My Personal Learning Network (such as it is)

When you Google Image Search "Personal Learning Network," countless incomprehensible results promulgate. This is, perhaps, the least comprehensible.

Broadly speaking, I follow TED and have become a slave to iTunes U (see, when you ride a bike 7 hours a week, you run out of podcasts, until Harvard comes along and gives you free lectures). I also read Bridging Differences and Schools Matter regularly, and highly recommend both. I might even include Congressional Quarterly -- I still monitor CQ, as old overtly political habits die hard (especially when you still remember your old corporate user ID and password), and I thereby keep an eye on legislative goings-on regarding education.

Individually, I now follow William Chamberlain and Karl Fisch on Twitter -- high praise, given that I might have mentioned once or a thousand times my aversion to Twitter. (Seriously! This class has me paying attention to, if not yet embracing, Twitter. Baby steps!) I've also incorporated a handful of friends from afar into an patchwork PLN, including Katherine Snape (Thompson Elementary, Washington DC), Ruth Chan (New Community For Children, Washington DC), Dan Morrison (CitizenEffect.org), and my very own brother, Tom Woolf (a middle school science teacher in Jacksonville, FL) via Google Chat and Facebook. I also talk to my brother on the phone, but that isn't always about school. Sometimes, it's about football.

In summary, my personal learning network could be less personal, and more networked. But by virtue of this class, I'm casting a wider net.