Blog Assignment #5

What are Personal Learning Networks?

Personal Learning Networks is a set of people and tools you call upon as a teacher to help you grow and deal with problems as teacher. The tools can be twitter or any other social media outlet.

How can they help you as a teacher?

A teacher is like any other career you need help from people. Teacher is a trial and error job. You have to learn by experience to deal with situations that you are not accustomed too. You have been taught how to deal with situations in college, but they are many situations in which you you are not prepared for. Your PLN will help you overcome this situations. They do not have to be teachers because sometimes the best advice come from unpredictable sources. The tools such as twitter can help you stay connected to the people. Twitter or Facebook will help you deliver information fast.

How are they formed?

PLN is formed by the person who developing their own PLN. The PLN is formed by people you respect and listen too. It can also be college student or teachers that you have connected with during your college career.They are just peers who you value their opinions on subjects. They have to be highly valued because you are dealing with your career. You will pick your number of people. It can be a large number or small. I think the smaller is better because if it is large many opinions can make your decision harder. Do you feel like the bigger the number, the better PLN will be?

How can you create your own PLN? You create your own PLN by deciding who is in your PLN. I would add three to five people to my PLN. I would go ahead and tell them that they are my PLN. It will help the members to know why I keep asking their opinion on my career decisions. PLN is very easy to create because everyone has peer or should have peers or tools that will help you. The tools of twitter handles or phone numbers need to be exchanged so information can flow fast.

What will be the first additions to your PLN? My first additions to my PLN would be my mother and my friend Grant. My mother has taught school for twenty five years. I think she would be really good addition to my PLN. My other addition Grant is also becoming a school teacher. Both his parents taught school for over 30 years. Grant has always gave me straight advice. I think these two addition would help me almost instantly.

Summary of Developing My PLN

My PLN is quickly coming together. I have two members already in my PLN. The two are my mother and my friend Grant. I will be adding three more people. I am adding a teacher that taught me in high school. He is Marty Hanks. He is currently the principal at my former high school. He has been in the classroom situation and in the office situations. I will also be adding my friend Matthew Rowell. I respect his opinion very much. We always have the same look on things but we arrive there differently. I believe this will help me very much so and he has no teaching experience. He can speak as the best outside source of information. I will also add another teacher that influenced me a lot. Angelia Harrison who was my junior college math teacher. She brings the college voice to situations. All of these people will help me in my PLN. I will be always looking for ways to improve my PLN. I need more college students in my PLN. I will be looking to make some more connections.