Journal #6-Growing Your Personal Network

Personal Learning networks (PLNs) have been imperative to the advancement of out networking strategies. They have allowed a faster form of information giving and gathering and have made progress speed along at a rapid pace. Some of the “old school” PLNs were phones, emails, face-to-face meetings, letter writing, and facsimiles. The modernization of the informational age of technology creates a whole new way of communication with others outside of our physical reach.

The three main types of PLNs are useful in there specific ways and are categorized in the following:
1. Personally maintained synchronous connections: basically these are instantaneous networks such as Skype, iChat and uStream.
2. Personally and socially maintained semisynchronous connections: These programs are designed for networking with others but not in “real time”. Some programs include texting, GoogleDocs, and Twitter discussion boards.
3. Dynamically maintained asynchronous connections: This tool connects us with content sources such as Delicious. The RSS allows the computer to search for information and gather want you are looking for.

Questions:
1. Does the movement of technology make a difference in what quality of work we produce?
*Yes, it I think that it helps because we have instantaneous information at our fingertips and it prevents us from becoming distracted.
2. Is all this instant technologicalinformation distracting to the quality of work we produce.
*Yes….the curiosity of the mind prevents us to focus on the specific task and also there is always an ever changing form of technology that has to be taught and learned before perfection.

Warlick, David (march2009). Growing your personal network. Learning & Leading with Technology, 6, Retrieved march 2009, from http://www.learningandleading-digital.com/learning_leading/200904/