Many educators in successful schools are involved in their school's professional learning community and perhaps they even collaborate with other schools in the district, city, state, country or beyond, but Innovative Educators also have personal learning networks (PLNs) enabling them to connect with other learners around the globe. If you're new to this world, personal learning networks are created by an individual learner, specific to the learner’s needs extending relevant learning connections to like-interested people around the globe. PLNs provide individuals with learning and access to leaders and experts around the world bringing together communities, resources and information impossible to access solely from within school walls. Personal Learning Networks are a terrific way to extend your knowledge and learning outside your classroom. I recommend Innovative Educators new to PLNs begin as a PLN consumer (1.0 skills) and grow into PLN producers (2.0 skills). Here is some advice to get started.
5 Ways to Begin Building Your Personal Learning Network 1.0
1-Join a professional social network. I belong to Classroom 2.0 (for educators using Web 2.0 technology) and EduBlogger World (for education bloggers) and I launched a social network called The Innovative Educator (enhancing instruction with tech across the content areas). I have found great value in each of them. I am also a member of Linked In but haven't found much value in that as an educator.
2-Pick 5 Blogs you find interesting and start reading them. In addition to my own blog, I follow weblogg-ed: learning with the read/write web, Tales of a Technology Omnivore, The Brazen Careerist, Cool Cat Teacher, Ted Talks, Dan H. Pink. You may want to look at some of these as well as find other Education Blogs or explore the listing of International Edubloggers.
3-Set up an iGoogle account using your professional email and subscribe to the blogs you selected in Google Reader. Caution: Limit your reader to five to start. Keeping up with more blogs will be difficult. I suggest the professional email (the one from your work/school) because it is professional, colleagues can find you, and you can keep it separate from your personal contact.
4-Become a part of the conversation and start commenting on the blogs you read. I invite you to begin here! (If you're following closely you may note this is actually PLN 2.0 tip thrown in for those who are ready for a head start, and because I'd really love to get to know my readers through comments here).
5-Join the microblogging phenomena by reading Tweets at Twitter. Start by selecting 5 well-known Edubloggers to follow and watch all the great stuff they have to share. You'll learn a lot in minutes that fit into 140 character sound bytes. I'd recommend starting with
So get to it and start building your learning network. Join a social network, subscribe to blogs, comment and Tweet. If you do, I promise you will learn a lot. Once you do, I encourage you to come back here and share your experience by leaving a comment.
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Personal Learning Network Tool for further investigation
Your PLN - A website designed to introduce the idea of what a PLN is and what it can bring to your professional life as an educator.
How’s Your PLN? from the Ramblings of a Professional Learning Community blog.
8 comments:
Simple guidelines are what teachers who are just beginning to use these tools need. Your post is great. I'll share it with teachers. Thanks.
Thanks for the organized steps. I'm writing a post now for my teachers to encourage them to develop a PLN and found your post very helpful--actually almost exactly what I said except I'm following John McCain on Twitter.
These are helpful guidelines. Thanks for pointing out the need to evolve from consumer to producer. I have learned over time that the vitality of my PLN absolutely depends on my willingness to contribute content -- such as this comment ;) -- as well as consume it.
This was a very helpful post. I am new to the whole PLN idea. Your post will help the teachers in my district have a better understanding of what a PLN is, and how they can get started. Thank you.
nice post
Nice post. I know it's a list of 5 things to do, but I can't help but add a 6th thing - become an active social bookmarker. I especially like Diigo - it's a great space to connect with like minded educators and share and compile resources in one place.
@Alyssa ... great point!
And Lisa, this is such a helpful post! Belated thanks for pulling this together. It's going right to the top of my page of resources on this topic.
@Alyssa R. Thank you for that addition. I agree and encourage others to share ways they are building their PLNs. Soon enough it will be time to write "5 More Ways to Develop Your PLN."
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