What's your personal learning network (PLN) look like in 2024?

Over the past 15 years I've written many articles about personal learning networks (PLN) and about social network analysis, or mapping networks. Below is a graphic from one of those articles.

In that article I wrote, "We all have networks. Most of us don't spend time segmenting our network into family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. then look for ways to tell them "I'm involved", yet if more people did that on a regular basis, more people would be giving time, talent and dollars to support youth tutor, mentor and learning programs and that might reduce the number who get involved with gangs and end up on the wrong end of a gun."

In another article I used the concept map shown below.

I created this concept in the mid 2000s to visualize my goal of helping students and volunteers, at the tutor/mentor program I led in Chicago,  build personal learning habits, drawing information from the Internet, and the wealth of people you can meet there if you spend time looking. 

I started connecting with others using the Internet and e-Mail list serves in the 1990s.  Below is part of a message I posted in 2000 on a Digital Divide list. 

You can read this in my archives - at this link.  It was exciting back then to be connecting and sharing ideas with people throughout the USA and the world.  It's motivated my on-line efforts for the past 25 years.  

I began using Twitter (now X) in the late 2000s and my use has grown since then.  Thus, the change in ownership and policies over the past couple of years has really been discouraging.  

Last week I read an article written by some of my CLMOOC education friends who I first met on Twitter in 2013, titled "Lines of Flight: The Digital Fragmentating of Educational Networks".   For some of you who have been connecting with myself and others on Twitter, this article will be valuable.  

For many others, who have never posted anything on Twitter, or who may have stopped using it more than three years ago, this may not matter to you.

For me, the Internet has been an essential tool to share ideas and try to motivate leaders to take on strategic roles that make volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs available to more K-12 youth in more high poverty areas of Chicago and other places with persistent poverty. 

I created the graphic shown above in 2011. It's intended to show how an idea spreads as your network expands.  The longer you work at this, the farther your reach will be.  I'm still just a speck in the ocean of ideas, which is why I keep asking readers to share my blog articles.

If you're interested in network building and network analysis, dig into the articles on this page. 

Why is this important?  A couple of weeks ago I posted an article using the graphic shown below.

Our world faces a tsunami of challenges.

Many of the issues on this graphic are directly related to what we do to help youth in high poverty areas via organized, volunteer-based tutor/mentor programs.  Other issues are challenges the kids we mentor, our volunteers, and everyone else in the world, are facing now, and will continue to face for the next century.

I've built a web library over the past 30 years to aggregate information people can use to better understand problems, to see how people in other places might be solving those problems, and to find ways to work together to develop local and global solutions.

This concept map shows the role of information in an on-going planning process. 

While much of this work needs to be done at the one-on-one and small group level, the problems are too big and in too many places, for small groups to have much of an impact.

You, we, ME, all need to be connected in one or more on-line platforms and constantly learning from libraries like mine, and each other.  

I've moved from AOL Digital Divide, to Mott Afterschool Lists to  Yahoo Groups, G+, Ning.com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other platforms over the past 30 years.  If you open the PDF that I referred to at the top of this article you can see some examples of early efforts to map my network and show who I was connected to.   You can read more about network analysis in this series of articles. 

I don't know what's going to happen with Twitter. I still use it, and encourage others to connect and share ideas there, and in other spaces.  I don't find many who are mapping their networks.  It's something that youth in tutor/mentor programs might learn to do, with help from volunteers. 

If you know of people who are doing this, share that with me in the comment box, or, on social media!

I received a call last week from Leo Hall, who was in 4th grade in 1973 when we first met.  He's celebrating his 60th birthday this year and wanted me to send a video, since he knows that I am not traveling any longer.  I wrote this article in 2014 after attending his 50th birthday.  This article includes a message Leo sent me in 2006.

Also last week, I received a wonderful message on Facebook from a student from the 1990s who ended her message saying, "the rides you gave me, the scholarship to high school, the trips to different places may have been small gestures to you but they meant so much more to me."  

She was living on the West side of Chicago, after moving from the Cabrini-Green area. Our program was located at the Montgomery Ward Corporate office in the Near North part of Chicago.  So, for two to three years I gave her and her siblings a ride home after weekly tutoring sessions, as I headed to my home in Park Ridge.  We had many interesting conversations.  

My own experiences and feedback from former students keep motivating me to reach out and connect with others because I can't do all the work that needs to be done, or have the impact that's needed, for the country to do all it needs to do to help  kids in high poverty areas move through school and into jobs and lives free of poverty, and racism, and bigotry, and all the other problems we, and they, will be facing.

I hope you'll connect with me on social media, or take time to visit articles on my blog and website and then share them with people in your own network.  Small daily actions can make a big difference.

Thanks for reading.  

If you're able to help me pay the bills, please visit this page.