Journal 7: My Personal Learning Network

PLN's: A little bit of everything!

As technology advances and changes, people have the opportunity to interact with others across the globe who share similar interests. A personal learning network (or PLN) is an online community of people with the same interest who can learn from each other through different mediums. There are many avenues in which someone can use a PLN. Personally, I used Twitter, Diigo, and The Educator's PLN (a digital discussion forum) A PLN will help me as a teacher to develop contacts throughout the educational world. It will allow me to get answers to education problems from outside my immediate circle. I can also use it to become more aware of the changing use of technology in the classroom.


 Twitter is a social networking site that also makes for a great PLN tool. Twitter allows users to send short bursts of information to their followers, and using common tags, allows users to have discussions about specific topics. For me, Twitter is the PLN tool I have come to use the most, as it is easily accessible and user friendly. My Twitter PLN consists of: Lisa Dabbs, Steven W. Anderson, edutopia, Tom Whitby, Eric Sheninger, as well as my fellow classmates. I chose these individuals because they seemed to have a wealth of good information to share with their followers. I have already learned more about the teaching profession and the impact technology has on it from following them. These people have also been key players in the different chats available on Twitter. I participated in one edchat on April 3rd (this morning) at 9am. The topic was administrators and their role in the educational world. From the posts I read, I could sense that the teachers felt that the admin were out of touch with technology and the classroom. Many posed questions asking what it would be like if administrators actually spent time in the classroom. Some users pushed for more admin to start creating PLN to connect with teachers and fellow administrators. I enjoyed reading the tweets and learning from more experienced teachers. Edchat provided a platform in which I could pick the brains of teachers that I normally wouldn't have access to.


 Diigo is a PLN tool that allows a user to save helpful websites to an online library which can be shared with other Diigo users. The benefit of bookmarking with Diigo is that the information is stored online so that it may be accessed wherever the Internet is available. Additionally, users can search the Diigo community library for articles containing information they are looking for. I have been using Diigo to bookmark interesting articles people have posted on Twitter, as well as websites I know I will need to remember for future assignments. I chose to follow people who were active on Diigo and shared a passion for education like I do. I follow Scott Shelhart because he posts regularly with information pertaining to education. I chose to follow Kathy Blades because she is a media coordinator at a middle school, and I would like to see what her job looks like. I chose to follow Kelly Hines because she does professional development for teachers, and I feel that she will provide me with wonderful resources for my PLN. I am following Stacey Isenberg because she is heavily involved in bringing technology into the classroom. Lastly, I chose to follow Tom Whitby because I follow him on Twitter, so I know he provides great articles. I bookmarked 3 articles as well, to increase my knowledge of PLN's. One I tagged, "The A-Z Dictionary of Educational Twitter Hashtags", will help me to use Twitter to its full advantage as a part of my PLN. Another article, "23 Resources about Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) : Teacher Reboot Camp" provides 23 resources to users so that they can understand and build up their PLN's. Lastly, I tagged "The Innovative Educator: 5 Things You Can Do to Begin Developing Your Personal Learning Network" because I am still in the beginning stages of my PLN and I feel that this article will help me develop my PLN.


 I chose to join The Educator's PLN, a digital discussion forum because it has a large number of resources available for me to draw from. The Educator's PLN provides professional learning opportunities in a multitude of ways: through forums, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc. I chose to read one blog post about cell phone use in the classroom. The blogger is an advocate, stating that if we teach students how to use cell phone technology to their advantage in the classroom, they will learn so much more. The idea that cell phones are distractions is not a strong an argument as some may think. I have had a range of teachers from those who abhor cell phone use in the classroom (common) to those who embrace its proper use (fairly rare). However, when I am able to use my cell phone to enhance my learning the classroom, the material becomes much more relevant to me, not to mention the fact that I am able to save what I have learned and access it outside of the class.