Developing my Personal Learning Network: “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry” …
Introduction:
I have only recently qualified to teach
English to speakers of other languages, however I am not currently teaching. I
completed my Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (CELTA) in early February, and then went straight back to university
full-time to finish my Masters of Education in the field of TESOL. So, as a technically
qualified teacher without a school or classroom, I found it quite difficult to
develop my PLN. I often felt like I did not have the relevant experience or
knowledge to engage with much of the content being posted in the network space of
Australian English language teachers. I exist in the threshold of being a qualified teacher, but does not have much teaching experience. I tried to connect with fellow English
teachers across a few networks: Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, and Facebook, some
of which proved more fruitful than others, but overall my experience has been
relatively quiet. In this post I will analyse my PLN to discern how my online presence,
or lack thereof, affected my connected learning experience.
Digital
Literacies and Engagement: Creating a Blog
Admittedly, before developing my PLN I had
never considered digital literacies. I had heard the term before, but I never
investigated it. However, I employed my new knowledge of digital literacies
across different stages of my PLN development. First was the task of locating
the online affinity space for TESOL through internet searches and then weeding out the irrelevant information. Online affinity spaces are not just confined to one area, they are vast and sprawling across many different platforms (Krutka, Carpenter & Trust, 2016; Summey, 2013). In this process I quickly decided that Tumblr was not an ideal
place for me to develop my PLN, as the search function is incredibly difficult
to use. There are no advanced searches and no way to scroll through information
quickly. The tags were also cluttered with irrelevant information.
For example, the #TESOL tag often brought up Japanese grammar and vocabulary posts.
However, once I collected found a suitable affinity space, my next task was to contribute by sharing my knowledge through my digital artefacts. Sharing incorporates a
huge range of digital literacies (Summey, 2013), but I chose to focus on
blogging as it was the most familiar form of media for me and my lack of digital literacy, and therefore not stepping out
of my comfort zone became a theme for my PLN development process.
Digital
Artefacts:
For my digital artefacts, I wrote two major reflective posts about my CELTA experience and included a hand-drawn (iPad) graphic of my top ten tips in a bitesize and condensed form.
In a Connected Learning environment,
artefacts act as transmitters of information that are trackable for both the
sender and receiver (Downes, 2006) The best practice is to write for the people you follow, not for those who follow you (boyd, 2016). Upon reflection, I have realised that my intended audience, the receivers, do not actually need the information that I put in my blog posts, as they are already fully qualified and working teachers. However, it was the only information I felt comfortable enough sharing with my lack of experience in the field. This was perhaps my first networking mistake, as peer-to-peer learning occurs when people with similar interests, needs, skills, and expertise interact (Krutka, Carpenter, & Trust, 2016). I definitely do not bring enough expertise to my PLN because I am not currently teaching students and thus found it difficult to relate to other teachers. I was also naively hoping that people who were thinking about doing a TESOL certification, especially CELTA would read my blog posts and find useful advice, as I wrote what I wish I knew before I did my CELTA. Unsurprisingly, I received very little engagement with my posts, even though I advertised them on Tumblr and Twitter multiple times. People also use social networks in PLNs to seek out people that they already know (boyd, 2016). However, one of my CELTA tutors is a prominent member of the Facebook group that I joined, and therefore I did not share my blog posts on that platform for fear of being judged.
Overall, I was able to track what little engagement I did have through Blogger’s statistics counter and found that I had an audience trickling in from all over the world, but no one commented or asked me a question about my post or experience which I so desired.
Over a month or two, I only received 36 views across my two blog posts and no comments. I was surprised to find that my uniquely Australian CELTA experience was drawing an audience from the United States, however the CELTA is trusted around the world and has rigorous, unchanging standards.
Networking
Ourselves: Face-to-Face and Online Interactions.
Networks have always been a part of human
learning and development, even before the advent of accessible internet and social
media (Siemens, 2008). Traditionally, these connections were face-to-face
interactions among people in groups with like-minded interests. Social media, has made it easier for users to project themselves in a digital space
(Siemens, 2008). This is not so much the case for my experience with developing
my PLN. I found that personal and face-to-face connections were the crux of my
PLN both before and after my attempt to develop it. For example, I reached out
to someone that I met years ago at university on Instagram to discuss one of my
interests, teaching abroad (in Asia), and I only felt comfortable doing so
because I had a direct connection with that person that I cultivated face-to-face.
I find it hard to talk to people that I do not know online.
A Few Brief Comments on My PLN:
My PLN is rather sparse and very similar to what I started out with. However, the decentralised nature of my network is a promising sign for the future as the most effective networks are not evenly balanced (Downes, 2006). I'm beginning to see a connected mesh form with connections from my offline presence to my online presence. In terms of the type of transformative teacher, I tend towards the traditional side of the spectrum (Baker-Doyle, 2017). I would judge myself as a technical to emerging teacher from this PLN as, while it is not very well developed, I am beginning to make important connection and asking important questions about myself and my practice as a teacher. It was difficult for me to seperate the task as an assignment from what I want from my own PLN, which is very typical of a traditional-type teacher (Baker-Doyle, 2017).
Also, I will be avoiding analysing YouTube as I found it to be a horrendous time sink which was not worth the information that I got out of it. It is also quite an addictive form of media, and it will eat away at time very quickly (Malita, 2011). Most of the videos for aspiring language teachers looking to go overseas with a programme like JET (Japan), or EPIK (Korea) were either made for entertainment or with profuse amounts of negativity and clickbait. Time management was a major issue with my PLN, as I often missed Webinars and Tweet chats because of previous commitments such as online university lectures.
