It is now okay for me to be on Pinterest all night long! Thank you PLNs!

Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are great ways for educators and individuals with common interest to share ideas.  I love Pinterest!  I am on it constantly to look up ideas for my classroom, recipes, kid activities, basically anything you can think of.  As we continue through this course, I find that I have been only a consumer of technology and not a producer or curator.

I have to admit that I do feel guilty, very guilty for always taking and using things from PLNs, but never contributing to them.   In accordance to the Getting Smart article by Dr. Mark Wagner on PLNs: Getting Smart PLNs, educators need to not only connect with others on PLNs, but they need to contribute to the network.  Educators can use blogs, twitter, Google+, and many other avenues to produce and contribute their own information to their network.

With that being said, I want to become a real member of a personal learning network for educators.  My goal is to try and contribute something for everything that I use from someone else.  I know of course this will be difficult, so maybe I will start with 5 for 1, for every five things I use, I will contribute one thing to my PLN.

My motivation stems from watching Will Richardson's video about PLNs.  This was not the video that we were assigned, but another one very similar, but a little bit longer, that he presented at TEDxMelbourne.  He started his presentation with one of my favorite quotes by Charles Dickens, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of time, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness..."  I love how he used this quote to compare it to what education is today with regard to technology.

Here is a link to the video if you want to listen to Will Richardson again:  Education Leadership: Will Richardson TEDxMelbourne  I always find him very interesting and this is just another video I will use to help encourage my fellow teachers to use more technology in their classrooms.

I want to be a better educator for my students and model the type of behavior that I want our students to use with regard to technology and PLNs.  If I can create and become a better role model in my own Personal Learning Networks, I can use my experiences to help my students use and create their own PLNs as well.