Personal Learning Networks

This is an interesting topic and is open to an infinite number of perspectives. I have to admit at the outset that I currently do not have much of a PLN as far as I can tell. I think my own PLN originally was very low tech. It involved engaging in long conversations with colleagues about teaching pedagogy. However, I have to say that for me, it was brilliant. But it is over 3 years since I was a full time teacher and I currently have a teaching load of just 4 hours per week.
My facebook friends are limited to my direct family. I do have a LinkedIn account which I developed when I was doing a previous role which benefitted from contacts with local and international industry. However that was much more along the lines of business introduction and I do not think LinkedIn would work for me as an educator. I signed up for Twitter a few years ago but used it very little. But I could see from reading the articles and blogs how this could be a very useful and quick way of getting ideas and keeping updated. I think I will try to get more involved in it. I also like the look of Pinterest and could see possible applicatins for that. I have signed up and will see how that works out.

One of the issues I feel I have always faced is that I have never really felt that there were loads of educators on line in a similar situation to me. To be honest, an awful lot of the online stuff I find is either for school teachers or for ELT teachers. I don’t seem to find that many for teachers who are teaching content subjects to second language learners. And maybe it is a weakness that I have, but it feels that this is a significant problem. And it also occurs to me that probably the most relevant PLN I could develop is with other colleagues in HCT and other institutions in the Middle East who are in a similar situation. But at HCT we seem to be incredibly bad at collaborating with each other across colleges or soemtimes even in the saem college!. I cant really figure out why that is. Maybe it is the environnment created by the organisation. Why is it easier and more relevant to have contacts with people from across the world in totally different situations, when I hardly ever speak to the colleague working for the same employer, teaching the same course to the same type of students in a college a few miles down the road?

So I suppose where I am heading with this is that the first step in developing an effective PLN for me is to find a way to engage more effectively so that I can learn from the experiences and knowledge of people in a similar situation to me within HCT. It often seems that we are all so busy at work that we do not have the time to stop and talk to discuss and share ideas. Instead we do all that at home in our own time online! That’s not to say by any means that I don’t want to engage or learn from others with different experiences, but it does mean that I want to make a determined effort to connect with my HCT colleagues. I believe they are probably the best and most relevant resource I could access if I want to improve as an educator in my current situation. Not taking full advantage of that would be stupid.