:Connecting the Dots

Will Richardson is discussing personal learning networks again, and pitying the 75% of teachers who “don’t know they have a network.” I don’t think the problem is that the teachers don’t have networks or that they have them and don’t know that they are there. The problem is that the networks in which they have been involved are so closed, artificial, small, and impoverished. For many teachers, their personal learning network ends at the door leading out of their department office, or perhaps extends only through one corner of the faculty lounge. Maybe - if they’re lucky - that network extends throughout their school faculty and there is a sense of collegiality and an ongoing conversation within the building. Even so, those teachers are still bound to hear mostly the same ideas over and over and over again. Those networks are real, but they’re tiny and closed. They serve to reinforce norms. They are stale. They rely on hiring a few new teachers each year to “bring new ideas into the building.”

The expansion of the reach of our personal learning networks is the real story here. Now, through RSS, blogs, and wikis, we can connect with people in other schools, cities, countries. When I look to see what’s happening in my network on del.icio.us, I don’t know what I’ll find there… and that makes me happy! An opportunity to learn something new. An opportunity to have all that I believe challenged and expanded. These are fundamentally good things. I’ve always had a network. The difference is that now it’s so darn big, diverse, and active.

I look forward to the day when I stand in front of a faculty and ask, “so who’s in your network?” and the answer isn’t “the three people sitting to my left and the three people sitting to my right.” We’re getting there…

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