Clint Hamada's List: PD/Building a PLN

• Everyone has one, and each is different and as unique as a fingerprint. Some employ technology, and others dwell in faculty rooms across the country and around the world.
• I was emailing and Googling and I had mastered PowerPoint. I was even able to get by in Blackboard, but beyond that, I had a million questions as to what to do and how to do it.
• Like many people I tweeted out nonsense, got no response, and left the application not to return for several weeks. Unlike many People I returned determined to figure out what Twitter was.
• Twitter by appearances held a virtual Treasure Trove of educational information and I needed the map to get to it.
• I quickly followed those who I knew and trusted as serious educators. After that source was exhausted the process became simple. I looked at who each of those folks were following and I ripped them off.
• With this devastating discovery Regis taught me that someone who has nothing to offer in education was not part of the goal that I had in mind. I refocused on Educators. If there was nothing educational in someone’s Twitter bio I did not follow.
• What I came to realize over time was that I developed this PLN and many of its members are forward thinking educators who are all seeking the same sources that I am seeking. That fact makes them different from many educators in the system today.
• One thing that I never considered in all of this was the personal relationships that are developed along the way.
• After being together virtually on the PLN, we were now all connected in the real world. One needs to experience this to understand it.
• With each connection there is a new lesson learned. It is the need to collaborate and communicate that prompts the learning.  I had no idea what most of this stuff was when I started out on this journey.
• My dilemma was that I could no longer live with my definition of classroom. Most of my learning through this entire process was done when my school was on summer break. My classroom was the couch in the den
• If an old guy like me can get as much as I have gotten on my own, what could brighter, younger students with proper guidance accomplish?
• The constraints of time and space that once defined our process were no longer relevant. In an ideal world, a classroom might one day become a place for guidance, reflection, and redirection from the teacher. Learning could be going on elsewhere at a more individualized rate and time-shifted for convenience.
• Many need to hold on to that sense of history for comfort.
• Give an administrator a twitter account with an established PLN on it and show them how to use it. The value would be soon recognized by forward-thinking administrators.
• Educators who use their age as an excuse not to use technology should take note that my involvement at this level came four years after my retirement from a 34-year career. I am an old dog learning new tricks. That would be a very old dog and very new tricks.
• To exclude access to information in an educational environment goes a long way in insuring irrelevancy.
• The power of the PLN needs to be supported by educators. If students were encouraged by educators to develop their own PLN’s many educators would have to do the same to keep up with the learning.
• Students should not be bound by their teachers’ limitations.

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• You need a group of folks you can trust who will clue you in to the latest and greatest. As a leader of a school district or building or classroom, you need to know what new ideas are floating about, what old ideas are being reinvented, and what old ideas are being discredited.
• PLNs use Twitter, Facebook, or some other social networking tool to communicate.
• Rather, who doesn’t have time to join like minded professionals who also don’t want to waste time? PLNs are about pithy conversations. With its 140 character limit, Twitter encourages one to really focus.
• “It contains educator lists that will enable you to begin following vetted educators who are all willing to collaborate. Those lists save months of time in accumulating valuable educator sources."

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• By taking advantage of opportunities to connect with colleagues, both face-to-face and virtually, you can grow and nourish your personal learning network.