Journal Assignment #5

Grow Your Personal Learning Network
New Technologies Can Keep You Connected and Help You Manage Information Overload

by David Warlick

"Harnessing these new technologies to create and grow our own PLNs is imperative for educators who want to stay connected to the changing world we are charged with introducing to our students."


The Many PLN Paths...

Pick Your PLNs
1. Personally maintained synchronous connections.

• Traditional network- includes the people and places you consult to answer questions, solve problems and accomplish goals.
• Tools: chat, instant and text messaging, teleconferencing, Twitter, and virtual worlds (ie. Second Life)
• Traditional barriers of geography, background, language and culture become transparent.

2. Personally and socially maintained semi-synchronous connections.

• These are conversations that are not exactly conversations.
• Semi-synchronous refers to the idea that collaboration does not have to happen in real time.
• Tools: mailing lists, wikis, Google Docs, Twitter, group discussion boards and comment walls in Facebook, and commenting on blogs, among others.

3. Dynamically maintained asychronous connections.

• Most often connects us with content sources that we have identified as valuable.
• Central tool: RSS aggregator- Google Reader, Netvibes, and Pageflakes.
• This technology has inspired a shift from a hunting-and-gathering information economy to the domestication of the information landscape.

Cultivate Your Network

As 21st-century educators we are often described in terms such as facilitator, guide, coach and curator. These are all terms y which learners are being connected to the world they are learning about. With this in mind, it is even more important for us, as educators, to be learning about new and emerging communication technologies and applications. The image above shows a variety of tools that can serve as strands of a single PLN.

"Preparing children for an unpredictable future means helping them learn to teach themselves. That is why lifelong learning is such a crucial part of the education conversation and why modeling a learning lifestyle is one of the best things that teachers can do today. So fire up your PLN and become the networked learner you expect your students to be."

Q1. Why is it important for educators to develop a Personal Learning Network?

A1. Young people who will make up the students in any classroom will already be immersed in the networks that are made available to them in the world. It is an awesome idea, and should be a requirement, for educators to become familiar with the technologies out there and then work with the one they feel most comfortable with so that when their in front of their students they are well prepared.

Q2. How many types of PLNs are there? What are they?

A2. There are three types of PLNs. They are as follows:

1. Personally maintained synchronous connections.
2. Personally and socially maintained semisychronous connections.
3. Dynamically maintained asynchronous connections.