Project PLN November Issue: Sharing issue

I’m a little behind this week (actually this year has been one big game of playing catch-up).  Last week, Nick and I published the latest issue of Project PLN.  It is worth reading through, it gave me just the right jolt of inspiration to tackle some of the catch-up project that have been on the outskirts for too long.  I hope it does the same for you!  You should know, right now I am giving myself giant pats on the back for posting the November issue here BEFORE December.  Sometimes it is the little things that keep you going 🙂

Here in the US we are polishing off the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers.  Luckily those things that we are thankful for linger much longer than the turkey.   You know what we are thankful for?  Our PLN!  You all are truly incredible.  We are so thankful for the ways that you share with us (and educators around the world).  A BIG thank you to all of our contributors for the November Sharing Issue. We wouldn’t be able to do this without you. That is the truth!

This issue is jam-packed full of great lesson ideas(grammar can be fun, Count of Monte Cristo on trial!), helpful techy tips (great Google Chrome extensions), inspiration to keep plugging ahead, and much more!  Take some time to relax and be inspired this week. Consider this issue a big THANK YOU for all that you do for education every day.

We are now accepting submissions for the March Issue. We have decided to label it the “Innovation Issue”. We want to dedicate this issue to creative/innovative ideas in education and in classrooms.  What are you doing in your school/classroom that others should be?  What needs to change?  What adjustments must be made to allow room for this innovation?

If you think you have something awesome to share, please send an email to ProjectPLN10@gmail.com and we will add it to the March Issue. Please follow the guidelines for submissions below so we can quickly and easily load your posts to the site.

Please email the article or link to the article to ProjectPLN10@gmail.com

Please include a small bio that includes your blog, Twitter handle and other information you would like to share. A picture is encouraged, but not required.

It may be a piece you have published on your blog already. A good idea is still a good idea even if you had it a few months ago.

Please submit posts by Monday March 4. We expect for the issue to go live on Tuesday March 12.

Thanks again for all of the support you have given Project PLN over the years.

Have an awesome school year,

Kelly  and Nick

“It’s Project PLN Time, Project PLN Time!”

“It’s Project PLN Time, Project PLN Time!” (In my head, that is being sung to the tune of “It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time, Peanut Butter Jelly Time!”)  There are dance moves accompanying this. Can you tell I’ve been surrounded by 10 year olds all day long? 😉  Are you singing it now?  Good.

Project PLN is now accepting submissions for the November Issue.  This issue is labeled the “Sharing Issue”.  Whenever teachers get together, we quickly start sharing great lesson plans, resources and tools that we have discovered (this is one of the reasons that my husband is not interested in having dinner with a bunch of educators!).  Since it isn’t practical for us to all get together for a edugeeky dinner, we want Project PLN to be a place where people can share their awesome lesson plans or resources with everyone out there.

If you think you have something awesome to share, please send an email to ProjectPLN10@gmail.com and we will add it to the November Issue. Please follow the guidelines for submissions below so we can quickly and easily load your posts to the site.

Please email the article or link to the article to ProjectPLN10@gmail.com

Please include a small bio that includes your blog, Twitter handle and other information you would like to share. A picture is encouraged, but not required.

It may be a piece you have published on your blog already. A good idea is still a good idea even if you had it a few months ago.

Please submit posts by Monday November 5. We expect for the issue to go live on Tuesday November 13.

Thanks again for all of the support you have given Project PLN over the years.

Kelly and Nick

Co-Editors – Project PLN

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Project PLN Call for Articles! #projectPLN #edchat

It’s that time again! Project PLN is ramping up for another year of sharing.  We took a little time off for the summer to re-charge our batteries (and let you recharge yours).

What is Project PLN?  A collection of articles written by members of our PLN (Personal Learning Network-that’s you), on a common theme, all in one place.  Project PLN is an opportunity to get to know more passionate educators, and hear new voices.  It is a chance for us to connect and think and dream together.  We are excited to begin another year of Project PLN in August.

The focus of our August issue is Back to School Tips.  Over the years we have all discovered tips and tricks that help us make the start of the year a little easier.  I am often learning new tips from others and always have the same reaction: duh, why didn’t I think of that?!  This is our chance to share and get some new ideas.  We are looking for articles (this could be a blog post you’ve already written) from anyone involved in education.  You can be a teacher, classroom assistant, principal, hall monitor, superintendent, coach, or Sir Ken Robinson.  We want you to share your best ideas with the rest of us!

We publish everything we receive that follow these guidelines:

  • Email the article, or link to the article to ProjectPLN10@gmail.com
  • Please include a small bio that includes any links to your blog, Twitter handle, and other information you would like to share.  A picture is encouraged (we like seeing you!) but not required.
  • You can send us a new piece or a blog post you wrote ages ago.  A good idea is a good idea!
  • All posts need to be submitted by Friday, August 17, 2012.  We are hoping to make the issue live on August 21, 2012.
  • If you work for an online degree program…no need to submit anything. This isn’t an opportunity to advertise. We won’t post your stuff, so don’t bother!

