Connecting from the Couch: Twitter as a Personal Learning Network

 

Image Source: Link

I've been on Twitter since the Bush administration - my personal Twitter account is old enough for a driver's license. This realization has been both shocking as I continually forget that I am, in fact, no longer 25, and has also given me opportunity to reflect upon the ways social media has evolved since I created my account on "The Facebook" with my .edu email address, and how my use of social media in my personal and professional life has changed along with it.

My oldest Facebook photo (with t-shirt proof of the times).
 Image Source: Author

It can be hard to remember a world before social media. The photo above is almost 20 years old - I am literally twice the age I was then as I type this post, and incoming college freshmen were not yet born. The concept of a digital footprint didn't exist in any mainstream way. I can't recall a single course in my undergraduate tenure that used any form of social media in its curriculum, and it was certainly not considered a learning or professional mechanism in any way.

Bringing Work into Play

My public-facing social media life today.   Image Source: Author

As I grew up and we all matured in step with social media, my use has changed dramatically. I've written before about my intentional separation of my personal and professional digital lives, which has served both my desire for personal privacy and my commitment to work/life balance. But it's also helped me develop my professional and personal learning networks. The bulk of my professional identity has lived on LinkedIn, which served me well in my first career as a software product manager and marketing director. As I've moved into my second career as an academic librarian and scholar, however, I was not finding the connection or learning I need there.

I recognized that something was missing, and I wanted to figure out how to become more engaged in my new career field. Around the same time I was formally introduced to the idea of a Personal Learning Network (PLN). A PLN is something you construct for yourself through a combination of tools and communication pathways, bringing together informal and formal learning with social networking to create an individual yet connected ecosystem of resources for personal and professional growth. PLNs are very popular in the education field, so in my journey I've taken cues from educators to begin personalizing my own network for my career as a digital pedagogy librarian.

My New Twitter Adventure

My first PLN task was to create a new Twitter account that I plan to use specifically for learning in my scholarly and professional life - and thus, LISwithLIZ was born. Since I've been on Twitter for quite a while I already had a handful of accounts I knew I wanted to follow with my PLN account. For others in the digital pedagogy and digital humanities space, just a few I recommend checking out are:

• VisualizingPam 
• LISPedagogyChat
• DHInstitute
• PrincetonDH
  

The intentional use of Twitter as a PLN has already paid off. In the past week, two valuable resource have landed in my timeline: one a gift of Twitter's algorithm and 'For You' tab, and one retweeted by an account I follow.

Image Source: Screenshot by Author

This Tweet from Left of Black landing in my For You tab - demonstrating one way carefully curated engagement can aid with discoverability on social media. Left of Black is a podcast hosted by Dr. Mark Anthony Neal, chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke. The account tweets about topics of global Black studies, including Black Digital and Public Humanities.

Mapping the Black Digital and Public Humanities is an interactive tool to help people find digital and public projects about Black history and culture and to connect projects and enable deeper analyses of the Black Digital Humanities and Black Public Humanities. The site is not only an incredible example of digital pedagogy in action, but also a door-opener that I can use in my own work in higher education. It is a very rich and well developed resource and I would not have found it as soon as I did without my PLN.

                        Image Source: Screenshot by Author

I have been watching my Twitter feed today while writing this post to keep up with Tweets from DHInstitute, which is hosting its summer institute this week. Attendees of the summer institute blog during the event, and one of the blogs landed in my feed as a Tweet from the The Civil War & Reconstruction Governors of Mississippi Project (CWRGM). CWRGM is a project focused on digitizing and making accessible records from the Civil War that may otherwise not be available in mainstream archives. 

Historian Lindsey Peterson's blog from her time at the summer institute is an excellent educational resource. It includes questions for facilitating discussions about data literacy, the humanities, and digital editions in classrooms across the board - from elementary through college students. I will certainly be repurposing them in my own literacy lessons.

Shifting from Passive to Active 

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I'm very comfortable with following and keeping up with other folks' Tweets, but I've never been a terribly active user on Twitter. This week I decided to give live Twitter chats a try. I had a difficult time finding any live chats for academic librarians but I didn't want to wait to learn, so I logged on for the Monday evening #EdTechChat to see what it was all about. While it became clear that this is not the chat for me (it focuses largely on K-12 education and I am in higher education), I loved the sense of community and engagement, and found it helpful to have a moderator with prepared questions. 

I can see the value in Twitter chats, though it will take discipline to make this a consistent part of my PLN. I do try to keep my work within work hours, so I'm on the lookout for daytime chats - and especially chats that are more aligned with my experience and interests. I would love any recommendations you have.

Start Your Own PLN

There are quite a few posts and articles that can help you get started. As you do, I'd love to connect with you- you can find me on Twitter @LISwithLIZ and on LinkedIn. What kinds of conversations do you want to be part of?