Welcome to our professional learning series on building a PLN.
This series guides you step by step through the process of setting up your own PLN.
The aim of this first step is to:
- Explain what is a PLN.
- Help you understand why educators create their own PLN.
The following information on PLN was co-written by Michael Graffin, a relief/substitute teacher and blogger from Western Australia.
You can check out Michael’s original “What the heck is a PLN” post here.
What is a PLN?
Let’s take this a little further…
Having a PLN is about making connections and building personal relationships with teachers, school administrators, university professors, and experts around the world. No matter where you are in the world, there’s always someone online available to answer questions, share their expertise, and simply chat about what’s happening in their lives and classrooms.
Having a PLN is about sharing ideas and resources, collaboration, and learning. We may share our learning, ideas and expertise in different ways; using different media and tools, but the essence is the same: the PLN is simply the best professional development you will ever participate in – and it’s available 24/7.
The defining feature of the PLN is that it is a global learning network, enabling people to tap into and share diverse, global perspectives on teaching strategies, educational issues, and technologies. If takes time and effort to build these connections, but it’s well worth the effort.
What is a PLN Video
Watch this video to learn more about what is a PLN.
Why create a PLN
“From little things, big things grow”
I’m a fairly new teacher, and a relative newcomer to the online education community. When I become an active social-media Twitter user, one of the first questions I asked myself was “What is a PLN?”
Within six months later, I realised that developing a Personal Learning Network is an empowering, transformational process, which fundamentally transforms your professional learning and teaching approach. And my experience is hardly unique…
Real People, Real Teachers – Why we have a PLN
Being a connected educator
A connected educator is a connected learner who collaborates online and uses a range of social media tools to build their own personal learning network to interact with other educators.
Watch the following video to learn more about being a connected educator.
Building your own PLN
Best of a PLN is it’s personal!
You make all the choices:
- What tools you use!
- Who you connect with!
- How you want to learn!
- When you want to learn!
The idea of this series is to guide you through the process of building your own PLN.
Remember as you work through the series we each have our own preference of what online tools works best for us and we’ve included the most popular tools for building a PLN to help get you started.
Personal Learning Networks are all about sharing, collaborating, and learning from each-other. So here’s your chance to ask a question, comment, and get involved!
We’d like you to add your voice and ideas to our ongoing conversation about PLNs by undertaking one or more of these challenges:
- Watch What is a PLN video. Leave a comment on this post to explain what a Personal learning network means to you.
- Check out Real People, Real Teachers: Why we have a PLN voicethread. Leave a comment on this post to share what you learned from the Voicethread.
- Watch the connected educator video and leave a comment on this post to explain why it is important to be a connected educator and how a PLN can help you.
- Write a blog post to explain what you have learnt about Personal Learning Networks. Leave a comment with a link to the post so we can have a look at how you went.
Also feel free to leave a comment to ask any questions or share your tips.