Week 3 Post 1

You've Got a Text: PLNs are Here!

I feel as if I've said this every week but, this week's reading and learning activities really resonated with me, specifically, Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). PLNs are individuals, organizations, and resources you wish to connect to. They are chosen by you for the purpose of acquiring new skills (personally or professionally) within a collection of individuals. They differe from communities, because they are not defined by certain requirements or properties to be a "member".

As I learned about the qualities, functions, and ways to build a PLN I realized I already have one: my AVID Cooridnator group chat. It is a network of teachers who are coordinators of the AVID program at their respective campus within my school district. Our group chat developed out of necessity: the ability to share and broker information we learned through experience in our classroom or information we learned from different professional development activities or conferences. It was also a place where I found mentors, because I was the least experienced coordinator in the group. Here is just a few examples of our PLN at work:

      

My PLN is consistantly following each other on various social media platforms, but our main way for communicating for learning purposes was through our group chat. Everyone in the chat curated useful resources at one point and shared them with each other. Out PLN was mainly digital, however we "left the chat" on days we district meetings together. Being able to enjoy each others company help generate a sense of community within our network. 

I can't wait to tell them how I got to use our group chat as an example in my grad school class.