After learning about the benefits or starting a Personal Learning Network, I am interested in starting one and connecting with a larger group of people that are not in my immediate school.

When starting at Personal Learning Network I need to first identify a problem. I need to create something that has a purpose and will attract the attention of others to share and communicate (US Department of State). For me, the most immediate cause on my mind is how to adapt PE in these new times of education. Generating a list of new activity ideas, new ways of assessing and new lesson plans with the greatest form of collaboration. This can be beneficial in the short term, but also in the long term as we can always use new and creative ideas no matter what the time is.

In order to do this, I do not want to do too much at the beginning because it may be intimidating. Therefore, I need to start out small (US Department of State). I have already began following the BCEd chat on twitter and am currently looking through the channels to see if anything comes up involving PE. However, I would like to do more. I am hoping to create a PE collaboration group that can meet online via twitter, google meet, zoom or any form of communication style. Here we can also start a shared drive in dropbox or google drives so we can share our lesson plans and ideas. By having a shared a drive file, we can look and use other lessons that people are willing to share and then when we meet for short periods of time we can chat about how they went. In keeping with the US Department of State ideas to start small, my plan is to create this group with the PE teachers in my district. From there as our resources grow each of us can expand it to more teachers that we know. And eventually the group can become larger and larger.

This idea, which is still in the beginning stages, will take some time to get going. Currently, I have a few colleagues in my school on board as well as a few other PE teachers from neighboring schools. The challenge here is that I am spending some extra time teaching others how to get on twitter and share their documents, but it has been started. We are predominantly using Google docs, Google Drive and Google Meet. What I need to continue doing so this idea lasts and gains speed, is to set up meetings each week and monitor the discussions (US Department of State). Make sure that new resources are going into the drive so people want to continue to join.

Resources

US Department of State, The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, American English. (n.d.). Developing your virtual personal learning network (PLN). Retrieved from https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachers-corner-personal-learning-networks-plns

US Department of State, The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, American English. (n.d.). Maintaining your virtual personal learning network (PLN). Retrieved from https://americanenglish.state.gov/resources/teachers-corner-personal-learning-networks-plns