PLN - Learn It, Live It, Love It!

What exactly is a PLN?  A personal learning network is a group of people connected together for a sole purpose:

-          to learn from

-          to gain insight to what others have learned or experienced and the resources used

-          to give advice and inspiration

-          to share your findings and revelations

A PLN is customized specifically for you.  It allows you to decide exactly what you want to see and it allows you to choose how involved you want to be with your new found networking group.

A lot of research on the internet favors PLN for educators, but a PLN can be useful to everyone.  My mind is already going on how I can utilize a PLN in my current position.  As a Program Scheduler, it is my responsibility to devise a project plan incorporating details of the tasks involved from onset of the program to the finished product.  While doing this, I am also incorporating resources (both human and equipment), loading budget to these tasks and measuring the team’s performance on these tasks.  There are times that I have questions or would like to know how others accomplish similar tasks within the industry.  A PLN would be a beginning for me to establish a network of people doing similar work.  I also would like to do a PLN for my husband’s small engine repair/welding business.

So where do I start?  Once I focus on my topic of interest, I need to start to build a plan.  My first step would be to reach out to others with similar interest.  This can be accomplished through tools made available in the internet.  Twitter and blogger would be my first stop.  Initially I would just follow others to see what kind of information is available to me.  From there I would venture to blogging on the subject matter (both original posts of mine and commenting on others).  This will start my little circle of trust.  Using blogger as my main focal point, I can have links to various other social networking tools such as twitter and facebook.  It appears that there are a lot more tools out there to be utilized such as flickr, slideshare and del.icio.us.  Do you know anything about these or have some favorites of your own?  As I learn, I will keep you posted.  I invite you to do the same.

If you are doing a PLN for a business, the most important thing to remember is that you are creating business leads.  What you write and who you chose in your network is representative of the type of person you are and what your business ethnics you have.  Even if your PLN is for schooling or personal pleasure, be sure to be professional.