It All Starts With Your PLN

With this being my first blog post,  I want to dedicate it to everyone I follow on Twitter and those of you who follow me on Twitter.   3 years ago I created a @weltyphysics Twitter for my students to follow.  I was tweeting homework hints and some random physics jokes.  Now back then high school students were not really using Twitter, they were all on Facebook.  Fast forward to the present where most EVERY high school student has a Twitter, and many don't have a Facebook account.  How quickly the times change.

In January 2013 I started to follow some EdTech people on Twitter.  Then I started to seeing more about 1:1, then the flipped classroom, and then it snowballed!  I was soon following tens of educators and started having them (you!) following me.  I quickly realized that other teachers didn't want to see my posts to my students, so I started my own professional twitter @weltyteaching.    I still cannot believe the number of teachers out there who are utilizing twitter for PD.  In fact it has been only in the past 2 weeks that I have participated in my first Tweet Chats and even a Google Hangout.  Unreal!  

I was having some lunch duty PD with another teacher a few weeks ago.  I shared with her my experience of a #flipclass Tweet Chat.   Later that day, I heard she spoke to another colleague about our conversation and exclaimed, "My mind is blown!"  My thoughts exactly.  I also talked to a friend in the banking world who has always been anti-social media.  Even he was impressed with educators use of Twitter.  It was a use of social media he never considered.

My PLN means the world to me.  It is where I found the Flipped Classroom model.  Before January I had no idea this sort of teaching existed.  Now I am 3 months into flipping my physics classes thanks to my PLN.  I have become obsessed with using the iPad in my classroom.  As my high school is not 1:1, my students have been great about bringing their own iPads into class.  To see them creating content with Educreations and Explain Everything has been nothing short of amazing.

I am meeting with 2 colleagues tomorrow to get them up and running on Twitter and to introduce them to the world of online PD.  I should also say they each just received an iPad from our school, quite possibly the first 2 teachers at our school to get iPads.  It is a start!

Thank you for reading my first post, I will use this as a platform to share my teaching practices and experiences with flipping physics and the use of iPads in my classroom.