Do You Have a Personal Learning Network?

When I first began teaching, there was no such thing as a mentorship program in Virginia Beach. I was on my own. But that was okay because I love teaching, and I like doing my own thing.

I stayed that way for a bit too long. I had an attitude (common among many educators) that I wanted to close my classroom door and just have everyone else leave my kids and me alone so we could learn.

Now I realize that I should have then, and need to now, network with others so that I can learn even more. You know how it is when a baby first begins to walk, and suddenly you have to move items to a higher place so that he or she can't reach them? Babies/toddlers are so curious and want to learn as much as they can about everything around them.

Well, I've never stopped being that way. (Maybe that's why my nephew insists that I'm just a kid.) I want to learn as much as I can about as much as I can.

A great way to do that is to develop a personal learning network (PLN). Sometimes when I walk down the hall where the administrators' offices are, I hear them calling out questions to each other, or at least to the one next door. That's part of their personal learning network.

But now with the interactive world wide web, we can develop PLN's that include people from all over the world. I have begun to network with people from Maine, from Australia, from the UK--all over. And I learn and learn.

A little over a year ago, I was introduced to Twitter. Honestly, I thought it was dumb. I'm a very private person, so why would I want to post what I'm doing every five minutes so that lots of people could see that? I have since discovered that I can learn a lot about educational technology from networking on Twitter with leaders in the ed tech world. And then I can add their blogs to my RSS reader (Google Reader), and I can join social networks that they've created or already belong to.

And I can learn and learn and keep learning.

I know the phrase "social network" scares a lot of people in education. However, there are a lot of educational social networks that you can join. I think I belong to about five so far. (Check out Ning.)

Here's an example of how my PLN has grown. When I first began using Google Reader, I found the blog Free Technology for Teachers just by doing a search in the reader. I commented on a few of the posts, and then I communicated with the author on Twitter, and then networked with the author on Facebook. You see, social networking is not just about looking for a "hook up."

That experience led me to many other leaders in educational technology, and I am learning more and more from them. Yes, often it is hard to keep up. But it's worth it.

Here's the thing, if you don't develop your own learning network, YOU will be left behind. To begin your own Personal Learning Network, visit this blog post for some great tips.

And have fun learning!!