Building+Your+Professional+Learning+Network+(PLN)

=Building Your Professional Learning Network (PLN)=

What is a PLN

 * Personal or Professional Learning Network
 * Built by you to suit your needs and interests
 * Free
 * Individualized Professional Development available 24/7
 * Directly relevant to your classroom
 * Consists of a combination of social bookmarking, blogs, videoconferencing, social networking, face to face interaction, collaborative wikis, and other tools

Social Bookmarking

 * Allows you to store and share websites that you find interesting or helpful
 * Unlike bookmarking on your computer, these can be accessed anywhere there's internet
 * [|Delicious] ([|My Delicious Links])
 * [|Diigo]

Blogs

 * Written by others who want to share classroom activities, opinions, research, and experiences on a variety of topics
 * Commenting on blogs is a great way to start participating in "conversations" about educational topics that interest you
 * When you find a blog you like, subscribe so that you get future posts delivered to you
 * Using a feed aggregator like [|Google Reader] can make it easy to keep track of your blog subscriptions
 * Some of my favorite edublogs:
 * [|2¢ Worth]
 * [|dy/dan]
 * [|Cathy Nelson's Professional Thoughts]
 * [|Educationally Minded]
 * [|Generation YES]
 * [|Informania]
 * [|Lisa's Lingo]
 * [|Making Teachers Nerdy]
 * [|Open Education]
 * [|Practical Theory]
 * [|Successful Teaching]
 * [|The Principal Difference: A School Leadership Blog]
 * [|Think Thank Thunk]

Videoconferencing

 * Allows for collaboration without the travel expense and time
 * If my 88 year old grandmother can do it, you can too!
 * [|Skype]
 * [|Skype in the Classroom]
 * [|Skype Education Blog]
 * [|Skype in Schools Directory]
 * [|Oovoo]

Face to Face Networking

 * You already do this!
 * Grade level meetings
 * Asking colleagues for input/advice/feedback
 * Conferences/Workshops

Collaborative Wikis

 * CDS Professional Development Wiki
 * Changing Classrooms Wiki
 * Ideas Exchange
 * Educational Wikis

Social Networking and Microblogging

 * [|Twitter]
 * [|Education Twitter Users]
 * [|Top 50 Educators to Follow on Twitter]
 * [|Facebook]
 * Most people use FB for family/friends, not for professional purposes, however...
 * Often other educators will share good blog posts and education articles from newspapers/magazines
 * [|Plurk]
 * More conversational and easier to use than Twitter
 * Much quicker, and more professional feedback/conversation than Facebook
 * The best professional development tool I've ever come across - Nothing has helped me to grow as an educator more than Plurk.

Other Tools

 * [|Ning]
 * [|Edmodo]
 * [|Pennsylvania Standards Aligned System] - has places to share and find lesson plans
 * Professional Organizations - Alphabet Soup - NCTM, ISTE, IRA, etc.
 * [|iTunes] - Podcasts, iTunesU
 * [|Google Docs] - collaborative document creation