Just a few days ago, Andrea Hernandez (edtechworkshop) and I had a conversation about our Personal Learning Network.
A “working definition” by David Warlick says that a Personal or Professional Learning Network:
involves an individual’s topic oriented goal, a set of practices or techniques aimed at attracting or organizing a variety of relevant content sources, selected for their value, to help the owner accomplish a professional goal or personal interest.
As I am working on various projects at school (A Worldwide Audience for Six Year Olds? and Jewish History Fair), where the presence of my PLN played a mayor role, I can’t help but wonder, if using and “showing off” these connections to students and other teachers, does not shed a “false” light on “reality”.
In order to disseminate student work, like
and get them an audience for
- global awareness
- increased motivation
- and the value a network can have as a source of information & resources
you have to have an active PLN to work for and with you.
As Steve Dembo (Teach42) points out in one of his recent posts If you tweet, will anybody hear?
In the effort of attempting to demonstrate how wonderful, simple, powerful and dynamic it is, we make it seem much more effortless than it really is.
[…]
the fact that it takes TIME and EFFORT to gain a few hundred followers. And without having a critical mass of people to message out to, your odds of getting a response from a general tweet are VERY small.
Steve is absolutely right. It takes time and effort to blog, tweet, share and disseminate. Are we making newbies or others who we want to introduce to the value of a PLN look through rose colored glasses?
Seeing the World through Rose Colored Glasses
Some of us are expanding and growing our PLN through blogging, twittering, skyping and speaking at local, state, national and international conferences. In consequence, we are able to create projects, collaborate with global participants solicited through PLN contacts and disseminate results to get feedback through our globally read blogs. I would not be able to do a lot of these above mentioned projects, at least not to the same extend nor with such a far reaching response/audience), without the always willing participant of my PLN.
Will Richardson even compares creating, maintaining, growing and working with and through Personal Learning Networks to a literacy.
… the literacy becomes how do you build these [Personal Learning] Networks? How do you flourish within these networks? How do you find trusted sources within that context?
[…]
You have to be able to engage in those conversations. You have to be able to find those other people who are producing content or who are engaging in their own kind of conversations that you are interested in.
It takes time… it takes dedication to build a network… it takes perseverance to not give up when no one responds to your first (second or third) shoutout.
Building and Maintaining a Personal Learning Network
The conversation, Andrea and I had started, about PLNs took a turn by asking, if we could expect every educator to dedicate that time and effort into building AND maintaining such a PLN?
Is it realistic to expect every teacher to create, be part of AND nourish a PLN? A network that consists of contacts that would allow them to expose their students and their work to a global audience, experts and collaborators? A network that models for students the possibilities of connected and collaborative learning?
I wonder if every school should have a a position that is dedicated to search for, find, grow, nurture and provide a far reaching network of contacts to bridge that gap? The person in that position would be connecting teachers,  scout curriculum related projects from around the world to get involved in, find communication and collaboration partners and put them in contact with their colleagues and students.
A Learning Network- A Give and Take
That person would be responsible for creating a SLN (School Learning Network). I don’t mean a Learning Network among people who work at the same school. I am thinking of someone in charge of nourishing a Learning Network for all classes, teachers and students at a school, with their interests in mind.
Such a person could be in charge of sharing resources, growing potential collaboration partners, being available to help others via video conferencing, survey participation or collaborative assessment and in return be able to solicit expert advice, receive authentic feedback and harvest resources to distribute among colleagues and students.
A Learning Network is built on a give and take. You get out of it what you put in. What if that becomes the responsibility of one person or a small group of people at one school in order to benefit the learning experience of everyone?
[email_link] [print_link]
Great reminders here! Also helps those of us who don’t yet have a following/large PLN, feel better about where we are in the process.
Thanks!
Great post! Here is a ning devoted to sharing exemplary stories and questions related to personal learning networks within an educational setting – http://studentpln.ning.com/
I’ve followed your Tweets for about a year and always find new ideas and outlooks! Thank you! The edtech PLN on Twitter is indispensable to me at this point, though being a West Coaster, I do wonder if my 9+ PM tweets can be helpful to others. So, I’m trying something new out here – a PLN of local K-8 tech teachers with introductory face 2 face opportunities! Our local teacher development center, BATDC, is hosting two full days for interested folks to gather in my lab to meet each other and develop curricular projects. Can’t even express how excited I am to see what we can do together! Part of my work with the group will be to encourage continuation of our mutual support through social networking. A PLN that feels like home?
I like your idea to have one person in every school create a SLN (School Learning Network). My website, Cybrary Man’s Educational Web Sites which originally started as a Middle School Library site ten years ago, served a similar purpose. I gathered educational sites in all subject areas for the students, parents and teachers in my school. Teachers were so busy that they did not have the time to do that. I originally had on each subject page the call letters and titles of the books that I had on that area of study.
To me a PLN is a teacher’s personal Professional Development network.
So, since you asked… ;0)
I think it is realistic to ask this of every teacher. More, I wonder if networked learning shouldn’t simply be a part of the school culture, the way we do our business in general rather than a position. Somehow, we’re going to have to make it a seamless part of the curriculum, one that every teacher practices and models. And, we’re going to have to prepare teachers differently, obviously. While it might be good to have a resource person along those lines, my fear would be that we’d pass on the personal responsibility of figuring this stuff out to that person.
@Will
I agree with you that networked learning should be part of every school culture. Realistically… I would even be happy if ANY kind of continued learning from the part of EVERY teachers would be present in a school culture.
The point I was trying to make though was about building AND maintaining a PLN which allows for bringing in experts, dissemination and receiving feedback from connections, takes (a lot of) time. I LOVE to spend MY time blogging, tweeting and building professional connections around the world, but… can it be expected from everybody else too? There are fabulous teachers out there with completely different talents and interests that I have. Can I expect them to stop spending their time pursuing their interests and specialties in order to blog, tweet and grow a PLN? There are only so many hours in the day. All of us can’t have the same interests and be enthusiastic about the same things.
I share your fear that teachers might pass on personal responsibility to a resource person instead of getting involved themselves.
I wrote about that same worry in “Interested? Supported? Let’ Move on to Taking the Reins” a few weeks ago.
My questions still remains… If there is at least one person at a school who takes the responsibility… without having a full teaching load…of creating a school learning network… a person who has the skill, the motivation and is “literate” in moving around these learning network platforms… can at least more students benefit from/through the advantages a PLN can offer?
I am very glad to be a participant in your network. Here something I wrote a while ago on the topic. It has a link to something Stephen Downes said that you may be interested in.
http://doctoralconversation.blogspot.com/search/label/Professional_Learning_Networks
@Nancy
Thank you for the link to Stephen Downe’s presentation. Another great resource for Twitter newbies and other educators just getting started with their PLN.
Here is yet another resource: Twitter for Educators (basics and PLN)
http://www.slideshare.net/Bhupesh/twitter-for-educators-2344887
Our new teacher registration process requires us to complete a certain amount of professional development, yet does not allow teachers to partake in this development through their PLN or their own professional reading – at this point in time, at least around where I am, there is still too much of a focus on ‘real life’ Professional development, rather than using that time, money and energy to allow teachers to learn from the world at large.
Without PLNs being acknowledged properly, we cannot require teachers to foster them