PLNs

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PLNs have offered all types of professionals a way to stay in touch with global communities. PLN stands for personal learning network. The basic idea of a PLN is that you can create or join a group of individuals that share similar interests and stay in touch with research and happenings within that area. Since PLNs have started utilizing online forms they have increased the reach of their influence. PLNs help professionals become life- long learners in their area of interest.

In the field of education, it is especially important that teachers become lifelong learners. During a writing class, teachers are advised to spend some of their time writing side by side their students. This type of modeling can serve as evidence to their students that writing is valuable and show that they write themselves. This same logic can be applied to learning in general. Students come into class every day and are expected to fill themselves with abstract knowledge. Giving students a model as to what a lifetime learner looks like can help prime them to become lifelong learners themselves.

Staying up to date with peers in the field and sharing and challenging ideas can all be done through PLNs. I think it is imperative that we set this example for our students to see and for our own development within the profession. There are many different forms that a PLN can take. For example, writing in a blog and reading and commenting on other’s blogs create a community that is in constant communication.

Without even realizing, I have been part of the PLN created around my ED483 Technology in Education course at Northern Michigan University. The community is the students within the classroom. Our main form of communications is between our blogs, and during discussions that we take part in online through a university forum. We share our thoughts and opinions and then we also reflect on what our peers have to offer.

To start my journey towards joining some great PLNs , I found a blog post written by a fellow educator, Tia Henriksen. It can be found at https://henriksenlearning.wordpress.com/ . In one specific blog post, she bundles great places to start when looking for elementary education PLNs. What I liked about this post was that she divided it up by grade level so that you can find a good fit based on the grade level you intend to teach. Before I dove into more PLNs, I decided to look around her website. Tia Henriksen includes an about section. This was helpful to get to know a little background information on her life and career. She also includes blog entries, recommended blogs, podcasts, and leadership standards. What I liked about her site is that you can chose to follow it. If you decide to click this option then you can get new blog posts sent directly to your email. This would be helpful for staying up to date because when you see a title for an entry you are interested in you can easily go to it and read more. You can also easily leave comments within her site, which is vital in creating a community.

From Tia Henriksen’s blog I was able to find another resource specifically on technology education. This website is set up by Jason Seliskar(http://www.jasonseliskar.com/) . His site proved to have a wealth of diverse insight on technology in the classroom. It includes helpful advice, tutorials and information about different google apps. I found this particularly interesting since I will be volunteering at Bothwell Middle School in Marquette, Michigan implementing different google tools into classroom curriculum. This website also had a sidebar that allowed you to share the resource with multiple different media’s and to comment on each tutorial you use.

Another PLN that I would like to be part of is the Department of Education office of Education Technology. This branch puts out goals and helpful resources to help teachers successfully integrate technology into their classrooms. You can find them by going to http://tech.ed.gov/netp/ . On their page you can share the resource to your PLN through twitter, facebook, google plus and email. It is easy to use because they have side bars that allow you to skip to featured videos and links to lead you to further resources. This is one PLN that you can gain a lot of future resources from.

PLNs are something I hope to use throughout my career to connect with other like minded educators.