Personal Reflections on My e-Journal Process ~ Where am I at Now? - Journal Entry #13

I found the work of seeking out a PLC, that fits my professional context of practice to be complicated. The key to success was in devoting ongoing time to actively and consciously engage with others towards a shared purpose. The group that I joined, in such a short amount of turn around time is the Higher Ed Learning Collective and I have realized that to make a deeper connection and to receive and give better contributions, this requires a long term commitment and investment in time.

Through this short period, I was trying to figure out the best way to engage, by sending posts, sharing materials/articles, or through direct messages. In such a short amount of time, I could not realize the true impact of a PLC as noted in Watson's reading:

A PLC is a "group of people sharing and critically interrogating their practice in an ongoing, reflective, collaborative, inclusive, learning-oriented, growth-promoting way’ (thereby presenting us with another long list of essentially contestable concepts), the key purpose of which is ‘to enhance teacher effectiveness as professionals, for students’ ultimate benefit’ (Stoll et al. 2006, p. 229 as cited by Watson, C., 2014, p.19),

The content and discussions are authentic in that there is no script and participants are responding through their own experiences and schema. 

Part of my criteria for selection was to find resources for online learning; the discussions in the Higher Ed Learning Collective group have been highly focused on tools, pros and cons and what works best in what context and since this has been an active community since March of 2020, there are many discussion threads to sift through. Engaging in the this learning collective through the Facebook Platform left me underwhelmed. I also see that it uses the LinkedIn platform and then realized that it is also has a digital presence on Twitter and WOW what a difference! In a matter of minutes I was able to sift through so many posts, information, resources and discussions. There was no need to wait for post approval, as in the FB platform and it allowed for easy access to communicating with others in this group.

As I continue to engage in this PLC I anticipate how I might connect my ideas, views and course learnings of educational philosophy, curricular designs, planning, instruction and evaluation into the conversations on the platform. I have shared my google form for feedback with this Twitter group and look forward to additional discourse around my learnings in this course.

Resources:

Watson, C. (2014). Effective professional learning communities? the possibilities for teachers as agents of change in schools. British Educational Research Journal, 40(1), 18-29. doi:10.1002/berj.3025

Blitz, C. L. (2013). Can Online Learning Communities Achieve the Goals of Traditional Professional Learning Communities? What the Literature Says. REL 2013-003. Regional Educational Laboratory Mid-Atlantic.