Creating your PLN

How do we track our personal learning networks? As you are gathering links to blogs and wikis and people who are forming your own professional learning community, how do you keep it all organized? There is no one right way to do this. Some people use an organizing tool like their own wiki to link to other resources of use to them. I personally like my iGoogle page where I have an RSS reader that shows my favorite blog feeds, a Twitter gadget where I can follow Twitter, a Delicious gadget that shows my delicious bookmarks, a Flickr gadget that shows my pictures, my email, etc. Other "start pages" like Yahoo can do this, but NetVibes, iGoogle and PageFlakes are particularly good as organizers. Some people add links to the sides of their blogs for other blogs and sites they find useful. Figure out what works for you and begin to build your PLN. Remember, you can always get rid of things that prove to be off target or lose their usefulness.

Webinars this week

As you build your personal learning network, you'll find that webinars are a good way to get ideas on who to use these technologies in teaching and learning. Classroom 2.0 and The Future of Education provide a series of weekly webinars on a rage of topics conducted by people from all over the world. Sometimes it is a famous author like Daniel Pink or Ken Robinson talking about their work. Other times it is practitioners sharing their experiences. Sometimes you learn as much from the chat backchannel going on during the presentation. The entire schedule can be found at http://www.learncentral.tv/.

In light of our recent discussions, you might want to check out these:

Tuesday, April 13 3pm CDT (US) :
MSP2 SERIES: “Google Apps for Educators" with Rachel Lacy.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/58400

Wednesday, April 14 2pm CDT (US):
EDUCATION FOR A DIGITAL WORLD: “Adventures in Virtual Collaborative Authoring” with
Sandy Hirtz and Dr. Kevin Kelly.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/65716

Wednesday, April 14 2:30pm CDT (US):
EDUCATION FOR A DIGITAL WORLD: “Immersive Gameworlds for World-Wide Change” with
Natasha Boskic. Video and computer games in the context of contemporary educational practice.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/65718


All you do is go to the link a few minutes early, download the software and listen in. For most of them, you can ask questions either through the chat or with a mic at the end.

Value of a Personal Learning Network

David Warlick in his 2 cents Worth Blog recently talked about The Teaching Profession. Think about the conditions he suggests help define what a teacher is and does in this technology-rich, information-driven, and rapidly changing world as you are developing your personal learning network and thinking about the types of learning that can take place using the tools we are testing out in this class.

Teachers as Learners

Will Richardson, in his blog webblog-ed, recently posted about new roles for teachers. He said, "We still need to be teachers, but kids need to see us learning at every turn, using traditional methods of experimentation as well as social technologies that more and more are going to be their personal classrooms." I think this provides a basis for what we are doing in this class - learning to create our own learning networks in a networked world. This can help us understand how our roles as teachers are moving toward facilitating conversations among our students and with people and resources outside the classroom. It is worth reading the entire post and the related links at Teachers as Master Learners.