3-4 Reflection on PLNs

• In your Blogger blog, reflect upon the need for a PLN. Use the module lectures Thoughts to Ponder as well as the module resources to assist with your post. Review at least two of your classmates posts (refer to the Student Information course wiki to obtain links to their blogs) and comment on their posts.

Everyone has a  Personal Learning Network (PLN).  Learning cannot happen in a vacuum, from an infant learning to walk, a child learning to read, or a graduate student learning to master educational technology learners and learning leaders have and fulfill roles in a learning network.  Past networks existed as teacher and student, or master and apprentice, but as technology speeds communication in the 21st century the PLN has taken on a life of its own through social media and online learning.  

Social networking tools and application s have expanded learners abilities to gather and aggregate information, and made it possible for learners to develop conversations across the globe in real time (Stevens 2008).  Using video services such as Skype and Google Hangouts  learners can participate in conversation with people in their PLN.  Microblogging services such as Twitter and Google+  allow learners to start conversations with their PLN to develop and create an understanding on any subject that they can imagine.  

Education in the United States has been struggling to reinvent itself over the past decade to attempt to improve student's test scores and abilities.  High stakes testing and teacher evaluations have been used as fear tactics with the ever present mantra "training students for jobs that haven't been invented yet".  Of course the jobs haven't been invented because our learners haven't created them yet.  The issue should be -training students to use their creativity to invent their own futures.  The PLN answers all of these fears and should guide the changes in 21st century education.  The classroom is no longer the cell of learning.  Learning has become a global enterprise which asks a new question.  "How far can learning take our children, how far are we letting the reach into their future?"


-Stevens, V. (2008) Trial by Twitter: The Rise and Slide of the Year's Most Viral Microblogging Platform. Retrieved from: http://www.tesl-ej.org/ej45/int.html