Personal Learning Network
Never
in my life had heard about PLN (Personal Learning Network), until now in my class of Curriculum Design.
Then, I saw myself with the need to find out more about the PLN, and also why
is important for me as teacher. What most caught my attention was the fact that
an important part of learning is to build your own Personal Learning Network.
This involves that I must make connections with other people, with the specific
intent that some type of learning will occur because of that connection. Building a personal learning network is requires
that you not only seek to learn from others, but also that you also help others
in the network learn. There is a useful places to start my own PLN, like Discussions
on Forums, Blogs and also Conferences online.
First of
all, in discussion forums we can find people with more experience about some
topic that us. In a discussion forum you can certainly ask
questions and discuss matters related to how to teach or learn English for
example. This can be very valuable and you will gain a lot of knowledge.
Furthermore, many friends and teachers
colleagues have met online. Moreover, an a result of joining in on a discussion
forum is that you after a while of receiving valuable advices from others in
the group you want to start giving back and helping others that have come along
and need some advices or answers too. This is a great feeling and the more active you
are in the forum, your PLN become stronger.
Another great source to find, and share
information is in the Blog sites. The
number of blog sites is increasing each day. So, we just can imagine how many
information is there. This activity helps you develop into a better researcher,
because bloggers need to research in order to impart and verify accurate
information to visitors and readers. Also,
since you are researching about English topics, you unconsciously are expanding
your knowledge base. Reading will always give us more information. Moreover, another blogging advantage is the improvement
of your writing skills. Blog sites definitely are a big tool
in the construction of our PLN.
Last but not least, the use of conferences online will be very useful. Online web meetings are very effective
collaboration tools, allowing professional colleagues to collaborate real-time
via internet. Another benefic of the conferences online are that, the Video
conferencing uses a blend of audio and visual technologies to offer effective
eye-to-eye online meetings, even though its participants are at remote
locations. Web conferences are great to get multiple students or trainees in
the same room via internet. Participants located at multiple locations can be
trained at the same time. The collaborative aspects of web meetings enable
students to interact with each other as well as the teacher. In-meeting chat
feature allows participants to send questions and comments via instant messages
without disrupting the speaker. Conferences online are a low-cost tool,
interactive, and a very useful way to improve my PLN.
It is amazing
how much we can learn from many places and from many people. Learners create connections
and develop a network that contributes to their professional development and
knowledge. The learner does not have to know these people personally or ever
meet them in person.
We learn
every time that we read a book or article, every
time that we observe how someone else is doing work similar to
my own, every time I ask a question. For all that it’s
important to develop a good PLN. The most important is that we can find simple
tools that we can use like, Discussions on Forums, Blogs
sites and also Conferences online.
