A presentation to my school, presenting blogging as an introduction to developing a personal learning network. Version 2 updated with a few little bits and a thankyou to my PLN.

1. A Challenge to the Staff and Students of
Shoalhaven High School
to start Blogging

2. What is a Personal Learning Network?
 A PLN is formed as soon as any sustained discussion occurs
about a specific topic.
 The network consists of the people conducting the
discussion and the artefacts produced or referred as a
consequence of the discussion
 PLN’s are currently relevant because of the rise of
collaborative technologies accessible from both computers
and mobile phones
 This has allowed discussions to move away from a physical
location where the artefacts are often centrally located and
onto the internet where the discussion crosses geographic
and cultural divides and artefacts are stored ‘in the cloud’

3. Why should we use PLN’s
 The consequences for those learners who start to use a
web-based PLN are:
 A ‘real’ audience for their work. It is not being produced
just to satisfy course requirements but is based on the
perceived needs and adapting understandings of the
members of the network
 A deeper understanding and connection with a wider
community
 Collaborative learning has a greater impact on an
individual’s knowledge than the presence of a ‘greater
intelligence’ (i.e. teacher or brighter student)

4. 1. Start a blog
2. Look for people to follow
3. Strengthen your connections

5. •Many of us already take notes about things we have learned or
want to do or have heard about and wish to follow up.
•A Web-log or blog takes this away from being merely a note on
a piece of paper, buried in our diaries or on our desks and
transforms it into a shared resource.
•We are inviting others (when we want to) to comment on these
things, to check and challenge our understandings and to
increase the general level of understanding, collaboration and
communication; not just within our own ‘closed shop’, but
within the wider community of our profession.
•A blog is the first step in removing the blinkers imposed on us
by the faculty door, the school gate and government
bureaucracy.

6. Start a Blog
 Why?
 Get your brilliant ideas, questions and resources out
there to share
 Record your learning journey, your understanding and
your achievements
 Improves overall literacy and communication skills
 Improves sense of wider community and belonging in an
overbusy, disconnected world

7. Start a Blog
 Plus many other reasons...

8. Start a Blog?
 How?
 Various Blog engines on the web
 BlogED (behind DET firewall, accessed
from “my learning tools” tab in DET Portal
 Blogger.com (uses Google ID)
 EduBlogs.org (internationally renowned
education based blogging platform)
 Wordpress, Tumblr, Posterous,

9. Start a Blog
 Choose a name for your blog that encourages interest
(I found this difficult!!)

10. Start a Blog
 What do you write about?
 A question you would like to answer or have answered
 An opinion you would like to discuss
 A soapbox issue you want to pontificate about (that’s
okay)
 Your learning, understandings and achievements
 You don’t have to publish every posting
 you can leave confidential stuff, or incoherent ramblings
as drafts.
 No-one else can see these but you

11. Start a Blog
 Organise your postings
 Use tags, categories and topics (whichever variations are
available to the particular blog engine):
 E.g. “PD, History, WWII, Europe, Australiantroops”, or
“Staffmeeting, ToDo, PBL, TeachersFederation”
 You will be able to search for and go directly to the older
entries which are relevant to your current work
(including your drafts)
 Your readers will be able to search for and go directly to the
posts which are applicable to their interests
 N.b – you can edit your posts and tags at any point in the future, so
don’t worry that you have to get everything right straight away.

12. •Now to start building your network.
•You want to find other people who have similar
interests and learning aims to you
•Having found them, you then want to encourage
them to start reading your blog
•This is were the sense of collaboration and
community comes to the fore
•Strong networks are a result of reciprocation

13. Look for people to follow
 Why would you do this?
 You are looking for other bloggers who have similar
learning goals in mind
 Ideally you want to be able to:
 further your understanding of a topic (look for an expert)
 work collaboratively to deepen your understanding (look for
peers)
 nurture new bloggers in your field (keep an eye on comments
to your blog and encourage participation)

14. Look for people to follow
 How do you find them?
 Use a generic search engine (use blog as one of your
search terms)
 Use a blog specific search engine (Google Blog Search,
Technorati)
 Ask or search on Yammer for people within the DET who
write their own blogs in your particular field

15. Look for people to follow
 What are you looking for?
 Your first post was about something (hopefully). Use
this as the basis for your search.
 Find 5 people whose blogs you wish to continue reading.
You will usually be able to subscribe to their posts via
email or a dedicated blog reader (more on these another
time)
 Any more than 5 usually becomes a bit difficult to keep
up with and you aren’t able to form strong connections
with all of the network members

16. Look for people to follow
 How do I make a connection with these
people?
 By all means say “Hi, nice blog!” but this doesn’t
encourage a connection
 Offer constructive feedback
 Ask a clarifying question
 Provide a weblink to a relevant resource
 Start an argument (positively of course) by
offering an opposing point of view

17. Look for people to follow
 How do you encourage them to correspond back?
 As you leave a comment, you are typically asked to
provide an email address. Use one you check
regularly.
 Try to leave a link to your blog
 Quote the address of your blog
 Or you can link to a specific blog posting of yours that is
relevant to their post
 Subscribe to the comments on that particular post
so that you know when they respond to your
comment

18. Look after the members of your
network
These are essentially professional
relationships that will work for you as
much as you work for them.

19. Strengthen your connections
 Keep an eye on both your email and the comments on
your blog
 Try to respond promptly and positively to any
correspondence
 Start referring to the people you follow (their blogs
and resources) when corresponding. You are
essentially giving someone a pat on the back by
encouraging a wider audience.

20. Encourage your network to grow
Investigate micro-blogging tools (Yammer, Twitter,
Facebook)
Join an online community (classroom 2.0, a ning network,
an online course) that provides areas for discussion,
posting of artefacts, etc.
Produce other forms of artefacts (pictures, videos,
mind maps, presentations, songs, podcasts, etc...)
Manage your online identity by consistently using the
same username so that people can find your other
artefacts easily (I'm iwoods2807)
Take the load of your inbox by using an aggregator to
monitor traffic on the blogs you follow (e.g. Google
Reader or Netvibes)

21. These people have helped me in my understanding of PLN’s and
contributed many ideas toward this presentation
Susan Julia Chris Vahid Jim
Sara Linn Kate Scott

22. 1. Sign up for your own blog
2. Write a quick post about your interests and what you would
like to learn about
3. Visit the SHS Blogging about Blogging site
4. Leave a comment with the address of your blog
5. Over the holidays:
1. Do some reading
2. Do some writing
3. Leave some comments
4. Help others grow their networks.