Social
Media: Falling Flat on my Face…book
Social media has been a huge part of my
life for the past ten years. I initially signed up for a Facebook account when
I moved to Australia from England in 2009, when I was only fifteen years old. I
am still using this account, and I even used it to join groups in an attempt to
grow my PLN. Social media, such as the aforementioned Facebook, has helped to transform
users from passive participants to active participants. This shift is often labelled
as ‘Web 2.0’, where dynamic interactions and co-creating have overtaken static content with no possibilities for interaction (Dynel & Chovanec, 2015).
However, Web 2.0 and social media can be
concerning for users and it does contain risks. It is not uncommon for people to project their concerns,
anxieties, and identities onto social media and as a result, reject
participation and participatory culture (Jenkins, Ito, & boyd, 2016). Risks such as damage to your identity It is
important to note that when attempting to develop a professional learning
network, a user often has to use their real identity and real photos online. This is a kind of mixing of a person's personality with a digital culture through the use of social media (Rheingold, 2012). Sharing so much about themselves online can help a user link their offline presence with their online presence and
be more visible, but it can also be a source of anxiety for people who wish to
maintain their privacy online (Marchial, 2016). I suffer from this sort of
online anxiety, and therefore tend to be reticent online, which had a knock-on effect
on the size and quality of my resulting PLN.
On the other hand, the main affinity space where I searched to develop my PLN was the Facebook group #AusELT. While it is niche, it is a very
active community, with up to 25 or more posts every day (although, the hashtag
#AusELT is not very active on Twitter). There is an interesting link between language learning and social media emerging and social media pairs well with language
education, as language learners, teachers, and providers are becoming
increasingly present online (Lamy & Zourou, 2015). As a result, there is a wealth of resources and information within this group, and teachers are often willing to share their experiences. The posts in the group ranged from
advertising Professional Development events occurring across Australia, to Webinars
about pronunciation (which is the current hot topic), to job listings and general questions and
advice about teaching English in Australia.
It is a closed community and therefore designed to only to interact with people in the specific community of people
connected to TESOL in Australia (Lupton, 2015). A prospective member needs to submit
an application form via Facebook which had question about why you want to be a member
of the group. This application was the source of one of
my major anxieties that I experienced when developing my PLN. I would describe
the whole process as a critical incident because of how integral this one group
was for my PLN, and how worried I was about the incident. It took a couple of days for the #AusELT page to accept me as a
member, and after exploring an environment which can give instantaneous
results, Twitter, the lack of speedy reply made me convince myself that I had
not been accepted. I wrote of a similar experience in my first blog post about
the rejection that I suffered during my CELTA process so I was worried. Failure
and rejection are one of the risks of Connected Learning, and I was quick to
judge this moment as a failure (Lupton, 2015). The group eventually accepted me as a member, so I did not need to worry!
Lurkers
Can’t Be Learners…Or Can They?
I cannot deny that my PLN remains sparse
and this is most likely a result of my lack of willingness to engage with posts, especially with the bank of knowledge that I found on Facebook.
One poignant example of this was a Tweet chat that I wanted to join, but could not find
the courage to do so. One night I stumbled across an #AusELT Tweet chat that
had only just begun ten minutes beforehand and one of the questions caught my
eye. It was about incorporating etymology in the language classroom. I began to
type out a response to the question, but deleted it half-way. I wanted to
contribute because I have a specialist knowledge in English etymology thanks to
my background in Classical languages (Latin and Greek), but I backed out and
went back to interacting with the posts in silence, reading and considering the posts.
Silent learners are often characterised as
lazy and opportunistic (Creelman, 2018). They often turn up, put the bare
minimum of effort in, and disappear when they get what they came for. The
common and somewhat derogatory internet slang term for these types of learners are ‘lurkers’ as they seem to not participate in a visible manner (Creelman, 2018; Smith & Smith, 2014). I fit the characteristics of a silent learner. I often sit in the sidelines watching all of the information flow through. This is how I often interact with Tweet chats and Webinars, as I go back and sift through all of the information and take what I need, but cannot contribute because I have no classroom to apply it to. I can only store information until I am able to use it, and then I will be able to reciprocate in the foreseeable future.
Not All Doom and Gloom:
While I am aware that this blog post has had an overwhelmingly negative tone, I am proud to share that I did have positive experiences developing my PLN! One such experience was my first critical incident, the near instantaneous response to my first post introducing myself on Twitter.
I was amazed that they replied to me so fast, but after doing some digging I found that they are a very prominent member of the community, and has so much experience in teaching adults migrants in the Australian Adult Migrant English program, which a Lecturer told me to volunteer for when I get the chance. Unfortunately the climate for teaching migrants seems to be quite stormy right now, so I do not know whether I will be able to achieve this goal. But I will definitely be keeping in contact.
In Conclusion:
Hopefully, in the future I can learn from my mistakes that I made when trying to develop my PLN. I feel that as I gain experience, my PLN will grow as it is nearly impossible to develop a PLN around teaching without an application (Tobin, 2017). I think my reticence ruined my PLN, but it did not impact my ability to learn from my experience and I look forward to further developing my PLN in the future.
References:
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