Technology Blog #2: Creating A Personal Learning Network For Police.

    Chapter 6 "Building Your Connected Learning Community" by Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, is about how to create strong learning communities for educators that allow for the sharing of ideas, and the continued learning of professionals. PLNs or Personal Learning Networks, as the author calls them can be expanded through digital tools, websites, blogs, and online communities to expand the knowledge attainable by educators and allow them to be better equipped to do their jobs. These networks share resources and practices and connect those doing the same job. In order to create these networks educators in this case, need to identify and connect with others who share their same goal. This happens on social media or other professional networks. Once in a community, educators can use tweets, blogs, etc. to connect an share their ideas and experiences with the others in the community. The most important way to keep these communities flowing is through meaningful engagement, trust, and respect to keep the community sustained. 

    My future career choice is Law Enforcement, like I mentioned in my first blog, specifically. The idea of Personal Learning Networks for a career in policing, although much different than education, is essentially the same idea. Officers make connections within but more importantly outside of their department. Through this officers can share ideas, experiences, problems, solutions, and challenges. They can use secure private networks to share important information to others more effectively or engage with the community through social media. This leads to knowledge sharing and trust building. A necessity for law enforcement is continued learning, it creates and enhances professionalism in the officer. This is usually hard because the officer has to seek their own education through various outside sources. But, if they have a connected learning community they can continue to learn faster and more efficiently. 

    In order to create or establish these communities, officers need to first break the mold of not reaching out to other departments for help. For a learning community in law enforcement to work, the community needs people from all over, all departments and agencies instead of just one department becoming stale from the same network. Using social media to connect to other officers or agents to meet them and learn about their job is a start. Then the officers can create an online community such as a blog to fully connect with each other. Like the author said, the most important part of the community is to cultivate it and keep it sustained. So to keep the community fresh, active participation and normal conversations outside of work are a must.