Collective Teacher Efficacy

Personal Learning Networks allow teachers to build a strong sense of collective efficacy within their teaching practice. Social Media tools provide the means for world class educators to connect and grow together building powerful learning communities. Current research by John Hattie, a leading education researcher, positioned collective efficacy at the top of the list of factors that influence student achievement (Hattie, 2016). According to his Visible Learning research, based on a synthesis of more than 1,500 meta-analyses, collective teacher efficacy is greater than three times more powerful and predictive of student achievement than socioeconomic status. It is more than double the effect of prior achievement and more than triple the effect of home environment and parental involvement. It is also greater than three times more predictive of student achievement than student motivation and concentration, persistence, and engagement. Read more about this study here.

Pinterest

Great site for discovering and learning about ideas, people, and products. Has a large and searchable database of ideas that can be viewed, tagged, and sorted for quick reference later. Create, add to, and name "boards" that serve as a repository for new discoveries and information you find/save. These boards can be public, for others that follow you to view/learn from or set as private. Millions of followers worldwide that you can connect with, follow, and learn from by viewing what they've discovered, learned, and posted to their public boards.

Twitter

A great "starting point" for teachers who want to use social media to grow professionally. A real-time, micro-blogging social network. Your status update is called a tweet and is limited to 140 characters. When you re-post someone else’s, that is called a ReTweet. When interacting with others on Twitter, you use their handle (@ symbol and their username), called a mention. You can favorite a tweet you enjoy and want to save it. Hashtags (#) are an easy way to tag, sort, and search by keywords, topics, phrases, etc...The key to following people on Twitter is to focus on those whom you want to emulate. Following too many people can result in an overflow of information that can be too much to digest. It’s a learned skill to be able to scroll through hundreds of Tweets for information that is important to you.

Facebook

The world’s largest social media site. Useful for making posts that include written (no character limit), photo, video, and/or tagging aspects. Easy to make connections with others, create and communicate with either public or private groups, post publicly, chat privately, and more.

Instagram

Similar to the idea of Facebook and/or Twitter but, rather than postings being primarily written, posts are heavily centered around photos and brief videos. Posts can be tagged, sorted, and searched by hashtags. Boasts a large network of users that you can connect with, follow, group, and reach out to.

Google+

Worth looking at; particularly if you are a Google Apps for Education school/district . Includes features like Hangouts, Communities and Collections which make it a great place for professional learning and personal professional development. All you need is a Google account to get started. You can post and share just like you can on Twitter but with more characters and more opportunities for extended discussions. In Communities you can curate discussions and topics around a theme as you would like it (if you make your own) or how it has been set up for you. They can be set to private too and are a great location for schools to share in teaching and learning communities. Users can assign people to different circles, such as friends, family, or acquaintances, and see various kinds of activity from the members of those circles. The activity shared by circle members is posted on the user’s homepage, a literal wall of content that is reminiscent of Facebook’s timeline, but with fewer ads. Users can also search on Google+ for specific people, Google+ pages, or posts to find things that interest them.

LinkedIn

Social networking site, primarily focused on providing a platform for connecting the world's professionals. With hundreds of millions of members in two hundred countries/territories around the world, they connect professionals everywhere in every field of expertise to people, opportunities, news, and insights to help them grow. Teachers join in because of its scope of community. You can measure how people are interacting with your site through an engagement percentage that compares the ratio of likes, comments, shares, and clicks to impressions. There is a section to easily showcase your products and services.