So last Thursday I got a call from the project director of the North Cascades and Olympic Science Partnership (NCOSP), Dr. Carolyn Landel. I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in the NCOSP trainings and summer academies from 2004 to 2007. It was an incredible boost to my learning about Science and how to teach Science (or better yet, how to help my students learn Science).
Carolyn, Dr. Landel, called me to tell about a new initiative she’s in charge of called Washington STEM. Washington STEM, “is a newly-formed nonprofit organization that works to catalyze innovation in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teaching and learning in Washington State.” I thought she was calling to pick my brains about using iPads in Science classes and social networking. Our conversation did go there. I shared some of the things I’m doing and some of the things I’ve been learning from my PLN. We got to talking about blogging and how blogging about what I’ve been learning in my AfL workshops has been so helpful to me.
My sharing soon turned into a pitch for an individual teacher grant from Washington STEM! We came up with an idea that I’ll be pitching to my Math/Science PLC team. Tuesday, Dec 14, I’ll be asking the other seven members of my PLC if they are interested in participating in a grant that will provide them each with their own iPad plus money for training so they can start their own blog and hopefully start using Twitter! This grant study will see how social networking will impact our PLC work as well as using blogging to reflect on our practice and to share.
I would love to share some of the amazing blogs people have written about why they blog and about PLN’s and the power of using Twitter. If you have a link to one of those or if you wrote one can you please share it in the comment section of this blog? I’d really appreciate it. This will be a good way to start showing my PLC the power of my PLN. 🙂
Thank you PLN for re-tweeting and sharing this blog and thanks to those who shared resources for us to read. I got the thumbs up from my PLC to proceed with the proposal! Now it’s up to WA STEM to approve the proposal! I hope the new year brings us good news. 🙂
We’ll find out later in January if we got the grant or not. Here’s the proposal I sent.
