How to Become a Good Leaner throughout Life
To become a good leaner throughout one’s life implies the creation of a PLN or Personal Learning Network. PLNs are personal networks we all create, no matter what we do in life, to keep ourselves updated in our working or teaching fields. A PLN allows us to gather and process new and innovative information that otherwise would not be available to us.
Understanding the maxim that states that “it is the student the one who must take responsibility for his/her own learning,” PLNs are ways to nourish our knowledge and to gain control over what we want to learn. PLNs reflect, in essence, memorable learning experiences that can allow us to recall and then convey to others, such as our students. “Being a good teaching professional implies being a good learner.” And this is true because, as learners, all of us make use of our learning networks to quench our intellectual curiosity and desire for learning way beyond we know in this very moment.
At this point you may be wondering what a PLN actually is. Well, a PLN is the way in which a human being expresses his/her need for learning. To get access to this learning, a person uses different resources to achieve it. A Personal Learning Network can include attending conferences or talks by experts in given areas, signing up for a virtual or non-virtual course to learn or develop new skills, reading articles online o journals, writing one’s reactions and reflections regarding our working and learning experiences on personal but professional blogs. All this highlights one’s enthusiasm, pleasure, imagination, and curiosity to develop and build one’s knowledge.
To create and strengthen a learning network has some special ingredients to make it successful. Taking the initiative in one’s lifelong learning process to become better teachers, instructors, or facilitators is one of these ingredients that our PLN can help us achieve. Honesty in our teaching day by day can also help us self-assess ourselves. By doing this, we can be able to strengthen our weak areas. Self-discipline can allow us to set realistic learning goals that can be accomplished with a bit of effort and dedication. Diligence can have us work individually towards autonomous learning.
The building of my Personal Learning Network will allow us to learn more and in a focused way. As a logical consequence of one’s focus, this can allow us to share one’s newly or recently acquired knowledge with one’s students, colleagues, and peers. A PLN implies cooperating with some other colleagues and students to build our collective knowledge. A PLN must be one of our lifelong goals as teaching professionals. It will pay off in the end.
Jonathan Acuña
Universidad Latina
Costa Rica
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