The Great PLN Adventure

Step One: Examine the state of my current PLN.

In doing this first I had to mentally separate my general PLN from my science PLN. In doing this I basically discovered that my science PLN was very small. For one I'm at a very small school and while I can (and do) consult with other teachers regarding general education topics and struggles, we only have 4 other science teachers and none of them teach the subjects that I do. Therefore, they can't really provide me with as much information to fit into my science PLN. Therefore, one would logically think that I have sought outside networks to fill this science PLN void. Not really the case. This caused me to examine why.

Everyone always says don't recreate that wheel and I've always had a hard time with that because I always want to do and make my own things and I don't always step back to see what's out there. This is partly because I just want to make my own things (and make my wheel new, different, and exciting) but also because I feel like (whether it's always accurate or not) that it's too time consuming to sift through others' stuff and find something that's useful. I would rather just spend that time making it myself. Sometimes I'll stumble upon something but will forgot to look there again. This has always been a struggle of mine.

Step Two: Attempt to expand my PLN.

Thankfully, due to summer break (although I start teaching summer school next week), I have this time to examine and look for resources. My major objective in beginning this PLN expansion of 2009 was to remember that anything that I added needed to not only make my life simpler but more importantly make me better able to teach my students.

Through this what I have discovered (or reaffirmed) so far is that

• Two heads, 20 heads, 100 heads are much better and more efficient than 1
  
• Google Reader paired with iGoogle might be the best thing ever
• In order to get the most out of my network, I need to be part of the conversation instead of watching while the conversation goes on around me; making comments, responding to blogs, asking questions instead of just saying them privately to my comptuer.

Step Three: Share, Share, Share

Here are some things that I've come across or begun using to build the Katie PLN empire that you might also find useful **short description included**.

1. iGoogle - Coordinating your PLN. Marta has a great post about using this and I just want to put another plug out there. For me (who struggles to check things that are scattered in many different places) having my Gmail, Google Reader, Twitter, and other fun things like the weather, picture of the day, and to-do lists all in one place is great!
2. The Synapse - This is a network for Biology teachers (I know many of you teach other sciences - sorry!). One of the admins is Stacy Baker who has Miss Baker's Blog that many of us have looked at. Another one is Elissa Hoffman who many of us are following on Twitter. I found information about Synapse on Miss Baker's personal page about using blogs in science.
3. Finally here a couple more blogs I came across that are proving quite helpful. Successful teaching has a lot of good information on various tools to use in the classroom. Lab Out Loud has podcasts done by two science teachers who interview scientists.

Step Four: Continue the journey

On that note, I'm going to stop rambling and call this post finished.