Blog Post # 6

Personal learning networks (PLNs) consists of a wide array of networks where you can go to collaborate with others who share interests with you, personal and professional help, organization of things in your daily life, and a place where all of your roads meet in the world community. That was my own personal understanding of what a PLN is, but it is all of those and much, much more. It seems like the more you uncover about them, the more curious you become about getting involved in your own PLN. With all of the resources that this type of network offers, it easy to discern its importance to teachers. If you combine the philosophy of a PLN with PBL (Project Based Learning), organization will be ten times easier for you and your students. As explained in the video, Welcome to My PLE, starting with a tool like Symbaloo can

help students and track of all of their networks, projects, and world communities in one place, but it is easy to broaden your horizons from there.

I developed a good concept of how to build a PLN from the video, Building Your PLN, in which Steve Anderson discusses the concept of the PLC (Personal Learning Community) as a way to make PLN a network that is simply a large platform on which to direct your PLCs. It takes a lot of work and networking to construct a PLN, so having tools in your kit like Twitter, Symbaloo, etc., can help you to establish a PLN much faster. Everyone in the videos and blogs were specific to point out that it can take a while to get a PLN started, but that it pays off big dividends later on, especially for teachers. Building a PLN from scratch only leads to a much broader knowledge that there is a bigger piece to the PLN puzzle, and reaching out to that community of learners, professionals, collaborators is central to making a PLN work for you.

After reading and listening to the videos for this blog, the first thing I checked out was Symbaloo, in hopes of setting up a manageable place to put my websites and contacts for a PLN (Personal Learning Network). To my amazement, it was far more helpful than I would ever have imagined it would be. Before I knew it, I was a member and putting all of my contacts and websites on it - at least those it didn't already have ready to go for me, which was a lot. Symbaloo allows you a way to organize

much everything in one central location, such as all of your education sites, entertainment sites, social sites, etc. I chose it over Netvibes simply because it was my first choice for organizing my PLN, but both offer some fantastic features for managing a PLN. You should also check out Pinterest, but there are many more that can be encouraging to become part of the PLE (Personal Learning Environment) and all the PLNs that are out there.

It was fun organizing all my icons on Symbaloo and creating my first bonafide PLN. As I wrote before, a lot of the like Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo were given, but many of my own personal were not there. I take pride in making my first addition to my PLN a link to the EDM310 Student Links blogspot. There weren't any good icons to use that made EDM310 jump out at you, so what to do? I clipped Dr. Strange's picture from the blogspot of course, since, at least to me, he epitomizes EDM310 and the future of education. I will do that, eventually, with all of my personal contacts I make over time, since the capability is there, and just in case I have trouble matching a name with a face. I have invited people to join me on my PLN. I am actively making a laundry list of all the things I want to keep track and sites that I want to be a member of, because it will help me when I become a teacher, since it can list other professionals that will give me a "clue" about what it is really like to teach as a career path. I was also able to put all of my banking institutions, social websites, favorite dining spots, best hotel/flight sites, and much more on it initially. It was much easier than I thought, and I will make time over spring break to get more added onto my PLN. For your consideration, I have included another excellent video, What is a Personal Learning Network (PLN), on helping you establish your own PLN. Overall, I really enjoyed the knowledge I gained from this project and I definitely feel it will be a great tool for me to have as a teacher.



Sources: Joseph Johnson, Education Technology Guy, Flying off the Shelf, and Career Tipster.