Depth is defined by Merriam Webster (2017) as the “degree of intensity” or the “quality of being profound.” This is perhaps the quality of a PLN least easily depicted or quantified, but it is also perhaps the most important. This is the aspect of your PLN that represents the quality of the interactions you have with your PLN. Depth is the extent to which you are supported and challenged by others. And, it is also the quality of feedback you return to your PLN. You should have high quality interactions, both as a receiver and a contributor, with your PLN. Your Professional Learning Network should be deep.
How can you ensure that your PLN is deep? By engaging, discovering, experimenting, reflecting, and sharing (as mentioned in the week 2 video). These five steps are not linear and they are not exclusive, meaning that you might actually do several of them at the same time. But essentially this process involves:
- ENGAGING or interacting with people and spaces
- DISCOVERING or exposing yourself to new ideas
- EXPERIMENTING or trying out those new ideas in the classroom
- REFLECTING or contemplating how those new ideas worked in the classroom
- SHARING or providing feedback to the people and spaces of your PLN
What is most important about these processes is that they expose you to new ideas and concepts, push you to try them out in your classroom, encourage you to assess what did and did not work, and provide feedback to fellow educators so that your own practice is continually improving. You may not share every time, or you might spend a long time discovering, experimenting, and reflecting with the same approach in your classroom. Again this isn’t a linear process of steps, but great educators are always trying to improve their practice. Your PLN will help you do that, provided you enrich it with deep interactions.
Here are some examples of educators deeply interacting with their PLNs:
- “Connecting with others has given me the tools, resources, ideas, lessons, and confidence to reach out to others and try new things” (Trust, Krutka, & Carpenter, 2016, p.21)
- “Being connected has allowed me to ask questions, be more of a reflective practitioner and be a better educator” (Trust, Krutka, & Carpenter, 2016, p.21)
- “Being a part of a PLN encouraged me to try new things like blogging. I started my own blog a couple of years ago and writing helps me process what I am learning as an educator” (Krutka, Carpenter & Trust, 2016, p. 155).
- “I’m much more reflective on my teaching. Blogging and sharing provides a way for me to check my work and get feedback” (Krutka, Carpenter & Trust, 2016, p. 156).
Learning Activity: How Deep is Your PLN?
Activity Objective: Evaluate your PLN for depth.
Activity Instructions:
- Think about a time when you when you engaged, discovered, experimented, reflected, and shared, not necessarily in that order.
- Use Vocaroo (http://vocaroo.com/) or any audio recording tool/app to describe this experience and share what it was like.
- Post a link to your audio file on 4399edn tute team.
