Personal Learning Networks - Why do I need to build one?

There are many advantages to investing time in building a PLN (Personal Learning Network). Although it may take some time to do it, once you have set it up, it will pay off.

Firstly, PLNs are useful to gain access to resources, ideas and advice from teachers all over the world; content that we can curate and share. Today, we can find everything we need on the Internet, without having to physically attend expensive conferences to keep up to date. Secondly, building PLNs using different webtools helps us develop our digital literacy.

Nik Peachey divides the PLN experience into three stages:

• Information in. This is how and where we find information.
• Information processing. This is how we process, engage with and capture information.
• Information out. This is how we share what we’ve learned or discovered.

For each of these stages, he mentions different webtools he uses. I'm going to talk about the ones I use, which may coincide with his.

Information in

These are the different ways in which I get ELT-related information online:

• Facebook groups. I currently belong to two or three ELT-related groups, where people share resources and ideas.

A Facebook group interface.

• English language and ELT forums. Right now I'm registered in forums such as Wordreference and UsingEnglish.

UsingEnglish.com

• RSS feeds. RSS feeds enable website publishers to syndicate data automatically, and once users subscribe to a website, RSS removes the need for them to manually check it. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and informs the user of any updates. The browser can also be commanded to automatically download the new data for the user. In order for us to sort through all of this information captured by the RSS feed, we need a RSS reader (also "feed reader" or "aggregator"), which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based. The RSS reader checks the user's feeds regularly for new information and can automatically download it, if that function is enabled. The two RSS readers I like the most are Feedreader and Feedly.

Feedreader

Feedly

• YouTube. By having a YouTube channel, you can subscribe to other channels and receive updates on their content.

YouTube feed

Information processing

Right now, I have a Diigo account, where I store useful links, tag them and organise them into lists. I've always bookmarked links in my browser and organised them into folders, but having a really long dropdown menu in your browser is not particularly comfortable. 

A Diigo library

Information out

As Nik points out in his blog article and in his presentation Developing personal learning environments for your professional development, sharing is a very important part of the process, because you are turning information into knowledge by using what you have found, reflecting on it, reformulating it and republishing it.
I usually share stuff on my Facebook account and Facebook groups.