Monday, July 26, 2010
Lately, there have been numerous posts around the education blogosphere about building PLNs, or Personal Learning Networks. Admittedly, I had no idea what a PLN was two years ago. 
When I did learn what the abbreviation meant, I still didn't see how a PLN would help me, so I pretty much ignored it, remaining stuck in my individual education world -- devoid of contact with other teachers, save for those who teach across the hall from me.
Then I began teaching online courses on web-based instruction through two colleges. Not long after that, I started getting invites to present my Paperless Classroom technique at education technology conferences. I met all sorts of teachers; many of them began asking for my blog URL, my Twitter handle and my Facebook page link. I had nothing to offer.
Suddenly, one day it occurred to me that I was teaching educators how to create an online world for their students, yet I had virtually no online identity of my own. Things had to change.
I began with a blog (one that no longer exists), but I had little direction in what to post. I read other teacher bloggers, but they were writing about methods and curriculum, and I figured I had to write about technology and Web 2.0. Two months in, I had few readers, so I stopped blogging.
Then, I tried Twitter. After six months, I posted about 40 tweets -- most aimed at getting people to take my online courses. No one was reading, following or retweeting. So, I stopped going to Twitter, too.
An epiphany changed everything
One day, I had a lengthy discussion with Angela Maiers, an education consultant, whose blog I read regularly, because it offered excellent advice for teachers and links to useful resources. Angela taught for 20 years, before leaving the classroom to become a full-time education consultant.
Interested in her position (I hope to consult full-time when I leave the classroom), I asked her how she's done it. Her answer was remarkable. She told me that even now as a paid consultant, she shares tons of free information with teachers (her blog is a true example of this). Angela Maiers made me understand in more depth something I had already been doing at conferences and with colleagues -- most teachers give away information others might be willing to pay for, because most teachers want to improve the world of education.
With this new inspiration, I finally understood the value of a PLN. Not only did I want to build one to get valuable information about education, but I wanted to build one to give away what I know about Web 2.0 and web-based instruction, so I might make the world of education a better place.
So, as I was creating Learn it in 5, a site designed to help teachers, I went back building my PLN.
The strategy
The first step, I concluded, was to follow good people. I was more concerned with learning from those I followed than from getting followers; that would come in time. My strategy was to follow the people that experts were following. I went to Angela Maiers' Twitter account and looked at the list of people she follows. I followed a few of these. As a big fan of Lee Kolbert's blog and Lee's tweets, I also followed some of the people she follows. As I repeated this strategy, my PLN began to grow with educators who were interested in sharing information.
The second step was to contribute the excellent content, as Angela Maiers had suggested. So, I began using my Twitter account like never before -- retweeting excellent links, steering people to what I believed to be powerful blog posts and education news and, eventually, guiding people to the videos and content being created here at Learn it in 5.
The last step included building a Facebook following and contributing to key Twitter streams like #edchat and #edtech.
Soon, people began following me. Sometimes it was strictly because I followed them, but after a solid period of contributing, I saw more people following because, I like to believe, they saw usefulness in what I was bringing.
