PLN

I joined #spedchat, a special education PLN . The topic of the evening was goal setting, which was perfect timing for me, as my own professional and student growth plans were needing to be submitted that same week. By chance, I also attended a professional workshop for art teachers earlier in the day, so I got a large dose of teacher energy, enthusiasm and support surrounding our difficult but amazingly rewarding jobs. It was a good day!

The format of #spedchat worked pretty well, as questions related to goal setting (goals for students as well as for ourselves) were introduced throughout the chat, and people replied to questions by indicating A1, A2, A3, etc, depending on which question they were answering. This definitely made the chat easier to follow.  The chat was moderated by Tonya Taylor, from INIS Special Ed. There was a lot of humor and many thoughtful responses to the questions posed, which I appreciated. I think more of the teachers in the chat were involved with high school students, but that was interesting for me, as I will be seeing several of my 8th graders off to the high school at the end of the school year. 

I enjoyed the supportive nature of the live chat, but I found more useful information in the regular Twitter format. I think the speed of the live chat format makes it harder to add links to content. I did find very helpful information from a contributor of #spedchat, although he provided his link to the info at a time other than during the live chat. The link was to Google Tools for Special Needs, providing details about 21 Chrome Extensions for Struggling Students and Special Needs.

It takes a lot of time to weed through tweets. While I enjoy the experience, I am not sure the pay off is worth the amount of energy required to find the nuggets. Still, it is worthwhile when there is some down time, perhaps while in a dentist’s waiting room!