Thoughts on Personal Learning Networks

Personal Learning Networks can be utilized as an amazing source for news and information that I have a vested interest in studying. But in a world so filled with grading, mixed up school schedules, lesson plans, emails, three young children, and the minutia of everyday life, I am still unclear how to incorporate time in my life to read and think for myself, much less read what everyone else is thinking about. I know I need to learn how to better manage my time since I mentally wrote this blog over a week ago, and I am just posting it now and attempting to make sense of my notes. I was fascinated by Clarence Fisher's presentation and discussion about how he incorporates personal learning networks into his classroom every day. I loved his idea of having my students subscribe to globalvoicesonline.org and have each student subscribe to one feed from one country and have that become part of the student's required reading. Having the students then post a blog commenting on their blogs is an excellent way to reach the students and make their learning more meaningful. The one 8th grader had over 23,000 hit on her blog within a 6 month period. This is unbelievable and an amazing tool for students to realize that they have a voice that is being heard. Although I believe I subscribed to many of my colleagues blogs, I am still unclear of how to access them on a regular basis. I am also concerned with the concept that if the teacher becomes the learning hub, how long will it take before we are obsolete? If student have this amount of control over the information, how will different ideas be expressed and taught so that we do not all end up only believing what we want to believe? In college, the true learning that I experienced happened when I ran into people that did not believe the same ideas as myself and we challenged one another to see the world differently. The world is changing and I am trying to change with it.