Blog#2: Chapter 6
There are many benefits to being a part of a connected learning community, especially with personal learning networks. These networks help individuals accomplish a professional goal or a personal interest by allowing people to think deeper and gather more knowledge about a certain topic. Networks allow you to receive more information that you can use to help the people in your communities receive more information. Starting your own personal learning network has a lot of steps like who you should follow and making sure that they are trustworthy, borrowing from bloggers, and using social bookmarking.
The job is not finished after you make your personal learning network you have to keep it up to date by making sure you engage in conversation with people. If you do not the network has no purpose anymore because there is no relay of information back and forth. You also have to make sure that you are bringing in the right kind of people because the internet has a lot of bad people out there. You want to design your network based on your own ideas and interest so you can bring in a crowd of people that have the same interest as you. Within a community, there are different people doing different things like linking, lurking, learning, and leading. Each one of these helps the community expand and branch out by explaining information or spreading information.
I can relate to what the author is saying as a criminal justice major because it is important to have your own personal learning network or at least join a connected community with the same interest. As stated in the chapter you want to make sure you are connecting with the right people because I do not want to be getting information from someone who does not know what they are talking about. You also have to do background checks on people to make sure that they can be trustworthy regarding the information that they are posting. Would you want the president of the United States to receive his information from a high schooler?
Citation - Nussbaum-Beach, S., & Hall, L. R. (2012). The connected educator: Learning and leading in a Digital age. Solution Tree Press.
Hi Zack! I agree that collecting a personal learning network is just a start and connecting with those within the network is what brings success. I like to think I'm an extrovert in person but online introvert. I enjoyed your summary of the book and got a chuckle at the last bit. Are you Smarter Than a 5th Grader's theme song is now playing in my head.
ReplyDeleteZack, you are 100% right about needed to stay engaged with your audience online. I have personally had amazing conversations with people and learned a lot from others while running my own blog. As well as it is important to learn where information is coming from. I personally never turn town information from people based on who they are, as long as they can provide me with a reliable source that THEY received the information from. It is important to check the source of information that people may be spreading around.
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