The Power of Attraction- Pulling Those You Need Into Your Learning Community

I have advocated that technology and other key drivers have created an environment in which individual Professional Learning Communities can be networked with, not only other Professional Learning Communities, but useful individuals such as specialists, district personnel, researchers, etc., physically and virtually.  I call this model the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. 

The essence of the PNLC is that the "who" of potential members and collaborators is increased exponentially because of individual members networking through collaborative technology platforms, the "what." It provides scale without mass.

Authors John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison explain why this is true in their book The Power of Pull. The reason that the PNLC is so powerful is because of the access it provides. 

A PNLC provides access—helps us find people, information, data, ideas, and resources on demand.

Access is, “…the ability to fluidly find and get to the people and resources when and where we need them.” 

Stocks of Knowledge vs. Flows of Knowledge

Access is key because we are finding that the many of the challenges and problems we are dealing with in education we were simply not trained to confront in our teacher preparation programs. We were given a “stock” amount of knowledge, but it isn’t enough.

“We are often disappointed to find that the education we invested so much time and money to pursue has failed to prepare us for the lives we are now leading.” 

Think of all the skills many educators have had to learn since leaving their college teacher prep programs—data analysis and management, conflict resolution, technology implementation, increasing numbers of learning issues and problems, etc. 

The challenges that we face in education today require that we tap into an ever refreshing stream of knowledge. 

“To succeed now, we have to continually refresh our stocks of knowledge by participating in relevant ‘flows’ of knowledge—interactions that create knowledge or transfer it across individuals. These flows occur in any social, fluid environment that allows firms and individuals to get faster by working with others.” 

The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative provides a stream of new knowledge and learning that can help us meet the challenges and needs of our students, our schools, and the environment surrounding education. 

Passions and Interests

“People are seeking out others for mutual support around common interests and passions more actively than ever before. What’s also different now is the reach and scale of these networks—their actual size as well as the diversity of participants they attract and mobilize.” 

Think of a PLN- Personal Learning Network mashed-up with a PIN- Passion and Interest Network, combined with a PLN- Professional Learning Network and you have a PNLC- Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. 

The cognitive diversity that a PNLC is able to attract is a major advantage compared to the old PLC model. The ability to attract physically and virtually those who share our passions, interests, and, I might add, problems, is a key lever of what make the PNLC so valuable. 

Breaking Down Silos and Barriers

The authors point out, “…there are a lot more smart people outside any particular company than within it.” 

We need to tap into all the knowledge and expertise that is out there. The people sitting at the table with us are important, but so are all the other useful outsiders, the “smart people” who exist outside of our classrooms, our schools, and our districts. And technology can attract them. 

“As the number of people we can connect with expands, our ability to pull from that network the resources and people we require to address unexpected needs expands along with it. Using tools and platforms emerging today, any of us can now find a person in a remote part of the world who just happens to have the knowledge or expertise required to help us.” 

At its heart, the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative is ambidextrous. It seeks those who we can physically connect with and those whom we can virtually connect with. It makes it incredibly flexible. 

“Flexible access to people and resources can be enormously powerful in a world driven by changes that, more often than not, lead us in unanticipated directions.” 

Thanks to Pull—and John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison for so eloquently describing what I have been trying to describe for the past year—the “pull” of the Professional Networked Learning Collaborative. 

Also See: 

Edge Perspectives With John Hagel

John Seely Brown

The Edgerati

Comments

[Nathan Mielke]

This book is really something else. It probably won't ever be as popular as The World is Flat or A Whole New Mind, but talks about things that are incredibly important to how we meet our present day-and future challenges. We're getting PLCs going in our district next year...but I worry it will be limiting in the sense that teachers will only be reaching out to people in the building and the district. We need to be looking everywhere for ideas and help solving the complex issues we face in public education.

[Rob Jacobs]

Nathan, good luck with your PLCs. I think the natural evolution of PLC is with those you work with and are surrounded by. But, as you mention, teachers will miss so much potential expertise if they don't continue the growth process in their PLCs.

In addition, many teachers have simply not realized how valuable developing their own networks is. Teachers need to develop their networks, see the benefit, and then apply them to their PLCs.

I do love the book. I have been writing about the concepts in it for over a year, but it is great to find a book and authors who so align with what I have been thinking and writing about. I hope it gets a bigger audience in education.