Interesting topic. I read articles on the web, attend workshops, watch videos, discuss teaching topics with colleagues but I had never thought of this as my “Personal Learning Network.” This week’s work will make me think about my PLN a little differently (now that I know have such a thing!) and maybe plan for my personal learning opportunities more deliberately, including getting together more often with other teachers to share ideas.
There was a quote from an issue of Fortune magazine a few years ago that read, in essence, “When learning a new skill, most people get good at first and then stop improving. However, a few continue to get better and go on to greatness.” I think that any of us will stop growing if we don’t continually keep learning ourselves and thinking about how to make our classes go better. With the constant onslaught of new digital tools and increased demand for online classes, this need to keep learning is more important now than ever.
I don’t know that sharing is a “moral obligation,” as one of the video authors asserted, but I do agree that it’s important to give back to others since so many people have helped us over the years. Sort of that “play it forward” concept. When I’ve shared ideas that work for me, oftentimes others have given me feedback to make those ideas work even better. Sharing helped them AND me. Unless you are writing a book or involved in some other profit-making venture, it seems like the potential benefits from sharing are unlimited and there’s very little downside.
Now for the bad news. As a result of this week’s topics, I thought I would search for blogs related to my field. My search produced quite a few. Some were filled with ads (bloggers trying to make a buck?) but I found a couple that were of interest. In one, there was a link to what was supposed to be another paper so I thought I would read it. Ouch, big mistake! It wasn’t a harmless link to a scholarly article and my antivirus software jumped into action and warned me that the site was downloading serious malware to my computer. Whew! I was relieved because I thought my antivirus program had saved me. Ugh. No such luck. My browser is now randomly opening up new tabs to what look like more dangerous sites. Arghhh!!! I’ll post this to my blog and then let my computer run a complete virus scan to see if it can find and remove the offending software. Wish me luck!
