Personal Learning Networks in Education

This week I wanted to discuss Personal Learning Networks, PLNs, in education.

What are PLNs?  

Photo Credit:  https://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/pln-challenge-1-what-the-heck-is-a-pln/

PLNs are an individualized network of resources that allow you to gain knowledge from others.  In education PLNs are used to share teaching strategies, lesson plans, educational issues, and technology.  PLNs can consist of electronic resources, books, journals, fellow teachers, friends, and others in the community.  

Watch this video for more information on PLNs.  

There are many resources available that help to build your PLN.  I am going to focus this blog on electronic resources.  Specifically, I will be focusing on Diigo and Twitter.  I will also briefly discuss Edutopia, EduBlogs, and Goodreads.  

Diigo

Diigo is a social bookmarkinng site.  Click here to access Diigo.  

Benefits of Diigo

• Bookmarks can be tagged for easy to find organization.  

• Bookmarks can be shared with a group.  

• Diigo allows educators to set up free student accounts making it easy to share resources with a class.  
• Diigo offers tools that allow you to annotate articles/PDFs, highlight information, take screenshots, and place post it notes on bookmarks for later viewing.  

• All bookmarks are web-based so, they can be accessed anywhere you have internet access.  
• Google Chrome offers an extension of Diigo you can add to your toolbar.  

Limitations of Diigo

• The free Diigo account comes with limitations on cloud bookmarks, webpage PDF highlights, image storage, and PDF storage.  
• The free Diigo account comes with ads.  

If you would like to learn more about Diigo, watch this informational video.  

Twitter

Twitter is a social networking site.  Twitter can be used for more than just telling people what you ate for supper.  Used correctly, Twitter can be used to add to your PLN as an educator.  

Here is an informational video on using Twitter to add to your PLN.    

Click here to access Twitter.  

Benefits of Twitter

• Wonderful tool for networking with other professionals in education.   
• Twitter provides access to a large pool of fellow educators.  

• Twitter is a great tool to access educational resources, such as, lesson plans, teaching strategies, and technology ideas.  

• You can follow certain hashtags that interest you.  

• Twitter can be used as a tool to share information with students and/or parents about events in the classroom.  

Limitations of Twitter

• Tweets are not always in chronological order.  
• Tweets are limited to 140 characters.  

Lastly, I wanted to provide you with a short description of three other resources that could be used to add to you PLN.  

Edutopia

Edutopia offers a wide variety of article and videos related to education.  You can easily search for articles and videos by selecting the topic you are interested in.   If you select favorite topics, Edutopia will send you notifications when new resources are posted.  You can comment on articles/videos and have discussions with fellow educators.  You can also share your own resources.  Click here to access Edutopia.  

EduBlogs

EduBlogs offers a vast amount of blogs by fellow educators.  It offers the capability for educators to make their own blog.  The blog could be created to share information with other educators or it could be created as a tool in the classroom.  It also has capabilities to manage students.  You can invite or create student accounts and you can manage the posts/comments students add to the blog.  Click here to access EduBlogs.  

Goodreads  

Goodreads allows you to add friends to see what books your friends have read or are reading.  After reading a book you can write a review of the book.  Using Goodreads you have access to other user’s reviews on books.  When you see books that you would like to read, you can keep track of these books by clicking want to read.  If you want to read a book it will show you if you can download it from Amazon or show you stores where it can be purchased.  Goodreads will give recommendations on future books based off books you have read and genres you enjoy.  Goodreads allows you to have group discussions.  You can join groups or you can create groups.  Click here to access Goodreads.  

Thanks for reading this week's blog on PLNs.  Join me next week for blog post on Edmodo and schoology.  Have a wonderful week.