A week ago, I had no idea what a PLN (professional learning network) was. What is a PLN, you ask? Multiple resources describe a PLN as your group/connections where you go to learn, share, stay updated, etc., on things in your world. Now you noticed I didn't say "things in your professional world" because, in a way, its just not your professional world as it bleeds into your personal world also. Your network will become your world on many levels, from those you teach with/mentor you to the organizations you follow who help you to become a better educator or help you to further a cause.
During my typically day, I do not have time for any luxuries outside of focusing on my work. If you think about it most of us are in this same position. We go to work, we go home, we come back the next day and do it all over again. We live in a bubble at work just trying to make it through the day. When do we have time to expand our bubbles?
I work with career and technical faculty everyday. Many of my faculty were very resistant to doing anything online. They felt that the online world did not belong in their classrooms. Then COVID hit. COVID caused a shift in thinking for many educators. My instructors had to go from thinking the online world did not belong in their classrooms to working in an online world overnight.
What does all this have to do with a PLN? Everything in a way. Professional learning networks help us to expand our bubbles. They help me learn, engage, expand my knowledge when I am busy working in my own little world. I use my networks to learn ways I can help support CTE, keep updated on human resource management issues, issues in higher ed, etc. They can help my faculty expand their bubbles to include more online learning in their classrooms. When COVID hit and we went online, what did we do? We researched to find out what everyone else was doing. We also use our networks for best practices. I spend a lot of time on Canvas (our learning management system) website learning tricks and tips to improve my online classes. It can help you to expand your world also. How you may ask?
Look around you and you may find that you already have the start of a PLN. What communities/ blogs/ articles/websites do you subscribe to? For me, I follow SHRM, Education Week, ACTE, Chronicle of Higher Ed, Canva, Canvas etc. I have the start of my network. However, like a lot of people I had never put a name to it. SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management) helps me stay current with human resources news, Education Week and Chronicle of Higher Ed help me to stay current with secondary and post secondary news, ACTE (Association for Career & Technical Education connects me to others in the CTE world, Canva and Canvas help me learn how to be more engaging in my online classes. I have also now learned how to set up an RSS feed so I can get all my updates from those in my network.
What/ Who do you want in your network? Do you currently have some networks that you are already subscribed to? Jeff Utecht https://www.thethinkingstick.com/stages-of-pln-adoption/ wrote in his article about the stages of a PLN. The stages he talks about are immersion, evaluation, know-it-all, perspective, and balance. Basically we immerse ourselves in all these different networks. Typical human behavior is to subscribe to everything until we are overwhelmed. We need to evaluate and narrow down our networks to the ones we find the most useful/beneficial. Then we try to learn every thing we can from our networks (know-it-all). The last two stages are perspective and balance. No matter how many we have in our network we should always keep in mind we have lives outside our networks and we have to make sure we have a healthy balance to it all.
And one day you can have a 12 year old photo shop techy in your network also...misspellings and all 😉
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