Journal 6 "Grow your Personal Learning Network"

Journal 6 "Grow your Personal Learning Network"

 

Warlick, D. (2009). Grow your personal learning network. Learning & Leading with Technology, Retrieved from http://www.iste.org/learn/publications/learning-and-leading/digital-edition-march-april-2009.aspx

There are a lot of different ways in which one can learn to find their PLN (Personal Learning Network). Before reading this article, I was not sure what PLN meant and whether or not I had ever used PLN before. It turns out that I have, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Hootsuite, etc. The article talks about different PLN sources out there and how teachers/students use them for their learning experience. For a long time, we have relied on our families, friends, and colleagues to supplement our knowledge of the world. But with new technology, PLN has given us different resources which one can use in order to find information and be informative. With the different PLN's out there, educators can choose the time and place where to have conversations with one another, via web of course, and they can talk about anything and everything that is of interest to them regarding education. The article mentioned that one of the most useful tools in PLN are social bookmarking and Delicious (now known as Diigo). The interesting thing about such PLNs' is that what you bookmark or research and make add it to your profile, will be viewable by the entire world. It is like having a small community within your computer with people who share the same interest as you do. Since there is new technology and different ways for society to communicate, besides face to face interactions, one needs to learn about the different applications as well as gain and develop skills not only for the use of these tools but also for future references. PLN is merely a destination for information.

For me now, my PLN is Twitter. Now that I have a more basic understanding of how this tool works, I can see that one can find a lot of interesting information regarding school, different technologies, and just important information that one might find of interest.  I think that it is a great way of staying in contact with the outside world and finding out all of their different thoughts and their new ideas.

Q: What is there to do in order to become part of one of these PLN?

A: First of all, as a teacher or student, one needs to have an understanding of what PLNs' are out there. There are so many, such as, Twitter, Facebook, HootSuite, Google, Ning, Second Life. One needs to understand and search what might be the different benefits that such websites can bring to us. If used correctly, one can gain enough information about a certain topic of interest. Each of these different websites require you to become a member of their site in order to obtain access to their different tools. Some may require you to pay in order to become a member, but for most of these web pages, they are free and only require a name and email to subscribe to it.

Q: Should teachers use these networks as part of their lesson plans in their classroom?

A: Absolutely yes. These are great tools for teachers to be informed of outside information that might be relevant to their lesson plans. For teachers, navigating this different web tools opens their minds into new resources and different ways in which they can gather information from outside resource that are interested in the same topic as they might be. Besides, showing students that one has knowledge of these tools can also encourage those students to learn all this new information and for them to want and research as well. It is always a good idea for students to have a basic understanding of where the information the teacher is teaching them comes from.