Learning from Others – PLN

Photo CC – By: Pavlina Rupova

A PLN or a personal learning network is “making connections and building personal relationships with teachers, school administrators, university professors, and experts around the world”. That is according to the 9 step article by Teacher Challenges I read about personal learning networks. I took the teacher approach as I aspire to be a high school English teacher. The article was a collaboration between multiple authors who gave their insight on different steps in the PLN journey. There are multiple ways to build your personal learning network, the most popular being through Twitter and blogs. Twitter gives you the opportunity to collaborate with educators around the world, often in real time. Blogs are another useful tool to build your PLN as they provide useful information often written by educators. They can share ideas, teaching styles, and concepts that have worked for them. I also learning about education Twitter chats, which are scheduled times where people all around the world get on Twitter and discuss an education topic using a hashtag. I want to attend one soon.

A1) They are a critical tool in my personal learning network, they help me extend my network & get out of my thought bubble #PMChat

— Tony Adams PM (@TonyAdams2002) September 20, 2017

This tweet shows an example of a Twitter chat in action.

To build my personal learning network, I will be following different educators on Twitter, as well as, following different education blogs. For my PLN, I am interested in English Education, classroom management, and teaching strategies. Something I strongly believe in is diversity and I made it a point to follow some blogs and Twitter users who discuss this.  I found a blog from a teacher based in Chicago who not only discusses education but also latino issues. As a latino myself, I find these issues highly important as it reflects the possible future of my friends and family. Especially now as our country and the Dream Act are changing. I have started by following a couple blogs and twitter pages but will continue to add as I start to find more resources for my PNL.

In the article “How to cultivate a personal learning network” by Chuck Frey I learned various things about PLN’s, the most important being “pay it forward”. This means you should strive to help others in a similar way they helped you. If someone is to recommend a good bookmarking site to you, you should always be ready to recommend something to them when they need help. I believe this goes hand in hand with getting out what you put in. If you are not active within your PLN, you will likely not get very good resources as you are not putting in the efforts. Strive to collaborate. I believe this is what I will have the most issue with as I am often a reserved person and am afraid of expressing my ideas.

Starting up my PLN will be difficult, but the outcome is sure to be helpful in the future. I am excited to start collaborating with other educators and reading their ideas. I am also looking forward to reading more blogs and jotting down some of my favorite ideas.