When I first heard the term ‘professional learning network’, I immediately thought of lots of small talk with other teachers at conference events that ended up being largely irrelevant or non-specific. Since undertaking this subject, I have discovered that not only was my assumption wildly incorrect, but there are online communities of educators connecting and sharing ideas, resources and information with the aim of improving their professional knowledge and practice (Trust, 2012; Flanigan, 2011).
During my previous career, I learnt that it was very important to continue to develop my skills and stay informed of best practice standards in the industry. I did this by attending conferences and short courses as well as subscribing to industry magazines. Teaching, however, is a profession which is so strongly underpinned by theory and research findings that I wondered how teachers would ever keep abreast of new developments and changes. Upon commencing my teaching diploma, it was clear to me that professional learning was also held in high regard within the education arena, as it is explicitly referred to in the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership’s [AITSL] Professional Standards for Teachers (AITSL, 2014). Standard 6.2 and 7.4 require teachers to “understand and participate in learning to update knowledge and practice” and “understand and participate in professional and community networks and forums to broaden knowledge and improve practice” (AITSL, 2014). When I commenced the second half of the unit, I still didn’t realise to what extent technology has transformed the way that these professional learning networks are created and engaged with. Over the past six weeks, I have learnt that technology has enabled the creation of online professional learning networks where teachers can create meaningful connections with other likeminded educators to foster interactions and share resources (Teacher Challenges, 2017). I discovered that teachers can participate in networks which are targeted towards their learning areas, a particular pedagogical framework or a topic such as incorporating digital technologies into the classroom (Trust, 2012a). As it is accepted that students learn best when the learning is collaborative, relevant and student-led, so too do teachers (Fasso, 2017; Clifford, 2013). To begin to develop my own professional learning network, I created a Scoop.it account and started to explore the functions of this digital curation tool. Through my research, I discovered that a digital curation tool such as Scoop.it would allow me to compile a collection of high quality resources based upon my discretion and personal insight (Kharbach, 2016) I learnt that adding a curator’s insight adds value to the artefact and allows other readers to determine if the artefact might be relevant for their situation or required application (Flintoff, Mellow & Clark, 2014). Curation also fosters the collaborative experience which is critical to the success of the professional learning network (Clifford, 2013). At the beginning, I found Scoop.it quite difficult to use. I initially couldn’t work out how to use effectively use the suggestions / key word search tool and I struggled to find relevant artefacts to ‘rescoop’ and curate. I visited the unit wiki page to look up the Scoop.it addresses for others in the unit but found that very few people had added their Scoop.it addresses to the wiki and those that had, similarly to me, had very sparse artefact collections. I found some of my artefacts through googling topics of interest but I was conscious of the fact that it was more beneficial for my professional learning network development to create connections with other people, read their curator’s insights and rescoop relevant artefacts. It wasn’t until many weeks later when I revisited everyone’s page, that I found relevant and interesting artefacts that I wanted to scoop over to my collection. Wager (2012) determines that to build your own effective professional learning network, you must connect, contribute and converse with others in your network. While I felt comfortable posting lengthy curator’s insights onto the artefacts I rescooped and using other’s comments to gauge the relevance of the artefact for my collection, I found it difficult to engage in meaningful conversations with others over the Scoop.it platform. I found that there were instances where someone rescoped one of my artefacts and made a comment on their own but it wasn’t a comment that would lend itself to meaningful interactions. For example, I feel like I contributed a relevant insight on this link to civics and citizenship lesson plans (see below image). This was not a rescoped artefact but one that I had added from my personal collection of bookmarked internet sites. The artefact was then rescoped by another user who added their own comment but unfortunately there wasn’t an opportunity for interaction. |