Networked Learning

My network is composed of a lot of different people:

• First, my colleagues. They share with me their experience, ideas, successes and failures (as do I in return).
  
• Second, my students. Even though I am the one who is teaching them, I learn so much from them. They teach me how to: engage them, explain concepts of varying difficulty, make clear connections, teach to varying learning styles and paces, and respect their thoughts and ideas. They push me to want to try harder. Hopefully they would say the same about me.
• Third, my family and friends. Talking things out with non-teachers helps me clarify what it is that I am trying to achieve. The support that my family and friends give me helps me to feel more confident to try new things and take risks with my teaching.
• Fourth, my LTT colleagues and mentors. Working closely with people who are also interested in pursuing higher education is beneficial in that the learning is reciprocal. We are forced to document and prove our learning, and then share it. My colleagues help me through this process by questioning me, providing ideas, and supporting me, as I do to/for them.
• Fifth, educators/experts/Jo Schmo that I seek out digitally via websites, blogs, podcasts, etc and physically by reading research or meetings with them to pick their brains. At this point in my career, this avenue continues to be one-way for me, but I am working on gaining the confidence to put my thoughts “out there”. My LTT blog is a start.

There are of course many benefits of networked learning. Here’s a few that came to mind that were of particular importance to me:

• It reduces your need to reinvent the wheel. For educators, time is precious, and the time used to come up with ideas, resources, techniques, etc can be better used on more productive tasks.
• It keeps you connected with other education professionals and opens up your resource bank significantly due to that.
  
• It can build your confidence knowing that something you gave someone helped them, which in turn helped children.
  
• It gives a feeling of assurance that other people have experienced the same struggles and triumphs as you.
• It strengthens your desire to learn more.
  

When asked to sketch my learning network (prior to watching assigned podcasts by George Siemens and Stephen Downes), here's what I came up with:

After watching the podcasts and following some blogs of "pros", I'm sure my ideas will change a bit as I am still learning what it means to learn. That doesn't sound confusing at all.


Here are some quotes that I came across on this topic that were inspiring to me:

“If you want to be incrementally better: Be competitive. If you want to be exponentially better: Be cooperative.” (unknown)

“None of us is as smart as all of us.” (Ken Blanchard)

“To teach is to learn twice.” (Joseph Joubert)