Build a powerful PLN

If you are a professional, you should have a PLN. Your PLN (personal or professional learning network) is the community of people you interact with and learn from on a regular basis. They may be people you meet on a daily basis, but more often than not in the digital age, many PLNs are comprised of people we interact with on social networking sites. In my opinion, the most powerful PLN building tool is Twitter. For me, Twitter is an incredibly powerful yet simple tool that enables me to connect with, and learn from, specialists, experts and enthusiasts in my chosen field of expertise. Put simply, I follow teachers, learning professionals and education experts from all around the world - over 1400 at my last count. I learn something new everyday, usually as a result of dialogue on Twitter, or clicking on a link someone has shared in my timeline. Many people I follow on Twitter I have never met, and perhaps I might never meet them face to face. Some are personal friends of mine. But all are individuals who I personally believe are important in the world of education. These are people I have selected to follow because they are saying things, or sharing content that interests me, and from which I can learn, contributing to my personal and professional development. You can gain an insight into ideas, content and events that would otherwise pass you by, and you can also engage in great conversations with people all over the globe who share similar interests, passions, problems and experiences. It's all a question of finding people, resources and sites that you can learn from. But how to do it, when you are in danger of being lost in a tsunami of web content? Well, there is a growing range of useful social media tools you can use to track down what you need. Such tools can help you to build your PLN into something that is powerful. The possibilities are endless, but let me share just five ways I have personally used:

One really easy way to find and connect with people who have the same interest as you is to follow hashtags on topics or events that you have an interest in. If you are a teacher for example, you may wish to follow #edchat or a Teach Meet event. If you do so, you will discover who else is following and participating in the discussion or event. Simply check out the profiles of these participants, and if you find them interesting or relevant to your own interests, click on the link to follow them. You can always unfollow later if it doesn't work out, but many Twitter users will also follow you back if they discover you have similar interests to theirs.

You can also scan the list of people other Twitter users are following and see if there are any there who might be of interest to you or relevant to your subject/topic. Select someone you are following whom you hold in high regard, and click onto their profile. Next click on the list of people they are following. If you find people on the list who interest you, click to follow them too.

Another way to find people who have a similar interest to you is to subscribe to a social bookmarking tool such as Diigo or Delicious. Such tools enable users to share URLs of web resources they find interesting. By searching and then saving useful website addresses to Diigo or Delicious, you will automatically be presented with links to other people who have also found the site interesting. One click enables you to subscribe to the feeds and bookmark collections of these people. You can also send them messages.

Still another way to build up your PLN contacts is to visit the Slideshare site and search for topics that interest you. You will quickly discover a rich vein of slide sets that have been shared by people with similar interests to you. Again, you can subscribe to their feeds and receive notification when they share a new slideset that may be of interest to you. Many of the slidesets on Slideshare are presented under Creative Commons license for free use - but do check the wording to see what the licence allows you to do.

Finally, a number of high quality blogs already exist, in just about every field of professional life. You can search for them using Google or another search engine, by selecting the 'blog' search section. When you find a blog you are interested in reading, you may be able to subscribe to it using the on site widget if there is one. If not, bookmark it on Delicious or Diigo for later use. Before you leave the blog, check to see if there is a blogroll. This is a list of other blogs the blog owner recommends, usually focused on the same or a related topic to the blog hosting the list.

Do you have other ways that are effective in building up a powerful PLN? Please share them with us in the comments box below...


Build a powerful PLN by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.