That’s everything, we look forward to seeing your best tips and tricks for starting a school year.

Thanks!

Kelly and Nick (@ktenkely and @thenerdyteacher)

ProjectPLN Editors

New issue of Project PLN and The Nerdy Cast…

I am totally falling down on the job.  The new issue of Project PLN came out a week ago (two weeks?) and I am just now getting around to posting about it.  Fail.  It is a good thing @thenerdyteacher and I decided to go bimonthly on it.

This month Nick and I shared some of our favorite educational blogs.  Of course our lists could have gone on and on (kind of like my Google Reader feeds), but we managed to narrow it down into a reasonable number.  Nick introduced me to a few new blogs I wasn’t following and I’m happy to say I’ve increased the number of feeds I subscribe to to include them.  Worth the extra reading time!  I hope that some of these awesome bloggers are new to you and that they encourage you and inspire you.  They certainly do that for us!

You can check out the new issue here.

We started out as an every monthly e-zine dedicated to sharing great stories from our PLN with he world around us. After a year, the time constraints of running a monthly magazine took its toll on us as we tackled new challenges and built new schools. We had hoped to move to an every other month format still wanting to bring stories to everyone out there looking for educational inspiration. After some long breaks and deep discussions, we have finally decided that quality is much more preferred over quantity. Below you will find our new schedule effective this year.

The thought of stopping Project PLN was never really an option for us because we just love sharing too much and we want to give others the chance to share with everyone as well. Although we are the editors of Project PLN, we feel this is everyone’s magazine. We are excited to move into a more structured format to all of our readers a chance to submit their ideas and see the thoughts on their PLN here.

We might just make another creepy video for old time’s sake.

Thanks again for all of the support over the past couple of years. We hope you stick around for the new changes.

-Nick and Kelly

Editors – Project PLN

Publication schedule for a year:

Call for Articles: June

Issue 1: August –

Call for Articles: August

Issue 2: November

Call for Articles: November

Issue 3: February

Call for Articles: February

Issue 4: May

In other Nerdy Teacher News, @thenerdyteacher and @tgwynn have a new project: The Nerdy Cast.  How those boys have time for this, I will never know!  I will say, that I will happily sit on the receiving end of their genius.

Call for posts: November Project PLN

 

You are really going to do this? You are going to make me BEG you to share?  If that is what it takes, that is what it takes!  The November issue of Project PLN is about ready…it is just missing one last thing, a post from YOU.

We would be honored to have YOU (yes you) participate in the November issue of Project PLN.  Here is how:

In November, we are having a #SchoolDidAGoodThing issue. We want people to share the stories of how school did a good thing for them. These stories serve as an inspiration to teachers and the community. It is a nice reminder of why we all do what we do. We really hope you will share a story with us about how school did a good thing.  Share a blog post you’ve already written, something you remember from when you were in school, something original you just have to say.  This issue is a great way to say THANK YOU to those who have impacted our lives and to our colleagues who change lives every day.  Lets come together and share all the ways that schools do a good thing each and every day!

As always, feel free to email posts to ProjectPLN10@Gmail.com, check in on us at Twitter @ProjectPLN or say hello on Facebook.

 

A New Year of #Project PLN!!

A new year of Project PLN is here!  Over the summer we (read: @thenerdyteacher) spiffed up the look of Project PLN and gave it it’s very own home.  You can now find a new Issue of Project PLN each month at http://projectpln.com.   I am LOVING the new look and feel this year!  Project PLN looks like a bookshelf and each post contributed by the PLN is a separate item on the shelf.  So cool.

Nick and I started Project PLN last year as a way to get to know the members of our PLN better and to connect and spread ideas.  Many of you have contributed over the past year and I hope that you will continue to contribute this year!  We have some fun topics coming up that I think will spur some great thinking.

We are dubbing the October issue”The Best” issue. We want people to share something that they think is the very best. It could be a lesson plan they really love, it could be a mobile app, it could be a web tool or anything else that you think is the very best and you want to share it with the rest of the PLN.

In November, we are having a #SchoolDidAGoodThing issue. We want people to share the stories of how school did a good thing for them. These stories serve as an inspiration to teachers and the community. It is a nice reminder why we all do what we do. We really hope you will share a story with us on how school did a good thing.

December is going to be EPIC. We have an idea for the December issue that we really love. We have declared December, “The Student Voice Issue”. We want to encourage teachers to have students write about, film, draw, etc. what they want their dream school to look like. Our goal is to have 13 posts with 1 post representing each grade of K-12. We still have some logistics to work out, but we want to get the idea out there now so interested teachers can think about working with their students on this exciting project.

We hope you like this month’s issue of ProjectPLN and we want to hear from you about what we can do to make it better.

As always, feel free to email posts to ProjectPLN10@Gmail.com, check in on us at Twitter @ProjectPLN or say hello on Facebook.

This month’s Project PLN was all about advice on starting the school year. We have a wide variety of advice from amazing educators from all over the world that might be what you are looking for or might be perfect for teachers in your building.

