Having a personal learning network has allowed me to learn from others from around the world and share ideas. My personal learning network that I started to develop at the end of summer has grown significantly. When trying to diagram these connections, I knew I wanted to separate the networks and environments into general categories. When I checked out the EdTechPost’s wiki that shows others PLN diagrams, I was a little overwhelmed by some of them. There are so many connections people have made and it was hard to follow some of them. I liked the ones that were simplified, yet still represented their connections without going into arrow overkill.
Martin Weller’s diagram is nice because it categorizes the networks. I also liked the use of the logos/pictures, it makes it visually friendly and the fact that he is part of the center of it all demonstrates that all of these tools make up what how he learns and stays connected. I also liked Chris Dukes PLN with the circles crossing each other. Many of the tools that are out there are not just used for one purpose, but can cross categories and his diagram represent’s this. So after checking out the EdTechPost’s wiki, it seems my PLN diagram would fit under user/action oriented because those seem like they are based more on categorization of the networks and how the tools are used.
So far I find my personal learning network sufficient for me. However, I would like more people join these networks that relate to my field, especially people who teach science to my demographic of students. It would be nice to get different perspectives and relate to others who share what I go through each day trying to teach science to students who are not at reading level and are from low-income families. It would be great if the teachers I worked with would embrace networking so we have more “eyes” searching the world for ideas. For now, I have been getting better at finding sources for information and for entertainment as well.
When I first started to develop my diagram, I was thinking of just having myself in the center and my networks shooting of it. However, as I started to think about how I use these tools, I realized that for me, it’s not that simple. That many of them are related to not just how I learn, but how I share. I considered this collaboration, learning from others and others learning from me to reach our goals of improving our practices of teaching. So I changed how I set up my diagram and included a Venn diagram (I actually did this before I noticed Dukes circles) to represent how these tools relate to each other. I also felt it would be nice to include a snapshot of how I use some of these tools. It helps with preventing the “arrow” overkill I mentioned earlier. I think some people just list every single thing they use and how they use it, I thought about providing examples. However, now I am going beyond just showing connections on a diagram, so I thought I would make this into a video that represented the ways I network. I used prezi to set up the diagram and just showed snapshots of networking in action. So check out the video above and I also have the diagram in prezi to view, but it doesn’t have the “snapshots” of my networking in action. But if you click on it and zoom out you can see the whole diagram as one. It was fun to make this!
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