Richard D. Solomon's Blog on Mentoring Jewish Students and Teachers: Rationale for Having or Creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for Students and Teachers

Friday, September 13, 2013

Rationale for Having or Creating a Personal Learning Network (PLN) for Students and Teachers

What is a PLN and why should a teacher/student have one?

A Personal Learning Network or PLN for a student is a learner created collection of knowledge resources both physical (i.e. library) and virtual (i.e. internet) that addresses the essential question or questions that a learner in conjunction with his/her teacher wants to investigate. Click here for additional information about essential questions.

Click on this YouTube video for a more elaborate explanation of the PLN: http://youtu.be/XwM4ieFOotA .

In addition to the traditional knowledge resources (i.e. teacher, library, encyclopedia, periodical, learned societies, etc,), what web resources might a Jewish student or teacher include in his/her PLN?

Below you will find a chart of sample secular and Judaic virtual resources for a Personal Learning Network for students and teachers. This listing of selected online resources should not be construed as a complete listing of authoritative resources available on the internet.

Sample Secular and Judaic Virtual Resources for a

Personal Learning Network[1]

Category	Value	Secular and Judaic Examples and Guides
Social Networking	Keeping up with personal, more social contacts like friends, family, and former students	Facebook, Edmodo, Judaic Study
Micro-blogging	Populated with educators from around the world who share best practices and resources in short bursts	Twitter, Judaism Update
Professional Profiles	Find other professionals and experts in your field	LinkedIn , LinkedIn Jewish Studies
Wikis	Community-monitored sites that can function as websites or for group organization and projects	Wikispaces, pbwiki, wetpaint Jewish School Libraries
Blogs	Great sources of information such as classroom best practices as well as personal opinions; Blogs monitor the heartbeat of new trends in education and the commenting back and forth leads to many great ideas and relationships	WordPress, Blogger, Jewlicious.com
RSS Reader	RSS means “Real Simple Syndication” – an RSS reader is a tool that allows you to keep up with many of your favorite blogs, all in once place (see this video ‘RSS in Plain English’)	Netvibes, PageFlakes, Google Reader , Jewish Week
Nings	Communities of people interested in similar topics, with forums and messaging	Classroom 2.0, Future of Education, Ning, Jewish Education Change Network
Social Bookmarking	Share bookmarks with others, see what others are bookmarking; you can join groups and get email updates on new bookmarks	Diigo, Diigo Groups, Delicious, My Diigo Resources on Jewish Education
Webinars	Live, on-line presentations or conferences, with real-time chat, hosted by experts on specific topics; Great way to learn about new things and to meet new people	Classroom 2.0 Live!, EdTechTalk Live, Elluminate MOFET-JTEC webinars
ListServes	Share conversation on scholarly topics	International Student and Scholar Services , Lookjed

[1] Adapted from http://onceateacher.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/pln-your-personal-learning-network-made-easy/ retrieved January 2013.

In previous posts we have established that a student and teacher might want to create a PLN to investigate and evaluate the human, material and virtual resources on a given topic of interest.

On the links below you will find addition resources discussing these two questions: