PLN Reflections

I had the kids in my class write a focused blog post on their own understanding of the concept of the Personal Learning Network. As they get started building a network, subscribing to blogs, and thinking about learning from their reading, I wanted their understanding of what was the purpose of working this way.

Here are some of their thoughts:

"What’s In Your PLN?

I have around 20 blogs in my PLN. I basically look for blogs that are different. In one blog, a person wrote a post about a poem. He made the poem and put pictures in it. The poem was different and made me laugh! I also look for blogs that have something in common as mine. Reading something that someone wrote that is a 1000 miles away from you is very exciting.

What Is The Point Of PLN?

Well, in my point of view, I think that PLN is for you. I think that it helps you communicate with other people."

"My Personal Learning Network:

I’ve only gotten my bloglines account a couple of days ago, so I am not subscribed to too many blogs or websites. I have some really interesting blogs from all over the world, such as, Brazil, Nata Village, Australia, etc. I have 13 or 14 blogs and sites on my account, which isn’t that much seeing as Mr. Fisher has around 92 RSS feeds. Out of my 13 or 14 subscriptions I have around 3 or 4 subscriptions of my classmates blogs. I have not dropped any blogs yet, seeing as I just got my bloglines, but if someone doesn’t write often and doesn’t write that interesting of posts, I will probably have to drop them.

Pointers:

Things that make me subscribe to someone’s blog is if they are writing often and have appealing posts towards me. I like it when blogs have titles that pop out and make you want to read the post, if posts have links to other sites or blogs, and if most of their posts include pictures. I also like bloggers that comment back to you after you comment on their blog. There are many blogs out there, all are good, but some just don’t appeal to us because they aren’t writing anything of our interests."

These are only two, but many of the kids had interesting things to say. Many of them spoke about how they are making their choices about which blogs they choose to subscribe to and about the possibilities of dropping blogs that are not interesting or informative for them to read. Many of the kids wrote about the concept of geography and distance being eliminated through reading the words of other people.

In several weeks, I am going to hold my first set of conferences with kids about their PLN. I am considering doing the conferences in small groups of two or three kids that way they will be able to draw some ideas from each other and hear what others have to say. I really want to get down to clear ideas of working in these ways. I want kids to think about the benefits of their network; the global voices they are hearing, the difficulties and struggles that are other people are experiencing. I want to be able to clearly point to benefits. I'm hoping that these conferences will help all of us focus our ideas.

technorati tags:classroom, blogging, pln, benefits

Comments

[Chris Harbeck]

Thanks for sharing this excellent Idea. I am starting to use it with my 4 classes of grade 8 math. I will start by having them use bloglines to track new entries to the 4 Sargent Park classes then have them add new blogs that interest them into different categories. This is an excellent idea from a man who keeps it interesting for kids to learn.

Thanks for such a wonderful idea.

Chris Harbeck
Sargent Park School
http://sargentparkmathzone.blogspot.com/index.html