ISTE 2011 – Cultivating your Personal Learning Network

One of the sessions I participated in was “A Gardener’s Approach to Learning”, with David Warlick. He started off his presentation by talking about his new passion photography and about a new camera. He did this to prove a point, you need to learn something new everyday! Something you didn’t know about yesterday!  This is important, because we as educators need to rethink what it means to be an educator. If we are to redefine the 21 century teachers we will find that they must be master learners. As a teacher you have to be willing to stand in front of the class and say; I do not know the answer to that question. But I can assure you I will find out. Either on my own or with the help of my PLN!

Personal learning networks are used to cultivate connections with people and other sources that help me do my job. How can you build a strong and resourceful personal learning network? ;

1. By reading blogs and wikis, by joining networks (Classroom 2.0) and using twitter.
2. Find what people are blogging about at BlogPulse,
3. Search blogs to see who is writing about ISTE at Google blog search,
4. Use Technorati for real time search.
5. Find who is tweeting about learning networks on Twitter search.
6. Use Diigo to highlight, then remember, and find others who are interested in the same as you!

His handouts can be found here at Colearners. If you want to watch the presentation you may find it here at ISTE 2011.You can find the back channeling talk here at Knitter chat.

I know for sure that I, just by writing this post, learned something new today, perhaps you will too!

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