Mapping my PLN
This was an interesting exercise. I decided to do a different version from the previous exercise; I narrowed it down to my career path in Indigenous education and focused in on individuals I knew through that career or who were otherwise relevant to that field. I started with my current work and the people I knew from there, and I focused just on those who I work with a lot or who are particularly important to my own learning; they are represented in colour and with bigger font because they are more recent connections, stronger connections, and most relevant to my immediate work. I also gave colour to some of the recent connections in QA and from Universities because those connections led very directly to my current place. Other connections are included because they helped me learn more about the field, or because they are important in the field. I included more nodes/individuals there because I was in those spaces for longer periods.
I should also say that I knew I was going to run out of space quickly, so I used initials to represent individuals (and in the case of other organizations, those places are also referred to with initials because they are such big titles).
Grey colours are used because they are relevant to the field but I don’t have as close a connection to them. Similarly, I used white background and a different font for those who I don’t know but who are important in the field or who I could learn from but haven’t met yet.
This obviously is not an exhaustive list – I started to run out of space!
A lot of my connections led to other connections, but that’s hard to show on a map like this. I used Mindmup to create the map, and was having trouble finding ways to connect the different parties. Perhaps a different tool would have been a better choice, but I liked the intuitiveness of this particular platform.
I also missed not being able to show how these connections changed over time. Some of these connections are quite important as individuals that I learned a lot from and initially had very strong and reciprocal relationships with them, but some of these have faded in recent years and we aren’t in touch as often now. They still had a strong impact on my own learning and development, but our circles have moved on a bit and we aren’t as close. This is difficult to show in a mindmap like this!
Overall, a neat exercise. Thanks!
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https://bank.ecampusontario.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/PLN-Mindmap-Big-one.pdf
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