My Personal Learning Network

As a teacher I have been familiar with a PLC, or Professional Learning Community, for years. These communities are either meeting as a department (have been part of the math department in our school for years, and now am part of the science department of our school for the last 1.5 school years), or as a team (8th grade team in a South Kona Middle School). Usually in these communities we work on data collection on teaching practices, read informational readings and reflect on them, discuss students or plan interdisciplinary projects for our students, or to plan team-building advisory activities. 

So, now on to my PLN, or PERSONAL Learning NETWORK. As a math teacher, I was told to join the Edmodo Algebra I group for the DOE Hawaii, to have access to the online resources and printable workbooks, along with DOE approved quizzes, test, and other activities, and to also be able to interact and share resources with fellow Hawaii Algebra I teachers. What I learned from this group, is that the majority of Hawaii Algebra I teaches don't really know algebra (or are just too lazy to use their brains and just do the problems themselves), as they are whining about having keys to all the worksheets, or whine about certain resources that aren't editable. Considering that the majority of the resources have typo's in them, I have never even looked at published keys of any of the worksheets or quizzes/tests because it takes me just minutes to do the work myself versus printing the keys out, walk to the print room to pick up the docs, to then discover they have wrong solutions on them. So, THAT PLN to me is not that valuable. 

Now that I am teaching Science and STEM, after having been very vocal about not teaching to the math and algebra tests, and have spearheaded our school's adoption of GAFE, I figured I should join fellow Google-minded people. I joined GEG ACE21 Hawaii (the local Google Educator Group), several MOOC groups (Massively Open Online Courses), Chromebooks, Google Classroom, and various other Google+ Communities, just so I could get "da scoops" on things that I am interested in with regards of using technology in the classroom.  I found out that only a few folks within these groups are the only contributors of gem-like resources, the rest of them seem just to be also "whiners". 
Many of them have members who will ask questions on these communities-very valid and interesting questions- and never receive answers or feedback. 
My take-away from some of the groups I joined, is that they are merely a one-way channel of the creators blurting out little not-so-gems to their followers, and that they do not allow for feedback or sharing of resources by members of the group. 

My goal, for my REAL PLN, and for my imaginary PLN that I have to create for my LTEC 642 class, is that is an OPEN network, where people can freely add to and comment on, not just a few select members who run the show. My focus will, hopefully, be open, multi-way communication, sharing of resources, feedback, Q&A, a safe place where members can ask, answer, share and review resources, knowledge, etc.

Next step: get this brain-fart into a brain(mind)-map, and actually make it functional! Wish me luck!