The Art & Technique of
Personal Learning Networks
or
"A Gardener's Approach to Learning"
Introduction:
 | | Diagram from Growing Your Personal Learning Network |
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As we work in a time of rapid change, with students who are digital natives, from within a dramatically new information landscape, the best description of the 21st Century teacher is Master Learner. Participants in this presentation will learn how to utilize a variety of new web-based applications to construct and cultivate personal learning networks. Educators will learn to attract information from other professional educators, experts in the fields of study, current news and news searches, student perspective, relevant resources from a growing library of web-based digital content, and other content sources to assist them in adapting to this age of change.
In a way, what we're talking about is a gardener's approach to learning, where you are working, rather than a small ecosystem in your back yard, we are working an information ecosystem, learning how its elements interrelate and arranging new relations to create an environment, a network, that produces what we need to know to do what we need to do. You can read more about this approact in 2¢s; worth [ link].
Web Links
Nothing New
There is nothing new about personal learning networks. They are the people and information sources that help you accomplish your goals, either on the job or in your personal pursuits. They are the teachers who work in your school, your instructional supervisor, your library media specialist, the art teacher at the high school, which whom you are friends, the magazines you subscribe to, books you brought home from college, etc.
Today, however, new techniques for organizing digital networked information, have enabled us to fashion new kinds of networks that extend far beyond our immediate location and face-to-face connections, and to grow our networks based not on explicit decisions, but through the ideas of other nodes (people and resources), whose ideas intersect with ours.
Origins of the Concept
In March (2009), Darcey Moore posted this article about the origins of the term Personal Learning Networks, which seems to have drived from Personal Learning Evironments. He links to blog entries by myself, George Seimens, and Stephen Downes (such up-rising company). Here is the opening.
Last year I started asking around, on Twitter, for the origin of the acronyms that I was reading so much about. ‘Personal Learning Networks’ ( PLNs) and ‘Personal Learning Environments’ ( PLEs) were so often used by the educators that I was following that it was surprising no-one really could source them.
Read More
Aspects of PLN Planned for this Presentation or Workshop
- Conversation Connectors -- These are avenues (or tools) that connect us to the people and sources that help us do our jobs. They can include:
- blogs
- wikis
- Microblogging
- Social Networks (Facebook, Elgg, Nings)
- Virtual Worlds
- Mining the Conversation -- These are strategies and tools for searching the blogosphere and twittervers, and other realms of fluid conversation, looking for content and especially for people and sources that we can connect to for more constant info. The tools are numerous, but chief among them are:
- Technorati & Google Blog Search for searching the blogosphere
- Twitter Search for searching the twitterverse
- Delicious, a social bookmarking service can also be searched
- YouTube, Flickr, and other social media sites can be searched
- Even News Searches
- Another part of "Mining the Conversation" is the ability to make "sticky" the content and people we identify. Using RSS, we can connect to those people and sources in a way that they ideas continue to flow to us.
- Mapping the Conversation -- much is this is eye candy, but it is increasingly important that as the networks grow, and especially as the content grows, we will need new ways of viewing all of the information. Data visualization, one of the most fascinating aspects of the digital realm today, provides us with useful and interesting ways to see our information landscape.
For more information on these aspects, refer to the Concept Map
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This page will list weblogs that mention personal, learning, network, and warlick. If you will be blogging a review or simply sharing your insights about the ideas of this session, please include the words personal, learning, network and warlick in the text of the article.
- Ewan McIntosh - 2¢ Worth
I have a personal bias that emphasizing U.S. History, at the expense of studying history in other parts of the world is a bit arrogant, especially when so many of us are working for Japanese, German, and Canadian companies, ... That's what I imagine, schools and classrooms that are as permeable as possible, so that learning leaks out — not that we're losing it, but because we've stopped trying to contain it, allowing learning to grow, to network, to fertilize other ...
- 2¢ Worth » Looking for My Personal Learning Library
We are all building our personal learning libraries. They include our bookmarks (local and/or social), our blogs, our RSS feeds, the Twitter hash tags we follow, etc. But what Hatherley is accomplishing is something that hadn't even reached my dreams yet — a ... Pearltrees is a collaborative network that let users create, enrich and share the world of their interests. We call it a human-powered interest network because its content is made and organized by its community. ...
- 2¢ Worth » A Few Shifts that I See Happening
... that I closed a webinar with last week. They are shifts that come largely from literacy in a new information landscape, maintaining a personal learning network, and paying more attention to our students 'native' information experiences. ... David Warlick posted the following on November 20, 2009 at 10:13 am. I agree that changing education is difficult. But identifying and “changing the directions of (our) goals” as you put it, seems a simple way to get started. ...
- 2¢ Worth » Community – Formerly Known as Audience
This network of ideas is one of my favorite aspects of personal learning networks. The people I am connected to are not part of my network because we look the same, speak the same native language, follow the same religous doctrine, or share identical cultural traits. .... type of audience to Shareski's breakdown in this blog post, and finally, David Warlick posted this entry in his 2 cents blog about the power of conversation and creating a network of ideas between [...] ...
- the lives of teachers » Blog Archive » personal learning networks ...
I particularly recommend the works of Warlick, Downes and Seimens (all of whom are on the twitter list, too). There are some great listservs in yahoo groups. I'll start you off with the webheads group, and follow with ELT dogme. ... But your Personal Learning Network should be just that - PERSONAL. Take your time building relationships with real people, don't be afraid to turn off or cut out when things become distracting rather than helpful, and have fun! ...
- 2¢ Worth » Personal Learning Networks — The Beginning
Personal Learning Networks – The Beginning from David Warlick [...] Pingback from A Personal Learning Network needs a Personal Learning Environment « Mollybob Goes To School. [...] seems to me that a PLN is the network, made of up of ...
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All Recent Blogs that mention Personal Learning Network
- PLC, FLC and PLN - dpeter's posterous
What's the difference between PLC (Professional Learning Community), FLC (Faculty Learning Community), and PLN (Professional OR Personal Learning Network)? Community has certain meanings, and as such may indicate a more personal, ...
- let's communicate: PLN
A Personal Learning Network is a group of people you communicate with online to share experiences, information, ideas. It's a great way to expand your knowledge with other professionals in your area of interest. ...
- Transparent Ignorance: Building your network
I really only use Twitter for professional connections and only follow people who are interested in education (except for two cooking folks). I believe strongly that we all need to have a personal learning network. ...
- S. Golab--EDU 653: MACUL---Web 2.0
---PLN Personal Learning Network iGoogle ---Google Account (School Supply) Place responsibility on parents ---Literary World----OpenSim (OpenSimulator)OAR files ---Portals (gate way to RSS reader) ---Embed your PD (do something with the ...
- Why Do we Connect « macbook implementation
Connecting with your PLN (Personal Learning Network). Shelly Terrell is a teacher of english in Germany, presenting at a conference in Turkey on sunday 14th of march. “By March 11th, over 50 teachers, parents, administrators, ...
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