starting+a+personal+learning+network

=PHASE 1: STARTING A PERSONAL LEARNING NETWORK (PLN)=

This is the starting point of our project. Listed below are a couple links to help explain the what, why and how of Personal Learning Networks.


 * Elliot, C. (2009). "We are Not Alone: The Power of Personal Learning Networks" in //Synergy,// 7 (1) pp. 47-50.
 * "Your Personal Learning Network Made Easy" from the edublog onceateacher.wordpress.com

Getting Started
Now there are just a couple things to do to get fully involved and connected digitally for our group. These are outlined below.

__**1. Join our unique group on edmodo.com**__ //We're going to be using Edmodo as a networking and sharing tool. You can find out a little background about Edmo////do here and more about how a teacher could use it with his or her students here.//


 * Go to www.edmodo.com and create a new teacher account. Check your school email for the unique group code to use to "join" our special teacher group on the Edmodo site.

//This has a few steps, but they're straight-forward and it's worth it. Feedly is an amazing feed reader that presents information visually as well as textually, allowing you to set it up with feeds relating to your interests - effectively creating your own personalised magazine.//
 * __2. Get started with Feedly and set it up with some edblogs__**




 * Installing Feedly **


 * If you don't have either already, you'll need to install Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to your laptop or home computer. These are alternate web browsers to Internet Explorer because unfortunately Feedly isn't compatible with IE. Installing these is quick and easy (one note is that if you're installing on your work laptop, consider keeping IE as the default browser as eMaze is optimised for IE).
 * Once your new browser (Chrome or Firefox) is installed go to feedly.com and click on "Get Feedly" to install the Feedly extension in your new browser.
 * Once done, click on the green Feedly icon next to the address bar to open Feedly and log in. If you don't have a Google account you'll need to "create an account".

If you want more step-by-step guidance on how to do the above, sing out on Edmodo.


 * Adding some blogs **

Now that you have Feedly up and running, all you need to do is add some teacher-related blogs to it.




 * Click on "add source" at the top of the page.
 * Cut-and-paste or type the web address of a blog you want to add, and then click "preview".
 * The blog title and a list of posts will appear below. Click on the "subscribe" button to subscribe to this blog. It will then become a regular part of your content.
 * Keep adding new blogs that you want to follow; just add them the same way you did the first one.


 * Finding blogs to follow...**

The site Personal Learning Networks for Victorian Schools has a starter "bundle" of great teaching blogs you can subscribe to all in one hit. Just cut-and-paste the following link into your Feedly add-source box as described above:


 * []

The Australian teacher blog site www.globalteacher.org.au has loads of teacher and class blogs to take a look at and consider following. It's also a place you can later create your own teacher blog.

For a solid list of blogs of every description relating to teaching and learning visit Support Blogging. There are blogs on teaching and learning in general, as well as every specific aspect of teaching including particular curriculum focus areas. You just need to explore a little.

There is also a small list of some great edublogs to get you started here. Feedly is great, though, because once you start adding sources it begins to suggest more than are similar and might be of interest to you.


 * Start Reading **

That's it. Now all you need to do is check in with Feedly each day, skim over the new posts and maybe read a few that are of interest to you. Never mind trying to read them all, but if you take even 15 minutes a day you'll be amazed at what you find and how it can inspire, inform and challenge your own teaching. Then share what interests, inspires, intrigues, challenges or informs you with the rest of us via our Edmodo group.

Why not use Feedly to keep in touch with news on other topics of interest to you too? Rather than going looking for the latest, let it come to you!