What’s new is that these discoveries, by their own nature, caused a breathtaking loop of new discoveries, each leading to something else, just as dramatic. It began with Blogging, which I had been doing for nearly a year. However, when I started reading the blog postings of other educators, and learned to subscribe to their writings with aggregators, I began to understand the importance of XML and to explore RSS. I started to integrate these technologies into my web services and staff development and to form, what I now call, a Personal Learning Network of people who have something to say that helps me do my job.

15 Responses to “Personal Learning Networks — The Beginning”

1. Darcy Moore
   March 22nd, 2009 @ 3:19 pm

   A great archaeological dig!

   Thanks David, I really needed to be able to trace the lineage of the acronym PLN to my satisfaction, just in case I was ever asked the question.

   [Reply]

2. Jen Hegna
   March 23rd, 2009 @ 11:35 am

   Thanks for publishing my PLN to your blog! (I used bubbl.us to create it) I would like to add that this is ever changing and expanding! I would also like to add that it is important to recognize not only what one learns, but how one contributes to the knowledge of the masses as well!

   Jen Hegna

   [Reply]

3. Gary Stager
   March 23rd, 2009 @ 1:02 pm

   David,

   I admire your candor. The simple exercise you shared demonstrates how difficult it is to engage in even mundane and recent historical research. You also perform a service by acknowledging that ideas have origins and transform over time.

   My only concern is that “PLN” may have already descended into a cliché at best and self-parody at worst.

   [Reply]

4. Stephen Downes
   March 23rd, 2009 @ 9:28 pm

   let’s try this comment again. The term ‘Personal Learning Network’ is directly derived from ‘Personal Learning Environment’, which as history shows was first used at the The Personal Learning Environments Session at a JISC/CETIS Conference in 2004.

   [Reply]

5. PLNs and PLEs « Darcy Moore’s Blog
   March 24th, 2009 @ 8:11 am

   [...] explanation of the origin of PLNs and Downe’s comment that Warlick has been promoting the term in his articles and [...]

6. WELSTech » Blog Archive » 064 - Who needs an encyclopedia?
   March 25th, 2009 @ 7:08 am

   [...] Personal Learning Networks – The Beginning from David Warlick [...]

7. George Siemens
   March 25th, 2009 @ 12:56 pm

   Hi David,

   Thanks for your thoughts on this subject. You may not have read this article:
   http://www.elearnspace.org/Articles/learning_communities.htm – but it is the first time I believe I used the term “personal learning network” (2003)

   George

   [Reply]

8. Scott Wilson
   March 29th, 2009 @ 3:02 pm

   I think “Personal Learning Landscape” was the term used for the Colloquia system back in 1998-2001. “PLE” was present as a concept when I joined CETIS in early 2001, but I don’t think we used the term publicly until the meeting Stephen mentioned in 2004.

   The most important inspiration for PLE was Illich’s four learning networks in Deschooling Society (1974). (Amusingly enough, this was the only book about education I owned at the time of joining CETIS!)

   I don’t think we ever really claimed to “invent” anything by coining PLE, but to give a name to the strands of opinion that were at that time very much on the fringes in elearning and had difficulty getting discussion in the mainstream.

   To this day we’re not satisfied with any of these acronyms, but they have served as a useful means for a group of people with similar dissatisfactions with the mainstream to identify each other.

   [Reply]

9. A Personal Learning Network needs a Personal Learning Environment « Mollybob Goes To School
   August 21st, 2009 @ 9:57 am

   [...] seems to me that a PLN is the network, made of up of what Siemens, who appears to be the father of PLNs according to David Warlick, refers to in Connectivism as nodes.  I see nodes in respect to PLNs as individuals or groups, [...]

10. Damage control | ELT Musings and other tidbits
    September 16th, 2009 @ 7:29 am

    [...] 3. David Warlick [...]

11. Stephen Downes
    October 6th, 2009 @ 7:54 am

    Update on the origins (posted on my blog because this blog won’t accept it):
    http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2009/10/origins-of-term-personal-learning.html

    [Reply]

12.   On historically defining Personal Learning Network by ClintLalonde.net
    October 8th, 2009 @ 5:31 pm

    [...] this week, as a response to a post by David Warlick, Stephen Downes posted on his attempt to find origins of the term “personal [...]

13. PLN, PLC, CoP – An Edtech Rose by Any other Name… « Open Ph.D. – An Experiment in Higher Learning
    December 21st, 2009 @ 4:29 pm

    [...] A further update on the term PLN (and its origin) can be found here at David Warlick’s $.02 Worth [...]

14. Personal Learning Networks & this blog | Mind Over Music
    July 21st, 2011 @ 2:09 pm

    [...] about Personal Learning Networks. I was inspired by the graphic created by Jan Hegna and used by David Warlick to create my own image of the Personal Learning Network (PLN) I use for this blog. That sentence [...]

15. Definition of a PLN | Professional Learning Networks
    November 13th, 2011 @ 7:58 pm

    [...] Warlick (again) – PLN – The Beginning [...]

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Email Address(required)

Website

Comments

 

Click to cancel reply

Notify me of follow-up comments via e-mail

Photo taken by Ewan McIntosh in a Taxi in Shanghai

My Posterous Feed

What Interests Me