The 21st Century Personal Learning Network

Photo by Hans Poldoja

Educational institutions in general may well be deemed the birthplace of social networking. For decades, instructors have been meeting with each other over lunch or a hot cup of coffee to share ideas, tips and developments in their professional fields. Students have been seeking out their peers for support and faculty members for guidance and information since the first schools opened their doors. The way in which students and faculty research, collaborate, utilize and share this information, however, is much different than back then. No longer are we limited to the faces and information within the walls of our institution. We literally have access to the world and to all of the ideas, opinions, situations and solutions that those who share have to offer. So how do we gather, organize, utilize and distribute all of this information in an efficient way? The answer is creating and developing a Personal Learning Network using the tools available today.

One of the most effective ways to keep up with developments in your field and to increase the depth and value of the information that you seek is to start building a 21st Century Personal/Professional Learning Network. The best way to begin doing this is to start off small and expand as your comfort level increases. There is so much information available for every possible subject that it can be more than overwhelming. Start by following a blog or two. When you find one that you really like, find others who are also following that blog and see what they are up to. Most likely they are utilizing Twitter or some other form of blogging or micro-blogging platform and you probably have a lot of the same interests. This is where it gets fun! Before you know it, you are following 50 people who are researching things that you are interested in and the information is coming right to you....no need to go searching for it yourself.

I have found that often developments in my field have taken a turn that I never expected or would never have even imagined. This is where my PLN comes in handy. Because I have surrounded myself with professionals in my field, even the most peculiar of developments surface--some of which I would never have thought to even search for.

Along with considering the variety and abundance of information you can obtain with these resources, also consider the number of people you can touch as well. I attended a webinar this week in which one of the presenters said that she had created a YouTube video awhile back to use in one of her classes. She used the video twice a semester for a demonstration and then let it sit on YouTube the rest of the time. She looked at it the other day and realized that it had gotten 100,000 hits. She never imagined that her instruction would reach so many people and it is a concept that is difficult to grasp. There is so much information available to us out there, but always remember that social networking is a two-way street. Share what you know with others for the sake of development within your field.

I think Nik Peachey does a great job of describing the the purpose and importance of a PLN and I have posted part of one of his articles below. The rest of the article can be found at: http://bit.ly/eTvdXm

What’s a PLN, why build one and how?: Part 1

Submitted by NikPeachey on 19 February, 2011 - 16:16

The word PLN seems to have become very popular recently, so I thought we could have a look at what it is and how it works.

What's a PLN?

• Firstly, PLN stands for personal (or professional) learning network. That’s fine but what is a personal learning network and why would we need one?
• Well a PLN is a group of people, any people, that can help you to develop and learn. I think it’s very important to stress that a PLN is people, because so much talk about PLN gets tangled up in technology and websites etc, but at the heart of PLN is the concept of people who connect together to help each other grow and learn.
• The technology comes in because it is a tool that can help you to connect to those people and it can help you process the information you get from those people into meaningful and hopefully useful knowledge.

Why build a PLN?

• Nowadays I’m tempted to believe that anything you need to know or learn can be found on the Internet, if you know where to look, but that knowing where to look can be challenging. As Michael Wesch wrote in ‘A Vision of Students Today’ in 2008 “more than 2,000 gigabytes of new information is being created every second”.
• That’s an awful lot of information to sort through to find what you need, but that’s where your PLN can help. They can point you to the right articles, the best sources of information and guide you along the way, so that you save time and access the highest quality resources.
• For me though, the PLN and accessing useful information is just the beginning of turning that information into knowledge. In order to truly develop I believe you need apply some critical thinking to that information, try to apply what you have learned to your own context and most of all feed what you have learned about the information back into the global community from which your PLN was formed.

How to build a PLN?
So lets get started on the first part of that process and that is connecting to those people.

There are many web based tools that can help you to connect with other English language teachers, but here I’ll start with just 3.

The first of those and probably the most useful is Twitter. Creating a Twitter account is quite simple and it’s free. Just go to http://twitter.com/ click on ‘Sign up’ and follow the instructions.

Okay so now you have a Twitter account, but that doesn’t mean you have a PLN. In order to get that you need to start ‘following’ people’. To follow people you just need to go to their profile and click on ‘Follow’.

Following the right people is very important because you need to follow people that share the kinds of information that you will be interested in.

I wholeheartedly agree with Nik on the usefulness of Twitter. I learn something new and useful everyday from the people that I follow on Twitter. Take a look at the Tweets I follow to the right. You can start following some of the people that I follow as a starting point if you are interested in technology in education. For those of you interested, below is some information about Twitter.

Seven ways to find other teachers on Twitter:
http://bit.ly/2ffoQa

Using Twitter to develop you PLN as an instructor

I can not stress enough the importance of developing your PLN. I encourage you to start today and ask those around you what they are doing to develop their PLNs. You might be surprised at what others are doing. Good luck!