Professional Learning Networks - PLN
Our future generations will never know what it means living
in a world where they cannot share their ideas instantly with a big audience.
Technology has enabled us to do just that, as social media and other platforms
make it easier for us to share our thoughts with others with a few clicks,
swipes, and touching of the screen. As educators, we should take full advantage
of this gift that technology offers us to share ideas on educational trends,
inspirational posts, and many other resources.
That is where professional learning networks (PLN) come into
play. According to Marc-André Lalande,
“a Personal Learning Network is a way of describing the group of people that
you connect with to learn their ideas, their questions, their reflections, and
their references”. So even though
technology is not required for a PLN to be created, it makes it so much easier
and effective. By using technology
tools, like Twitter, you can target specific subjects that are of importance to
you. It also allows these networks to be
much bigger so that more people can share their ideas and experiences,
therefore, making it a more eye opening and interesting experience.
I wanted to consciously (because we can sometimes do it
without realizing that we are doing it) take part of a PLN myself so for the
last 4 weeks I have been following different educational PLN’s on Twitter,
which can be easily done by using a particular Twitter handle or hashtag
quote. The one that caught my eye was
one that attempted to raise awareness of elder abuse (#elderabuse). It covered many areas on this very
delicate topic and provided me with information that I had not thought about. One of the posts talked about a report that
showed that Canadian seniors volunteer more time and money back to their
communities than any other group. I had
thought about so many other reasons why we should treat the elderly with
respect and decency, but I had never stopped to think about how they positively
impact the community as volunteers.
Even though this was a small example, there is so much good information out there that we as educators should stay connected with. We are lucky enough to be part of a profession where we need to self-actualize constantly, and professional learning networks such as Twitter makes that task easier to achieve.
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