Growing Your PLN: Meet Catlin R. Tucker

This Week’s Topic in Focus:  Growing your PLN

Each month our Digital Learning Team will feature a person or blog that we feel exemplifies and supports our mission and goals. Our hope is that you find so much value and worth in their work that you add them to your own Personal Learning Network.

Catlin R. Tucker

Meet Catlin Tucker,  9- 10 grade English Language Arts teacher in Sonoma County, California, where she was named Teacher of the Year in 2010.  She is also a  Google Certified Teacher, bestselling author, international trainer, and frequent Edtech speaker, and a blogger.  Catlin’s first book Blended Learning in Grades 4-12 is a bestseller and her second book Creatively Teach the Common Core Literacy Standards with Technology was published in June 2015. Her newest book Blended Learning In Action was published in September 2016. Catlin writes the “Techy Teacher” column for ASCD’s Educational Leadership.

She is active on Twitter @Catlin_Tucker.

Follow her blog at http://catlintucker.com/

Catlin’s claim to fame is she is a blended learning pioneer. Even though no one else in her building is blending, she has had great success in the classroom.  She began experimenting with blended learning by starting with station rotation and flipping, but has moved on to incorporating many different blended models.  In her blogs and books she writes about the different blended learning models and gives functional tips and tricks that you can try right away in your own classroom.

Her advice to teachers that want to start the blended learning journey is this:

Think BIG. Start small.

Be patient with yourself.

Celebrate & learn from mistakes.

Use technology to replace & improve.

Weave together work in  class & online.

Build your PLN to continue learning.

Her YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/catlintucker  has great resources for students and teachers.  Her SAT Vocabulary videos alone have become famous worldwide with over 22,000 views helping students around the globe to study.

We hope you will consider following Catlin’s blog and Twitter feed and check out her YouTube Channel too!  If you would be interested in borrowing any of Catlin’s books see your DLS.  

I can personally say that I learn more from my PLN than any one single professional development.  If you are not connecting with professionals outside your building you are missing out on so many great resources.  No time like the present to get started.  Need help getting started?  See your DLS - Cheryl, Melanie or Kyle.

Contributed by Cheryl Kemper @CherylLKemper