Week 8- PLN Halfway There

Week 8- Post #1

Halfway There

The article by Miguel Guhlin on the Wes Fryer blog talked about the need to develop your Personal Learning Network in order to keep up with the information that is out there and become a better teacher.  The idea that professional development is out there for the taking 24 hours a day, 7 days a week is both awesome and overwhelming.  You no longer have to wait for BER to send out their list of workshops for this year and hope one you need is in your area.  There are blogs to read, podcasts to hear, and videos to watch on any subject you can imagine any time you are free.

After reading this blog and reading David Warlick’s list of pre-requisites for an online PLN, I think I am halfway there.  Guhlin  listed three tools he felt were necessary for getting started; social bookmarking, which I’ve been using, Twitter which I have an account for but still really haven’t explored enough to see the benefits, and blogging which I have been reading lots of blogs but I haven’t made any comments on any outside of this class.  

David Warlick listed computer savvy and internet savvy as the first two items he felt were needed to begin a PLN which I’m feeling more confident about each day.  His third idea was to redefine your role from teacher to master learner and I hadn’t thought about this yet.  It adds new importance to the tasks of following blogs and watching a webinar when I think of it as becoming a “master learner” to become a better teacher.

Although I felt pretty good about having accomplished or furthered most of the ideas in the articles and videos this week, the one place I really fall down is the writing it down and sharing part.  I have been using Diigo but only to mark my own sites, not to look for others who may have found things I’m looking for.  I have been following the Free Technology For Teachers blog for two years but I haven’t once made a comment or joined a discussion.  

I think the main reason I have not done this is because I can do that part in person.  I am lucky enough to have a grade level colleague who is just as interested in all of this as I am.  She is right across the hall.  When we read things that strike a chord we will send each other the link with a few notes.  The next morning we chat about it.   We talk about things like how does this fit for our kids? How does it work in our building?  How can we make it work? 

I know not every person is lucky enough to have someone right in their building for their PLN and this week’s articles were all about online PLN, but I thought that piece was really missing from the discussions.  Each school has its own unique challenges and when you have two or more people working through all the information out there and thinking about how to make it work for that particular group of students, it’s very powerful and it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.