Feb. 10 2014 - Personal Learning Networks

To be perfectly honest, I had never heard of PLN's before taking this course.  I wondered if it was something I already did or had in place but I just didn't know it by this name.  Well as it turns out I discovered, quite sadly, I do not have a Personal Learning Network.  I suppose, if I count my colleagues in my Math Department at my school and other math teachers in my School Board who I stay in contact through emails and professional conversations, I do have a sort of low-tech Personal Learning Network.  However, I am afraid I do not have an elaborate online learning network. 

After reading the various articles and watching the many Youtube videos on Personal Learning Networks, I now have a much clearer understanding of what a Personal Learning Networks actually consists of.  From my understanding a Personal Learning Network is a virtual network set up online that connects an individual with a particular interest, to people with similar interests, and to many other sources of knowledge on the web, such as experts in a particular field, media sources providing articles or videos on the desired area of interest.    A Personal Learning Network can bring people together to brainstorm ideas, exchange knowledge, discuss activities, solve problems, deliver advice and stimulate professional growth.  The real power of the PLN is that the connections to people within the network, all have connections of their own.  This will grow the connections of an individual's PLN exponentially.  The amount of knowledge that a individual with a well connected Personal Learning Network would be staggering and would draw from sources all over the planet.  This would be a great exercise for my grade 11 Functions class, who study Exponential Functions.  Below is an illustration of how quickly the connections of a PLN would grow with each person in the network having only 5 connections each:

 

It is easy to see that the network connections can grow very rapidly in a hurry.   Here is an example of an elaborate and well connected Personal Learning Network:

(Source URL:   www.onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/how-to-create-a-robust-and-meaningful-personal-learning-network-pln/)

For somebody who doesn't have a Personal Learning Network this is very intimidating. However, it doesn't have to be this complex.  I found a good website providing tips for building your Personal Learning Network.  The web site is http://www.inspiration.com/blog/2011/03/quick-lesson-tips-for-building-your-pln/.  They also provided a good starting model for how to set up a Personal Learning Network that nicely illustrates the framework of a strong PLN:

(Source URL:   www.inspiration.com/blog/2011/03/quick-lesson-tips-for-building-your-pln/)

Regardless of the size of a Personal Learning Network, it is important to filter the enormous amount of information available on the web and to archive that relevant information into collections locally.  One way I discovered to do this effectively is using technology to support your PLN.  I found two really good examples of media technologies that filter  the "noise" of the web.  They are Google  Alerts and Hootsuite:

Google Alerts   A tool for monitoring the web to identify information of interest.   Within your Google account, you set up a search query and Google Alerts are emailed to you informing you of the latest  results (news, web, etc. based on your query.  It is a "set it and forget it" tool.

Hootsuite   A third party  application for filtering Twitter feeds.  It manages your Twitter streams into columns as shown in the image below.  The Home Feed column  is the basic Twitter stream of who you follow on a regular basis.  The Mentions column are the people following you.  The next column, Direct Message are the Tweets directed to you.  There is a Sent Tweets column.  You can also set up more columns containing hashtags which allows anyone in the world to participate in a conversation related to a topic of interest.  The user then sets refresh frequencies to allow for the filtering of all of the millions of Tweets that are out there.

 (Source URL:  www.ccimtechsupport.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/304/69/manage-your-social-media-networks-on-one-easy-platform)

After watching many videos on Personal Learning Networks the one I enjoyed the most was Will Richardson's key note address at the University of Indiana.   When I first came across it I noticed it was quite long (1 hour) and thought I would just watch part of it.  However, the speaker was so entertaining and his information very interesting that I couldn't turn it off and watched the entire video in one sitting.  If you can spare some time you should really check it out.  I included the video clip below.  You won't be disappointed. 

(Source URL:    www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKnRbhtyjcQ)