It's past noon and our group is Skyping (as I type this), to determine which direction our PLN will take... we're feeling very 21st century! In addition, the group (Karla and Mikki) are watching my screen as I demonstrate some of the functions, gadgets and widgets available in Blogger -- pretty much participating in the activities that define a PLN (Professional Learning Network). At the end of our Skype session (the first sentence of this post was typed while providing an example of how to use Blogger, labels for posts in this case), we agreed that we were grateful to have been given this assignment since this is a tool each of us can use beyond this assignment, this class and even this program (Adult Education and Training), a place where we can share new knowledge, ask questions, share our experience with the technologies we're using, air our frustrations... isn't that what a PLN is about?
Without putting too fine a point on this (and avoiding the temptation to turn this post into a paper on Connectivism or shared VLEs), I just want to say that, with the exception that this blog arose from an assignment to this learning team (the existing PLN on this blog), everything has evolved organically, through mutual agreement, one of the defining characteristics of a PLN.
Having said that, I want to point to a massive resource that will add to my understanding of what a PLN is and can be (mostly because I haven't had the time to really work on my Diigo presence):
PLN blogs on Edutopia.
That should do it, for now. In the meantime, I'm hoping to see this PLN's blogroll grow... and, while that happens, having this place attract the attention of other professionals like us who would like to participate!
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