than other teachers? 

Reference:

Prestridge, S. (2019). Categorising teachers’ use of social media for their professional learning: A self-generating professional learning paradigm. Computers & Education, 129, 143–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.11.003