Technology Blog #2: Building A Connected Learning Community For My Future Career

            Chapter six of The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age is entirely dedicated to how one can build a connected learning community. The author brings up how online sites were the go-to for meeting and learning from new people. For the author, the specific site was Newton, a science board for like-minded scientific individuals. On these sites, people can discuss anything for the specific reason of the site's existence; the possibilities are endless! The networks you build between people throughout your lives are essential for future information gathering. Building such a network is not just about following everything you can on social media apps such as Instagram or Reddit, but building meaningful relationships with those you connect with.

            To build a successful personal learning network, you need to find the best people to help you in whatever field you wish to have knowledge of and organize the much-needed information. The most notable things to do are to question who you follow, develop a relationship, and develop a unifying community. People you follow should be trustworthy and beneficial for you! Not only should the person in question be trustworthy, but should give as much as they take from you. Peers should always be learning from one another! The relationship's most important factors are the relationship being developed through mutual benefit and the structuring of a unified, connected community. People in a learning network should usually have similarities between one another. The key to a successful community is to find all these similarities within their lives and use them as branching paths to further connection.

            In my future profession of law enforcement, building a personal learning network is essential to success in the field, as it always has been. The local, state, and national governments always have new directives and goals being presented that could directly affect policing careers. Alongside this, every law enforcement agency has their own learning networks already established. So for law enforcement, a personal learning network is easier to make in totality, but far more caution is advised. law enforcement officers already have daily or weekly access to workshops as well as their agencies' members, who for the region are likely the specialists in their profession. Reaching out to other states' agencies as well as local politicians can be a crucial, overwhelming benefit for advancement of one's status in their agency and for evolution of that agency as well. Despite this, heavy caution is advised. Not every person in these fields will have the best intentions. Some people are purely self-serving or heavily authoritative, and will use any connection as a way to gain control. Adding onto this, some people can seem good at first but may do questionable things when eyes are turned, and in the fields of politics and law enforcement this is a greater concern. One thing to avoid at all costs is anyone who is evidently or suspected to be corrupt in any way. In this field, learning networks and communities can be easily maintained and built, but should also be an area of great caution and concern.