Personal Learning Network

In this section, I will share interesting discoveries, ideas, and resources to expand my (and hopefully your) personal learning network (PLN).

Creating my PLN

Upon reflecting on the process of creating a PLN, I realize there is a whole world of information at my fingertips. At first, I wondered how difficult it would be to set up all these different accounts and begin to build networks on twitter and Diigo.  Thankfully, it wasn't as tough as I originally thought.  The course-provided PLN videos helped tremendously.  Immediately after setting up all the various accounts, I started playing with programs before really knowing what I was doing. This reminded me of the story Jeff shared in class about his girls not bothering to read the manual for their brand-new Wii when they got it on Christmas morning-- they just started playing with it and figured it out.

Having all this information at my disposal can also be too much at times.  You can sign up for ed chats, follow people, join different networks on such a wide variety of topics and interests.  Even though I am very new to this, I have already found resources for school administration, educational technology, equity and social justice to name a few.

What struck me as odd, however, is that there are very few networks, chats, or other resources specifically covering homeless education.  I'll have to do some more digging; I'm sure once I find a few key people there be much easier to find others.

When it comes to using a personal learning network, the idea of the need to balance time is something that was discussed in class and resonates with me.  As soon as I got home from our first class, I spent the next few hours building my PLN.  While I enjoy doing so, I also need to be aware of the fact that there are other demands for my time.  One key advantage of building this PLN is that I do not have to go out and seek information in which I am interested-- once my network is built, that information can come to me.

Finally, one thing I need to think more about is how to distribute this information to my staff.  I know they would enjoy learning at about some of these resources and using them in their own classrooms.  Maybe we can get to the point where they can create their own personal learning networks.  Before getting to this point, I would like to be more comfortable using this newly-found technology.