There is a lot of discussion about what a Personal Learning Network is or is not. It can be different for everyone, clean, messy, exciting, informative, formal, informal. It can be anytime, anywhere. It can be on Saturday at 7am with a book and coffee. It can be enhanced by technology and social networks, or it can be a group of people that meet to discuss a book, a concept, a research project… A key piece I believe though is that it is participatory and often best when it is social. We learn best what we share and teach with others.
A lot of effort, time and money goes into in-service training where we take staff from their regular duties and school them on how to do specific things. Our success with in-service honestly ranges from wanting to amazing depending on the participant as it can be difficult to meet the varied needs of our learners on one specific topic. That’s where differentiation comes in. We’d like to meet the needs of everyone of our learners. Two ways we are going to help differentiate learning are to encourage the use/creation of your own Personal Learning Networks (get ready to hear this a lot more often) as well as use a self-assessment around technology to get you started.
With technology learning sometimes we don’t know where to get started when it comes to a certain topic and it is helpful to have some kind of assessment of our skills. In an effort to help differentiate learning for our staff around technology several of us in TS have created a page called the SD60 Technology Learning Passport.
While this is a tool to help you get started or continue your learning journey please remember that there are many skilled peers in your school, your district, your classroom (yes ask the nearest 10 year old for help they are teachers too), and online around the world to help you move forward on your learning goals! Go through the SD60 Technology Learning Passport, pick something new and then check with your skilled peers on where to go next.
One of your skilled peers that nearly everyone knows in our district is our Wireless Writing Mentor Teacher, Toni Thompson. I’m happy to say that Toni is still our 0.4 WWP Mentor teacher but she is also now our 0.4 Technology Mentor (I had originally misspelled that as Teachnology, I like that! Anyhow…) So Toni is now available to everyone in the district for help around the items in the SD60 Technology Learning Passport.
So please give us a ring or send us an email, we’d be happy to help you start with your Personal Learning Network!
Jarrod – jbell@prn.bc.ca – 250-262-6011
Toni – tthompson@prn.bc.ca – 250-263-8201