This week we were asked to share about our experiences with our Personal Learning Network. To be completely honest, I had no idea what that even was! So I decided that I needed to do a little research on what a Personal Learning Network was and how I was going to build my network.
I began and found this article, “What is a PLN? Why Do I Need One? by Teach Hub. com. The article stated that as teachers we are building a “network to make us better teachers.” It continued that as educators we are not just absorbing this information, but we are sharing what we are learning, in addition, we are building relationships with other teachers across the globe! I really feel, that by having a PLN, I will be able to collaborate with other teachers, learn and share with them and bounce ideas of what worked in the classroom and what they have tried. From this I decided that I wanted to build my PLN around education, with a focus on elementary and preschool education and authors.
So, to get started, I searched the internet for Personal Learning Networks for Educators and several sites popped up and I checked them out and found lots of fabulous ideas. This site, Teach Thought had a list of the 50 best Twitter accounts, it can be found here. It was a nice starter list to begin with. It was helpful as I would look at one and then I would get an idea to find another account to look at. Before long, I had an abundance of accounts and ideas, which I was excited about. I had a great time reading and searching from these accounts and eager to see what they all post.
This one account, from Samatha Neill has been a great follow. She is an educator from Kansas who teaches 9th and 10th ELA English. I know that it is a little higher in the education field that I was thinking of, but her tweet caught my attention. She shared about how she was teaching her class how to create their own PLNs! I was thrilled that a teacher was teaching a young group early in their lives to go forward and start now and create their network.
I know that with time, I will want to filter through my network, add and drop a few here and there. As of right how, I am enjoying reading what other teachers are posting and learning more and more. Its been exciting to read what other teachers are writing and sharing!
JaimeBurkink 