Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the presentation by John Evans on January 6th regarding PLNs as I was in The Gap playing volleyball. However, since then I have been doing some research on PLNs and have found some interesting connections to my own personal and professional life.
A PLN stands for a Personal Learning Network. As teachers, a PLN allows us to connect with people to learn from and share with. The first time I heard about a PLN was in my ITC class last year, and I have been working on developing mine since then. Most people have some sort of PLN naturally. This could include facebook, twitter, the local media, blogs, or whatever else allows a person to connect with someone else to acquire or share information. The great thing about the great technological boom in the last few decades is it allows us as teachers to access and share a lot more information with way more people. For example, you may see a blog post on your RSS feed from a fellow student teacher about a website they have found extremely useful in developing lesson plans in your subject area. This information may help you develop new innovations in your classroom and because of the find, you also post a link on your twitter page and blog so other teachers that are connected to you will also benefit. If working correctly, the whole education world and society as a whole will benefit from the open sharing of information through PLNs because good information will be widespread, while useless and impractical information will die out.
2 comments:
I also wasn't able to sit in on the discussion about PLN's but after some research I determined that I had in fact already started building my Personal Learning Network.
I must admit that many of the applications that I use are sites and tools that have been introduced through Diigo. Diigo is a social bookmarking website that people can bookmark interesting websites that they encounter in their day to day lives. I was introduced to this site last year by Mr. Nantais and I have been following it ever since.
If you haven't checked out a social bookmarking site like Diigo, you should.
You've got some great insights here, keep it up!!
Prior to this presentation I was in the dark about PLNs, but I have a feeling they will become an invaluable resource in helping me teach and in becoming a better teacher. It's fantastic being able to come across new applications that you didn't have to surf for hours to uncover yourself. Not to mention having great suggestoins on how to use them in the classroom as well. Like Blair, I have found Diigo to be a great addition to my teaching. It has added a lot of variety.
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