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Chapter 1 – Building a Personal Learning Network

By Jason Bedell, on February 10th, 2010

First, I owe a big thank you to everyone who helped out with this. There are at least 10 people who I have added to the special thanks list to be included at the beginning of the book when it is published. In particular, though, @lasichelped me retool the introduction and gave me some really good advice. @gottsledand @bryanjack(with his student Katie) helped me greatly by providing 1st hand stories from when they used some of the tools mentioned in the chapter.

Second, this is the first full chapter. The introduction, if you want to read it, is still available here. It is rather long (38 pages in Word), but I also think it is foundational to succeeding through the rest of the book. If you are reading this, you can probably testify to the power of having a good PLN.

Third, I am always looking for honest feedback. What do I need to do to improve this chapter? In particular, is there anything you think I should remove to make it easier to read? Would you change or add anything (I was going to cover the Educator’s PLN along with Google Reader, but I was concerned over space)? Is there anything about the chapter that you particularly don’t like?

Lastly, the referenced video tutorials are not done yet. We have our second day off in a row today and my microphone is in my office at school. The tutorials will be done by the weekend.

Without further preamble, here are the download links and the Scribd document:

Click here for the Word doc.

Click here for the PDF.
Chapter 1: Building a Personal Learning Network

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  • http://ohtheplaces.edublogs.com Oh_the_Places

    WOW! That student story in the opening is awesome! Imagine the skill and knowledge. I like the Twitter – TV analogy. Twitter gets such a bad rap as you probably saw in the THE Journal article. Most educators just don’t see the relevance and see Twitter as a way to follow celebs instead of transforming their own professional development. You might want to remove any time references and make them more general. For example, when talking about #echat you said, “Last week….” or the rubric hash was “Last night…” Relevant for a blog post, but not a book. My two cents there. Another thought too when you talk about user names. I would suggest creating a name that you “own” and can market. For example, my initial Twitter name was ODSTech (my school and position), but when I realized I was making a mark for myself, and who know what could happen with my job down the road, I changed it to something that represented me and I wouldn’t need to disown it later if my position changed. More to come but I don’t want to lose this comment.

  • http://ohtheplaces.edublogs.com Oh_the_Places

    Another twitter follower screening tip I use is skim over other people the person follows. Often I can find a picture of someone I follow or recognize so I know they’re legit. If you look at the user in Tweetdeck, it says when the person joined Twitter – FYI. Didn’t know if you realized you are missing the link for the SPED blog. I’m thinking maybe @andycineck One Comment project might be cool to mention – places to find other blogs as well as get your own blog more visitors and hopefully comments. I also like @tomwhitby’s advice – if you like a person’s tweets, you’ll probably enjoy their blogs since blogging allows for more than 140 characters. Something else I started doing also was copying comments from other blogs to my own blog. I did this with one of @tomwhitby’s posts – I realized I was leaving a lengthy comment on someone else’s page and I wanted a copy for myself on my page – for myself, but also to continue the conversation with my own thoughts and opinions.

  • http://jasontbedell.com Jason Bedell

    Oh_the_Places,

    You have some really great ideas that I’ll try to incorporate. I wasn’t sure if I sure include time references, but you’re right, as the book evolves it would be better to leave it more general. The naming convention is also helpful. I use the same username across Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, Diigo, Wallwisher, etc… I added @spedteacher’s blog. Thanks for all the tips. I’ll definitely be using this when I go back to revise.

    Jason.

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