This text is part of a chain of events. Just follow the link at the end of the blog post and you will find out more about the collaborative efforts of PBL5. PBL5 is a group of 8 professionals from Sweden and Finland. We belong to different universities, we have different professional, cultural backgrounds and interests. What we have in common is the thirst for knowledge and the passion for sharing what we learn and how we do it.

Some days ago, Alec Couros aroused my curiosity with his webinar about Personal Learning Networks (PLN). I’d not heard that word before but I’d already realized that I needed to get more contacts with other professionals sharing the same interests, having different expertise, I wanted to know about where and how to share ideas, resources, experiences. How to find, select and join a group of people that can help me. So I guess that I already knew about my personal learning networks in an intuitive way.

As Steve Johnson said in his book “Where good ideas come from” : A good idea is a network…

So, I was thinking about the networks that I will need to join in order to survive in my academic environment and came up with these:

1-Research (Breast cancer research)

2-Medical community (Breast cancer challenges and real problems to solve)

2-Funding (Grant writing, crow funding)

3-Entrepreneuship (Economy, implementation)

4-EdTECH (Technology applied to education)

5-Pedagogy (Learning theories and methods)

I am a researcher with interest in technology applied to education and pedagogical development. I need to fund my research and to fund myself in order to do what I like most. Therefore, I would like to have new ideas for my research and to discuss the feasibility of these ideas in a community with similar interests (Research Network). I need to identify the real problems within my field (Medical community), the influencers inside my field and the funding opportunities (Entrepreneurship, Funding network). Moreover, I would like to teach students in blended or online environments using the technology and digital tools available for education (EdTECH) and I would like to deliver with quality and seriousness (Pedagogy).

What tools can I use to build up my PLN?

I’ve neglected twitter for many years but Alec showed me this video, making me realize that my “Twitteracy” (term coined by Christine Greenhow, MSU) was very low. I had participated and enjoyed tweetchats, as good brainstorming opportunities. Sometimes I post in twitter or retweet things but what I am missing is using twitter actively to network and identify people with similar interest. To get new inputs and do research.

What do I need to start using twitter this way?

Check this site

First I had to know more about hashtags (keywords preceded by the pound symbol #keyword) and how to use them and which hashtags I need. I feel like I’m a novice to what everyone already knows: hashtags are useful to track and organize topics in social media.

Here I found this blog  that inspired me to do a twitter experiment

I asked a question in twitter:

I am waiting for answers now but if you know and can help please visit @Gizpe

More than twitter, what else can I use to build my PLN?

Visit some teacher blogs. Some of them have been awarded:

Or to subscribe to a new podcast as suggested by this article

Now continue PBL5 learning journey by following this link