Networks bring people together to brainstorm big ideas, exchange information, discuss activities, solve problems, deliver advice and more. These small communities and teams can improve and create a wide range of subjects or breathe fresh ideas into old ways. In the education community, we call these groups – that expand our knowledge and bring new ideas in our reach – our Personal Learning Networks (PLNs). Creating a PLN can connect you to people and information that help you accomplish your goals. We understand this. This is why we’ve made it easy for you to further develop your PLN.1
What’s a PLN?
PLN is a relatively new acronym based on an old concept. After seeing it used repeatedly in blogs, in wikis, with Twitter hashtags and more, I started to wonder like many before me: What is this PLN idea everyone’s talking about?
Barbara Hoskins Sakamoto, the author of the blog “Teaching Village“, answered this for me. She says in essence, a PLN is where friends, colleagues and acquaintances in social groups come together to share information and ideas.2 The more I learned about PLNs and how educators were using them, I realized that Webspiration Classroom™ service has some great tools to help further develop this idea.
Visually Plan and Organize Your PLN
Planning how to get in touch with your PLN can be a daunting task. So why not begin with a simple concept map to brainstorm all of the online tools and applications that you may use to keep in touch with your PLN? In fact, on the wiki titled “edtechpost,” I found countless examples of educator’s PLNs.3 It’s worth checking out for ideas on how to visually plan and organize your own PLN.
Here’s an example of how I visually planned and organized a PLN in Webspiration Classroom (click to enlarge) …
Create Groups for your PLN
In Webspiration Classroom, individuals can create Groups, which help to better organize contacts in the Friends List. This is very similar to email groups or friends lists on Facebook. Once you’ve created a group with all of your PLN contacts, you can easily share current or future documents with these individuals.
GET STARTED: To create Groups, click on the “Sharing” menu from within an open document and select “Manage Friends” and “Groups…” Click the “New” button on the top of the screen, then enter the name “PLN” and click the green check box. Next, select the friends you want to include in your group and click “Add,” or if you want to add people who are not already in your Friends List, you can enter the username plus Org ID or email address for each user. When your group includes your whole PLN, click “Save.” Now, every time you want to share with your PLN, simply add the PLN group in the invite screen. Now you’re ready to exchange ideas with your PLN!
Share Ideas with Documents
Use one or more Webspiration Classroom documents to share ideas with your PLN. You can take turns adding to a diagram or outline to share ideas, solve problems and more. With the Collaboration Panel, you can even comment and chat in real-time to freely discuss ideas as you work.
So visually plan your PLN, connect with others, build your Groups and share ideas through Webspiration Classroom documents!
What does your PLN look like?
Sarah Cargill
Thinkspiration Ambassador, Inspiration Software
- “YouTube – Sketchy Explanation: Starting a PLN.” YouTube – Broadcast Yourself. Web. 21 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSH5TMYlz4>. [↩]
- “What Is a PLN, Anyway? – Teaching Village.” Teaching Village. Web. 08 Mar. 2011. <http://www.teachingvillage.org/2009/09/10/what-is-a-pln-anyway/comment-page-1/>. [↩]
- “PLE Diagrams.” Edtechpost. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. <http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/PLE+Diagrams#warlick>. [↩]
