Professional Learning
Crowdsourcing a Personal Learning Network
Kristen Vogt (she/her/hers)
Knowledge Officer
NGLC
in Philadelphia, PA
Topics
Educators are the lead learners in schools. If they are to enable powerful, authentic, deep learning among their students, they need to live that kind of learning and professional culture themselves. When everyone is part of that experiential through-line, that’s when next generation learning thrives.
Practitioner's Guide to Next Gen Learning
Personalize your professional learning: this summer, we polled NGLC school leaders and supporters of next gen learning to find the very best resources for you.
How are you personalizing your professional learning? This summer, we asked NGLC school leaders and supporters of next gen learning to share their top recommendations for websites, social media, blogs, summer reading, and leaders to learn from. Use these crowdsourced recommendations to build up your Personal Learning Network, one that you can rely on throughout the year.
Today, I’ll share recommendations for websites and social media and the rest will be pulled together in future posts.
A huge thanks to those who contributed to this list—they are named below. Please join in: if you don’t see one of your go-to sources, share it in the comments below.
What websites do you visit?
- CompetencyWorks
- Dwell and Architectural Record “for design”
- EdSurge
- Edutopia “Their tweets are usually the beginning of an Alice in Wonderland-style rabbit hole where I am looking at an article on A and end up reading A, B, C, and D!”
- EdWeek
- Fast Company “for innovation”
- Forbes
- Harvard Business Review “for strategy”
- Getting Smart
- Inc.
- LA Times
- Lives in the Balance “We use Ross Greene’s method of solving problems collaboratively with our high school students, most of whom have significant behavioral challenges. Like Greene, we believe that ‘kids do well if they can’—but it’s wicked hard sometimes to help our kids figure out how they can!”
- Nellie Mae Education Foundation
- New York Times “I admire the increasingly fine data visualization—wouldn’t it be great to be that good with our learning data! There’s often a link to something in the Times in my weekly staff communication.”
- Popular Mechanics
- Scientific American
- Stanford Social Innovation Review
- Students at the Center Hub
- LA School Report
- Washington Post
- EdSurge's weekly blast and iNACOL's daily blast “The most useful weekly and daily summaries for our field in my opinion.”
What social media sites do you use? Who do you follow?
Twitter is by far the go-to social media site for this group. “With Twitter, I’ve found that if you follow a broad spectrum of people and curate the right lists, it's a great window into what's happening and a useful tool for discovering new resources,” said one of the contributors. LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat (“To receive strange missives from my teenager”), Tumblr, Pinterest, and IMDb were also mentioned. FlipBoard and TweetDeck are two aggregator services that contributors mentioned they use to curate content, follow threads, and stitch together their social media networks.
- Hashtags: #competencyed #studentcentered #edreform #edtech #21stedchat #entrepreneurship #designthinking #innovation #chatBVPHS
- @4pt0schools “Their feed has great energy and gives a glimpse into their process and cohorts of innovators.”
- @AdamMGrant “Professor at Penn, Wharton who writes on motivation and management.”
- @audreywatters “A really unique perspective on issues of equity and purpose with regard to edtech.”
- @bryansetser
- @CarriSchneider “Good insights on what I should be reading.”
- @chdrountree
- @chiachess
- @chrislehmann “His feed is always so full of joy and celebration of his students’ successes.”
- @cbertrand88, @amyloyd1, @MariaKFlynn “JFF, they consistently point me in good directions.”
- @CRPE_UW
- @esanzi
- @gbfield
- @HowardLFuller
- @jcasap “Interesting, and a constant voice on diversity in technology, STEM and innovation.”
- @j_santossilva
- @JDPoon “Packs a lot of punch into 140 characters.”
- @joeatmsdf Joe Siedlecki, Dell Foundation
- @John_Merrow “His passion and eloquence shine in any format.”
- @keithAISR
- @kevinhoneycutt “Classroom resources”
- @MattAWilliams and @jessemoyer “KnowledgeWorks, they consistently make me laugh as well as provide valuable info.”
- @michaelbhorn and @ChristensenInst “Disruptive innovation”
- @nilofer “All sorts of 21st century economy/leadership/social media issues from Nilofer Merchant.”
- @PrincipalKafele
- @RebeccaSibilia EdBuild
- @SujataBhatt
- @tceb62 Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO
- @tedfujimoto “A fabulous source for infographics and visuals related to our work.”
- @thinkschools “Alex Hernandez, an early and thoughtful advocate of technology-enabled personalized learning as a key lever for better student outcomes.”
- @tonyhsieh CEO of Zappos
- @tvanderark “Innovation”
Go on to parts 2 and 3 of Crowdsourcing a Personal Learning Network: The Leaders of Next Gen Learning and A Reading List
Thank you to these resourceful next gen leaders for their smart and thoughtful recommendations:
Elina Alayeva, Director of National Strategy, Springpoint
Sujata Bhatt, Founder, Incubator Schools
Sajan George, Founder and CEO, Matchbook Learning
Nichole Husa, Personalized Learning Officer, Cornerstone Charter Schools
Steve Kossakoski, CEO, Virtual Learning Academy Charter School
Leigh McGuigan, CEO and Co-Founder, Vertus Charter Schools
Scott Milam, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Afton Partners
Jonathan Santos Silva, Head of School, Blackstone Valley Prep Mayoral Academy High School
Carrie Stewart, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Afton Partners
Ephraim Weisstein, Founder, Schools for the Future
Rebecca Wolfe, Director, Students at the Center, Jobs for the Future
Kristen Vogt (she/her/hers)
Knowledge Officer, NGLC
Kristen Vogt, senior program officer for NGLC, helps school communities tell their stories of transformation and learn about effective strategies, promising practices, and supportive conditions to transform learning. Her goal is to help school communities lead the way to a more equitable and just future of learning for our nation’s youth. Over a dozen years, she has supported school-based teams of educators, students, and key partners to build their knowledge and skills of leading transformation and has helped connect forward-leaning educators to learn with each other. She also leads the organization’s efforts to center diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice in its mission and practice.
