Seeds, Growing, Learning, Personal Learning Network

Learning is growing, no matter if that learning is for students or teachers. One thing I am sure of is that it is absolutely essential to be learning in order to be a good teacher. A step that I am taking toward that goal is to check in with my colleagues around the world.


The definition of a Professional Learning Network (PLN) is a place a digital “support system” of teachers and educational colleagues. Of course, I can ask my colleagues, my administrators, my professors, my friends, or my family for ideas. However, with the addition of RSS feeds, message boards, blogs, and articles, I am able to expand the branches of my personal educational tree. I am able to reach out to teachers who may have the same questions as I do through the PLNs in online discussion groups on The Educator’s PLN, I can follow colleagues’ blogs through Google Blogger, keep track of relevant websites through Diigo and Pinterest, and follow up-to-the minute news on Twitter. I also recently became aware of edmoto, a social network site specifically for educators.

One great resource for creating and collaborating with other Educators is through the Educator's Personal Learning Network. This is a place where we, as teachers, can participate in professional development without expensive workshops (which are not always possible due to limited funding these days).

I really like the video section, where my professional colleagues around the world have posted TedTalks, conferences, and lessons.

In my exploration of PLNs, I looked first at Classroom 2.0. In my "surfing" of the feeds, forums and groups, I was specifically interested in the "PBS News Hour" EdIncubator.

In this group, educators were discussing student reporting labs, presidential election lesson plans and stories, and journalism.

The RSS feeds that I personally follow are NPR “Digital Life.” I follow NPR almost daily through podcasts, news feeds and music updates, but I specifically liked the technology-based theme of this feed. I wanted to follow KPBS News “Education” because of the relevant news updates that are specifically tailored toward the education world. Anyone who views my website will likely have similar interests. The last RSS feed that I chose to follow is the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. While I do not teach math this year specifically, I am constantly teaching it in my resource classes. I like to remain current on NCTM feeds.

In Terms of my Twitter, this is new territory for me. I have been hesitant to try twitter as it seemed like a constant stream of “status updates,” typical of Facebook. I was delightfully surprised, however, by the professional capabilities. I am in the beginning stages of Twitter, including my EDUC 422 classmates and a few national organizations, such as “Teaching Tolerance,” “Education Weekly,” and my school’s feed. I was happy to find that feed with updates about athletic and academic events!

Since my Diigo account is new, I was not able to closely follow too many of my classmates. When, it is up-and-running, I hope to be able to do that. I loved Diigo’s tagging capabilities, specifically for tagging potential literary articles for my educational research. I was able to bookmark, summarize, and tag peer-reviewed articles, which closely relate to my research questions.

Some of my colleagues were frustrated with the information overload of the PLNs, but overall, I was actually relieved. A Pro that I see with PLNs is the capability of organizing and categorizing essential professional development tools. Another benefit is the ability to get support without asking colleagues who are already busy enough. The only drawback that I see is that, we need to be critical learners by weeding through what information is valuable versus what information is not.