Category Archives: PLN

#RockBottom

THUD!

I haven’t tweeted or written a blog post since April.  I want to apologize for my absence to all of my followers, and my PLN, particularly everyone in my @EDTechTLC and  the #blogamonth group.  When I started this blog, my goal was to write a post weekly, and it seems I can’t even post once a month! I won’t go into great detail about why I couldn’t keep up, but I will say  I had a particularly challenging school year, and I got stuck in survival mode.  Teaching is tough stuff!

Just Keep Digging

Have you ever heard of the saying, “Just when you think you’ve hit rock bottom, someone goes and throws you a shovel and tells you to keep digging”?  There were many times this school year when I thought I hit rock bottom.  Below I have compiled a list of tweets from some of my funny/sad/desperate moments that occurred during the school year.  Since I was too busy to tweet these gems at the time they were happening, I present to you all of my #rockbottom moments in 140 characters or less; I hope you appreciate my witty take on the ugly reality of being a teacher.   (For anyone interested in becoming a teacher, you might want to read over these well so you know what you are getting yourself into, this could be you in 8 years!)

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A Very Merry Unconference #EDCampPGH

https://sites.google.com/a/msbordner.com/edcamppgh/_/rsrc/1373337990743/config/customLogo.gif?revision=3

A Bit of Background

I first heard of EdCamp from a fellow blogger, Darin Johnston @AnIowaTeacher, in his blog post My #edcampMadWI Expereince.  His blog post had piqued my interest, and I recently had been to another unconference, Pod Camp Pittsburgh, #pcpgh8, with my tech-savvy boyfriend (who is the brains behind this blog operation).  We learned a lot at Pod Camp about blogging, search engine optimization and social media, so I figured trying a education-focused unconference would be a great way to learn more about current trends in education and connect with other educators.

So You Might be Wondering, “What is an “Unconference”?”

Yesterday, I attended the unconfence, EdCamp PGH, #edcamppgh, which is kind of like a professional development conference, except its not!  What makes EdCamp different than a conferences is that class offerings and schedule are completely determined by the participants.  At the start of the day participants jot topics they want to learn more about on sticky notes and post stick them on a piece of chart paper.  Then there is another chart with a table, where the session times are listed down the side and the available rooms are listed across the top. If someone feels they are confident in moderating the discussion they move the topic from the first chart and place it in a time slot and a room.  From there the organizers put the schedule up on the website, so participants can access it from our lap tops, tablets and smart phones.

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Blog a Month Challenge

Blog A Month Challenge

I was recently invited to participate in the Blog A Month Challenge by  Tricia Shelton in her blog post. I think this will be a fun way to expand my PLN, and connect with other bloggers!  Thanks for nominating me Tricia!  Now that I have been nominated I will pass the torch and nominate another 11 bloggers!  I am choosing to nominate 11 people that I recently connected with on Twitter, who happen to teach 1st grade like me!  Continue reading