What does PLN mean to you?

What is a PLN? What are you talking about? What does it do for me? 
Common questions when one mentions the acronym PLN or PLE, particularly around a group of digitally disconnected individuals.


This morning I retweeted (RT) a tweet sent out by Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) to support Beth Still's (@bethstill) Wallwisher project titled, "What My Personal Learning Network Means to Me":

At some point people acknowledge their personal/professional/perpetual/persistent learning networks (P⁴LN) or environments (PLE) but they may not share their Aha moment or give credit where credit is due.


On January 3, 2010 I blogged a "Thank you to my PLN" and created an ABCD award for them.


Want to learn more about PLNs and PLEs? There are so many links and resources available that I cannot list them all here...please feel free to leave a comment if you have published information on your experiences with PLNs and PLEs.

edtechpost wiki - Collection of PLE Diagrams (Diagrams, links & categorized - 1 of my favorites)

EDUCAUSE - "7 Things You Should Know about Personal Learning Environments" in their collection of 7 Things briefs.

EduTech Wiki article on Personal learning environments.

Wikipedia provides a history of Personal Learning Environments.

Mohamed Amine Chatti's ongoing research on Technology Enhanced Learning blog post on PLE links with links to many other blog posts and articles.

However you reference your PLN/PLE, personal, professional, perpetual, persistent...or whatever adjective you use, it is yours, once you have learned it, applied it, the knowledge cannot be taken away from you...so enjoy it!

Thanks again P⁴LN for continuing to grow on my learning journey!

P⁴ - Personal, Professional, Perpetual, Persistent

Please share your comments, recommendations, and links about your PLN/PLEs and don't forget to thank them.


Don't forget to visit Beth Still's Wallwisher project, "What My PLN means to me..."

Who is the family communication collaborator in your family?

Who is your family communications collaborator? When was the last time you updated your contact info?

Early this morning my mother was in a car accident. Not her fault and she was not scheduled to work today...just required to attend a mandatory meeting. First message was at 6 AM I could hear noises in the background but figured she was at her workplace and accidentally hit the phone to call me. The first words of the message were, "Do not drive home, just call J, I am OK, car is totaled." When I did speak to her for a minute, I could tell the pain medication was working.

I started with messages to family and friends telling them I would keep everyone updated but keep the calls to the minimum because she was in the emergency room. Thankfully, I have some awesome neighbors in Augusta (Thanks Ron and Dot). They went to visit my mother in the hospital, where she had been admitted but was out of the room for a cat scan. After she returned, they called me from her room and I could hear her in good spirits in the background. DD showed up later and took a picture. As promised, I did not post the picture for the world to see but did share it with a few family members who have data plans on their phones and email for those who do not.

So it turns out, she has a broken leg and a possible fracture in the C2 vertebrate. My mother is also the oldest of 14 children, so you can only imagine the number of family members. Using a variety of tools, we all seem to connect when one family member or another needs thoughts, prayers, recognition, and/or thanks...but you can imagine the diversity of options to contact everyone. Thankfully I have two proactive aunts (Thanks Aunt Laura & Aunt Lois) geographically separated but keep connected to multiple family members primarily through email or voice calls.

So between GMail w/Gchat and video, Twitter, blip.fm, Facebook, and minimum number of voice phone calls the message was distributed. When I looked at the various tools used I wondered, "Who is the family communications collaborator in your network? Who would have been left out of the information loop if only one method of communication was used? When was the last time you updated your family contact information with family, school, or place of employment?"