The Potential of PLN's

PLN's have a great potential to build and experience unique connections amongst students and teachers throughout the world.  Social bookmarking allows educators and students to find like minded people who  share similar interests and then discover what those people are reading.  It's a great way to uncover ideas, articles, and experiences that can be used to enhance anything from teaching to technology.  Blogs are similar to social bookmarking in that they both encourage people to share their thoughts and opinions.  Both are also free to use and upload which helps encourage its success.  Blogs and social bookmarking can help in your PLN by allowing others to see your thoughts or scholarly articles and encourages a web consciousness of shared educational values. 


I was most impressed by the Ning websites.  I signed up for global education and classroom 2.0.  I also found some teachers I work with that were already signed up on this site so it's great that I am able to establish a connection so quickly.  The global education classroom reminds me of the MOOC format in that it is free and anyone from around the world can participate in real time discussion.  I hoped into a session on flattening the classroom and was immediately overwhelmed by how amazing it was to see people from all over the world engaging in real time discussion.  I believe that these Ning websites really balance the scale of education by allowing free, easy access to legitimate learning experiences.  I fear that these may one day put the public sector in jeopardy and a serious alternative to education.  This is not going to happen in my lifetime, but I can see as the world progressively becomes linked in and flattened, this model of online learning could be the standard.  You can find me at global education and my name is Beau Holley.