After reading Chuck Frey’s piece on How to cultivate a personal learning network: Tips from Howard Rheingold I realized that I have a bit of work to do.
- I need to be more open to discovery. In my explorations online, be it through research on Bing or hashtags on Twitter, I tend to overlook anything that isn’t my initial topic of search. By doing this I am cutting off any serendipitous encounters that I may have. I need to open my eyes and think outside of the box more often.
- I need to look into Diigo, delicious, and listorous!!!
- I need to follow more RSS feeds and Twitter accounts, but I also need to follow less. I’ve noticed just over the span of a week that some of the accounts and blogs I have recently followed aren’t really fitting the bill for me. I need to follow people who share a little more substance in their posts.
- I need to remember that when it comes to my personal learning network it isn’t about quantity, it’s all about quality. I was so excited by the amount of followers I have been getting on twitter lately, but I quickly realized that many of them weren’t worth following back or were only following me for advertising purposes. The number of followers you have is not important if they are not helping you expand your knowledge.
- I need to be more proactive in my sharing. I check my feeds several times a week, looking for inspiring facts and info, but I don’t need to wait for someone else to post first. I should share something that inspires others.
- I don’t think I need to work much harder at being a polite cyberspace participant. I tend to show my appreciation and am mindful of what I post so that I don’t offend too many people.
- I should really concentrate more on my productive give and take. I am not sure if my responses to others’ posts are that valuable to them. Sometimes I get so caught up on assigned comment quotas and making sure that I respond to every comment that I receive that I am not really focused on the substance of what I am typing.
- I am a very sarcastic person in face-to-face conversation, but a part of me must realize that conversations online are not the appropriate place for my banter. I tend to be very genteel yet straightforward in my posts and responses.
I feel that taking these steps to fine-tune my approach to cultivating my personal learning network will really take me that much further in my fly fishing journey.
Jaycie Cheatham 
I’m 100% in the same boat when it comes to the personal sarcasm and the need to be more proactive in sharing. I’ve been sitting back and absorbing info from all my new follows, but contributing very little.
I did do my best to make my PLN diverse as far as sources went. I looked for major publishing houses, literary agents, and editors in general, then narrowed it down to horror authors, publishers, and some literary communities. Still, I’ve got some combing through to do.
I hear ya! I think I need to narrow down my sources to experts, researchers, and professional bloggers to get the most useful information.
The problem I have with my PLN is that once I started following a certain amount of accounts about one topic, other accounts that were similar started popping up for me to follow and I thought, “Heck yeah I’ll follow these because it’s easier than searching for accounts myself!” Unfortunately, a lot of these accounts ended up being commercial accounts or just not related to the range of topics I want my PLN to focus on. I mean, I’m interested in a bunch of different topics but I needed to follow less accounts so I could keep up with it all!
My solution was to only follow accounts that were managed by reputable companies that I have heard of before, and professional educators that I found on lists of essential Twitter accounts for teachers. I deleted any accounts that just seemed nonessential. So far, I think this is working pretty well for me and I can’t wait to see what I glean from my PLN!
That’s exactly what happened to me !
I really liked you post! You have good ideas and good solutions, companies are where I found a lot of good sources. When I find someone I am following with good information I like to go through their followers as well! Good post!
Sarcasm isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It depends on who you want in your PLN. For me, I’m in it with a bunch of writers who tend to be cynical assholes half the time. I understand what you’re saying about needing more and less at the same time. I needed to fine tune. Now, I’ve found that quite a few of those that I am following either post some funny stuff or advice for my topic. Sometimes they give updates as where they are at. It’s kind of cool to realize that you’re not alone. I get what you mean about the quotas too. Now, I don’t really think about it; I just get excited when I think about how others will respond to my comments. It makes it worthwhile to read something that’s actually interesting and pertinent, and helps if you also post things that are interesting and pertinent, you know?
Jaycee you are so clever … I loved title and picture of the vintage radio. You have complied a good list of suggestions that would serve all of us.