Teacher as Learner

A Personal Learning Network (PLN) is a way of mapping connections that you have to find answers, learn new things, contribute your own ideas and collaborate to create new and exciting opportunities. It also maps the online resources that you use to accomplish these tasks. Often these connections are made through social media. These social networks provide tremendous opportunities for teachers to enhance their professional development by networking with each other beyond the boundaries of a school, town or even country.

Purpose:

The intention of this experience is for you to:

• Strengthen or build a professional branch of your PLN
• Practice curating information from digital resources that show meaningful connections to your field of study and future career
• Reflect on how you can connect with resources and other professionals.
• Establish your digital presence and grow your professional digital footprint

This assignment aligns with:

• ISTE Standards for Educators:  1b and 2c
  

Assignment:

This Personal Learning Network assignment will involve you in strengthening or building a professional branch of your PLN and examining its growth over the course. You will work on this assignment throughout the course. The exercise of growing PLN will be documented in a shared Google Document.  You will learn how to create and share this shortly. Follow all the steps to successfully complete the assignment requirements.

Create Pre-map

• Early in this course you will create a map of your Personal Learning Network. This may not be complete or complex because it is your initial opportunity to consider these networks. Your map should show what media you use to share information, ask questions, bookmark useful links, how you connect to experts in the field, etc.
  
• You may take a look at some examples created by other educators in previous courses (use them as an inspiration not a strict guideline)
  

Building Connections

During the course, you will be challenged to expand your Personal Learning Network with at least 10 various resources/connections that you have discovered/created. Following are just a few ideas and examples to get you started:

• Connect with other educators through Twitter.
• Engage in educational Tweet Chat
• Find (or create) informative Pinterest boards.
• Find a blogger who provides innovative ideas about teaching and learning
  
• Find (or create) a Symbaloo webmix that organizes important resources.
• Complete tutorial/training via Lynda and collect the certificate of completion
• Participate in a free educational webinar (online workshop or session) 
  
• Like and engage in Facebook conversation with a teacher

Create Documentation

However you expand your PLN during this course, document the situation. For each new PLN connection create a short narrative with link to the resource and the visual examples (screenshots). You can use the following prompts to reflect and organize your PLN expansion: 

• Short description of the resource
• How did you establish/find/create/use this resource?
• How will you benefit from this resource in your future teaching? 
• Take a screenshot of the event or connection
• Link to each of these resources.

Finalize PLN Map and add Reflections

Towards the end of the course, you will be asked to consider your PLN again. You will expand your initial PLN map to include all of the new professional learning resources that you found/created/established. 

You will then use your documentation to write a narrative talking about the growth of your PLN and how you will use it in your professional life.

Submitting

Create a shared Google Document with your PLN.  Keep adding to it as you progress through the course.  Near the end of the course, you will submit this map with your reflections.  In addition, each of us in the course will share our map with others in order to help them build their PLN.

Once you have a starting version completed, you can save it as a PDF and then upload it to the PLN assignment.