A PLN, or Personal Learning Network is what an educator can utilize to expand their chance to both share and receive useful knowledge and tips relating to education. It is the group of people that you engage and exchange information. PLN's have been around forever and before the emergence of technology would consist of friends, family, and co-workers. While these people can still play an important roll in ones PLN, most PLN's now, are usually created online with people from all over the world. In my PLN, I use tools such as twitter, a social networking site, Diigo, a social bookmarking site, and the educators PLN, a digital discussion forum. Creating this PLN will help me in many ways as a teacher. All of the tools which I use in my PLN allow me to connect with educators from all over the world and get tips, ideas, advice, and access to interesting and useful articles or journal entries. All of these are ways to help me become a better resource to my students, and as a result, a better teacher overall.
One of the tools in my PLN, twitter is something that I initially was 100% against the use of. However after taking part in an educational chat, I can say that my mind has changed, and I can not only understand why people use it, but that I support it's use in a PLN. I participated in a chat for fourth grade teachers called #4thchat on Monday at 5pm. The topic of the day's specific chat was the best way to rearrange classrooms to impact learning. While this is a topic that I have previously thought of, taking part in this chat really showed to me the importance of having a PLN and using twitter as a tool in it. The topic of classroom arrangement was something that I had not put a lot of previous thought into. However after reading the various comments and suggestions people had about it, as well as the answers they provided to the questions I asked, I was able to have a better understanding of its importance, and even began to think of ways I may arrange my future classroom. I now have ideas I may have never thought of before such as desk and chair alternatives for students, seating arrangement, and not even having a desk as a teacher. In my twitter network, I follow fellow classmates, an instructor of a class I have, and people who I found interesting and possessed a wealth of knowledge from the #4th chat which I took part in. These people are all included in my network because they can all provide me with different insight on the similar topic of education.
Diigo, another tool in my PLN allows me to find groups, people, and articles on topics I am interested in, and like twitter, I can follow people who share similar interests, and get access to things which they found to be interesting and useful. On Diigo, I currently follow five educators of different grade levels, location, and specialty. This allows me to benefit from the wide array of their interests and what they find to be of interest. However they all have in common the fact that they use technology in their teaching and they have all included Diigo as part of their own PLN. Through both personal searching, as well as referring to articles tagged by those who I follow I have found useful groups which contain many articles I find to be of great interest and use. I have tagged these groups with the tag PLN so that they can be quickly referenced. The things which I tagged PLN are groups which I feel will be a great additional tool in my PLN. These groups include things such as "Best content in twitterteachers", "100 ways you should be using Facebook in your classroom", and "community library for social media education" among others. I know that these are all resources which I can use to expand and improve my PLN. Things like twitter and facebook are so widely used, that gaining knowledge on how to make them part of your classroom, or ways which they can help one to become a more valuable educator is something that should be pursused. Diigo allows you to not only pursue that information, but also makes it easily accessible.
As mentioned earlier, joining a digital discussion forum is also a great way to expand ones PLN. I decided to join the forum The Educators PLN. This site has a great selection of videos, articles as well as providing those who join a chance to join groups, take part in discussions, and keep up to date on educational events. The video that I watched on the website was only one minute and five seconds long, but I felt spoke volumes to so much about what is going on in the current teaching world. The video was an interview with famous actor Matt Damon, and his mother who is a teacher. The interviewer asked questions which reflect on many of the misconceptions placed on educators such as no incentive to be a good teacher, and the fact that teachers have job security, where actors don't. I found it interesting that this thought process runs so rampant and so many people are misinformed about it. Interestingly enough Matt Damon is actually Harvard educated and effectively shut down the notion that the interviewer suggested. He brought up great points that I feel every teacher could get behind, stating that a teacher wants to teach because it's what they love to do. While this may not be the most groundbreaking of stories, I like the fact that someone in the spotlight such as Matt Damon rejected the ideas presented as it will expose a wider audience to it. Plus, his mother still teaches, when presumably she could afford not to as a result of her sons acting career. However just as Damon stated, you teach because you love it.
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