In addition to the formal professional learning opportunities and requirements, educators also engage in self-directed professional learning experiences both in and outside of their work environments. Self-directed informal experiences may include participating in social media feeds or reading a book or paper to support the teaching experience. Informal, job embedded learning opportunities such as discussions with fellow colleagues, sharing lessons plans or requesting feedback from students can also support an educator’s learning experiences. Many teachers also participate in more formal approaches of self-directly professional learning such as organizing a personalized learning network to track and build on their professional learning experiences.

Personalized Learning Networks

Online tools and social media have sparked new opportunities for educators to participate in self-selected, professional learning opportunities and to build their personalized learning networks (PLN) and to collaborate with peers. PLNs may include professional learning groups (online and in-person), COPs, listservs, blog subscriptions, newsfeeds and social media tool such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pintrest, Ning and Edmodo.

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  Lesson-Sharing Sites Raise Issues of Ownership, Use

  This article discusses lesson-sharing sites, key sources for common-core related PD, and the issues with ownership. “Say you’re a teacher and you’ve created a bang-up lesson on how to teach fractions on the number line. Everyone in the faculty room loves it. Fellow teachers are begging for copies. Your principal suggests you post it online […]

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  Professional Learning in the Learning Profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad

  National Staff Development Council

  This report provides an overview of professional learning and includes examples of formal and informal professional learning opportunities with some research regarding the effectiveness of self-directed learning opportunities.

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• Teachers Guide on Creating Personalized Learning Networks

  Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

  This web page provides a general overview of PLNs and multiple resources for educators related to PLNs.

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• Top State-by-State Twitter Chats

  eSchoolnews

  This article provides an overview of statewide Twitter chats related to education technology.

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From Policy to Practice

Sponsored by the Indiana Department of Education, the hashtag #INeLearn is used for both asynchronous sharing daily, as well as a synchronous conversation (TwitterChat) every Thursday night. The #INeLearn Chat Blog documents the topic schedule and moderators for these Twitter gatherings.