This month you can find the following:

  • Believing in Our Students
  • First Day of School Activities
  • Reflecting Back to Forge Ahead
  • I’m Ready
  • Back To School
  • Ready or Not
  • Personalizing Learning
  • Starting the New Year
  • Classroom Management Stuff for New Teachers

I am always humbled by all of you in my PLN, you are incredible!

Thank you to all who contributed to this issue and please join in by contributing to the next issue!

 

Project PLN is Back! Be a part of #projectPLN this year with a post

Project PLN is on it’s way back! @thenerdyteacher and I met on Skype today after our brief summer hiatus to plan the upcoming year of #ProjectPLN.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Project PLN, it is an online magazine that publishes articles from members of our personal learning network from all over the country and world!  Project PLN is totally free to you but the ideas, inspiration and people you will meet as a result…well that is just priceless.  Each month the editors (that is me and @thenerdyteacher) choose a topic for the next issue.  We ask our PLN (that is you) to share their thoughts in the form of an article (or blog post you may have written).  We publish every post we receive as an article and put it in one convenient location where we can then share with the world.  My favorite part of Project PLN: being introduced to new educators and ideas from around the world.

Last year we used Openzine to host our magazine. We had such and incredible response that sometimes we caused some Openzine fails.  This year we are moving the whole operation to WordPress.  You can find the new site for Project PLN at http://projectpln.com.  We are still playing with the layout and formatting so you can ignore the mess while we are tinkering.

And now to announce your part in all of this: we are accepting posts for the September 2011 issue!  Our theme for the September issue is getting started.  We would love to hear from you about how you get started for the school year.  This could be activities you do with your students, staff development, classroom decorations, or even how you pump yourself up for a new year.  There are so many creative ways to get ready for a new year and we want you to share yours with the rest of the PLN!

Here are the bits you will need to know to be included:

Please send the post to ProjectPLN10@gmail.com

Please provide a bio of yourself to be added at the end of the post, this should include where you are in the world, your Twitter ID if you have one, and a link to a blog, website, etc. if you have one.

Please include a picture with your post (it makes them so much more appealing!)

Please send us your submissions by Friday August 26th.

If you have questions you can always send us an email, contact us on Twitter (@ProjectPLN), or find us on Facebook.

 

I cannot WAIT to share what we have cooked up for October-December.  It is going to be fun!

Don’t hog all of the fun to yourself, share with the rest of your PLN.

Kelly and Nick

Editors-Project PLN

May Issue of Project PLN: New Teacher Reflections

It has been quite a month and Project PLN is a little late to publish.  I want to send out a HUGE congratulations to Nick and his wife who welcomed their new baby boy Leo into the world.  What a cutie pie!  I have no idea how he managed to get any work done after meeting that sweet new arrival- could look at him for hours!  I have been busy starting a school– who knew that was so much work?! 🙂  Today Anastasis Academy was interviewed on a local radio show, you can listen to it here. Nick and I finally got it squared away and are excited to share it with all of you!

In May, we asked new teachers to share some lessons learned and reflections from the year.  I am reminded once again that no matter how many years we are in to our teaching journey, we always have something new to learn.  I hope that as you read reflections from these great educators, that you take the time to reflect on your year.  Celebrate success, learn from mistakes, find a way to grow.

 


projectpln10 – Project PLN May Issue

Create Your OpenZine

 

Call for Posts: May Project PLN #ntchat

For the May Issue of Project PLN, we would love to hear from all of the new teachers out there. You have had a long year and we want you to share your experiences as a new teacher with everyone. Please email your stories to ProjectPLN10@Gmail.com or send us a tweet @ProjectPLN.  Be sure to include your name as you would like it to appear, your Twitter ID (if you have one), and a link to your blog (if you have one).  We look forward to hearing the joys and struggles from the perspective of a first year teachers!

 

March Project PLN: The 21st Century Library

Hot off the press, the March issue of Project PLN is here! This month we focused on reading, we got fantastic posts about reading, 21st century libraries and media specialists.  This is a fantastic issue packed with great ideas and a clear passion for literacy.  We hope you enjoy the March issue and will contribute to the April issue!

For the April issue: Mistakes. We have all made them. Sometimes it is easy to forget about them and move on, but we feel that mistakes are an important part of what makes an educator. We tell students to learn from their mistakes because it will help them grow as a person. Educators are not different. We love to share are greatest success with the world, but sometimes our slips can provide support for all of the teachers out there who think they are the only one to make a mistake.  Share your learning with all of us by sending your posts (remember these can be re-posts you have already written.  Send us what you’ve got to projectpln10@gmail.com


projectpln10 – The March Issue – The 21st Century Library

Create Your OpenZine

 

Once again, thank you to all who contribute and help Nick (@thenerdyteacher) and I pull this off each month.  I feel so lucky to be working with Nick to pull these outstanding posts together into one magazine that I get to share with all of you!  It is fun to meet more of our PLN up-close and personal.