January 16, 2010

Personal Learning Networks?

Posted in PLN tagged introspection, PLN, technology at 8:39 PM by Brianna Rafferty

For one of my classes this semester – Adolescent Literature and Literacy – I have been asked to create a “Personal Learning Network” that I will maintain throughout the semester. Before this course, I had never heard of a Personal Learning Network, or PLN, but when I googled the topic numerous sites came up detailing the process of creating one and commentary about them. I guess I’m just not that tech savvy. A PLN includes components such as: social networking, microblogging, professional profiles, wikis, blogs, rss readers, nings, social bookmarking, webinars, and backchanneling of conferences. Allow me to preface this by saying most of these things I had never even
heard of. I am looking forward to this journey, however, and to the amount of knowledge that I can potentially gain from it. This is the establishment of my PLN.

Social Networking: Facebook

Social networking is the aspect of the PLN that I am by far the most familiar with. As a tween, I had a Myspace, and by the end of my high school career I had graduated to the ever popular Facebook. I’ve been on Facebook for about four or five years now. It’s nice to know that I have at least one element of the PLN under control already – one less thing to learn how to work. My Facebook page can be accessed here.

Microblogging: Twitter

Being completely honest, I always swore Twitter was something I would never sign up for, but for the sake of the assignment I guess it’s something that I’m going to do. When Twitter was first introduced, I was kind of annoyed by the concept.

Surprisingly, I have spent time on Twitter (for other classes not for personal gain) but I had not yet succumbed to the creation of a profile.

I am now signing up for the site. One thing I noticed is that above the button to sign up it reads “Join the conversation.” This strikes me as a really good yet really obscure look into the world of Twitter. It’s concise 140 character limit does prompt a great deal of posting from a number of people – I guess that does make it similar to a conversation. But honestly, how creepy can you get? It’s like creeping on thousands of conversations at once – that kind of does away with the normal notion that conversations are intimate. Nevertheless, I am officially a twitterer (?), tweeter (?), twitter user (?). Follow me here.

A twitter afterthought:

I’m amazed at the amount of websites that give you the option of linking in some way to twitter. In the creation of my PLN I’ve noticed that I have the option to link my blog and my Linked In profile to my twitter account.

Professional Profiles: Linked In

At this point in my life, I’m not sure that I absolutely need to be “Linked In,” but this does seem like something that can benefit me in the future as I begin to become more of a professional and less of a student. I’ve heard a lot of discussion about people joining the site, but not a great deal about its function – I look forward to exploring it more. To view my profile click here.

Wikis: Wikispaces

Wikis fall under the category of I have absolutely no idea what to do with this. I have heard of them, but as far as a function I am unfamiliar. Wikispaces came recommended by my professor, so I stuck with that. Unfortunately, the links that explain more about what to do with my wiki seem to not be working. I’ll leave this one go for now and come back to it when I can figure out exactly what I’m doing with it.

Blogs: WordPress

While I’ve never had a blog before, this seems to be one of the easiest components of the PLN to master. Yes, I already had a facebook, and anyone who can type could master twitter, but a blog seems to be one of the aspects of the PLN that could have tangible benefits. If used properly, a blog really could create something substantial. For now, this blog is my adventure into the world of the PLN. Hopefully there is something truly beneficial to gain from it.

RSS Readers: Google Reader

Thankfully I already had a gmail account, one less step in signing up for Google Reader. The function of this RSS reader is to “help you find and keep track of interesting stuff on the web” according to the introduction I was given when I signed up. This seems like it will really help when my PLN is in full swing, allowing me to view updates to other sites from a single page. I have added my professors blog to my list of things I’m following, now I just need to figure out what else is going to benefit me in the long run. Once I have everything set up and running, I think this will be easier to distinguish. But for now, RSS reader: check.

Nings: Classroom 2.0, English Companion Ning, Future of Education

Nings are another web 2.0 concept that I really knew nothing about before coming into this course. In fact, I had never even heard of a ning. However, I think that they can be very beneficial to my PLN. I signed up for three separate Nings: English Companion Ning, The Future of Education, and Classroom 2.0. I was really surprised at the amount of screening required to sign up for the site. Unlike the more popular sites, signing up for the nings resulted in only “pending approval.” Interestingly, looking at the sites, it also seems that they may be owned or sponsored by the same company – they all share similar structures and layouts. I feel like as a teacher, these sites will be very beneficial to me – they seem like they present a lot of opportunities for learning.

Social Bookmarking: Delicious

I’m kind of upset that I have to create a yahoo e-mail to use Delicious, but whatever it takes I guess. The concept of the social bookmark seems really exciting to me. I think that this will be something that saves me time and introduces me to a lot of new material. Again, not really sure how it works – but I’m looking forward to learning.

Webinars

Webinars seem pretty cool too. I had never heard of them before, but I think I get the general gist. They seem to be video lectures of sorts that are featured on the internet. Sites that feature webinars include: EdTechTalk live, Classroom 2.0 Live, and Elluminate. As far as I can tell, these sites do not require membership, they seem to offer resources to anyone.

Backchanneling of Conferences

I’m not sure how relevant this will be to me at this point, but the concept seems like the most useful aspect of Twitter. Backchanneling allows you to search for terms – for example an education conference that occurs – and it will bring up relevant tweets. It’s a way to pick up on key points if you can’t attend the conference yourself.

PLN: The Results

I’ve got my PLN completely ready to go now and nothing was too challenging to set up. I’m looking forward to where my experiences with the PLN take me and to what I can learn from it.

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