Your Professional Personal Learning Network (PLN) is an invaluable resource to both your career in education as well as your private life outside the walls of your school. In the third episode of PodcastPD, Chris, AJ, and I discuss the people you should include in our PLN and how to go about building a PLN of your own (step 1-include US!).

Personally, we like to build our PLN with people who are: like-minded, share the same interests, share ideas, positive and upbeat, and push our learning and thinking. We connect in a variety of ways and a variety of platforms, from Twitter and Voxer to Facebook and CoffeeEdu (be brave-start your own!). We even discuss less traditional but more fun ways to connect with you PLN, like DinerEdu, EdCampOut, and BoardGameEdu! What would be your entry point for building your PLN? Who would you connect with?

• Our favorite Twitter chats:

1. #BFC530
2. #SSTLAP
3. #TLAP
4. Find a chat that will help you grow your PLN

• Voxer Walkie Talkie App
• Overcast.fm
• Innovator’s Mindset MOOC

AJ is currently reading Blended Learning in Action: A Practical Guide Toward Sustainable Change by Catlin Tucker, Jason Todd Green and Tiffany Wyckoff.

Chris recommended a podcast from WNYC (NPR) called Note to Self. His wife recently turned him on to this podcast and his jumping off point was a series of episodes called The Privacy Paradox.

What is the Privacy Paradox? It’s the term behavioral economists use to describe the disconnect between our feelings about digital privacy (we value it!) and how we act online (we give privacy away!).

Stacey is back to listening to podcasts (YAY!) after a really long affair with the OverDrive app! She recently listened to NPR’s Hidden Brain, specifically episodes 59 and 60. Each of these episodes deal with current events and have a place in any SS, political science, psychology, or humanities class.

• Shout out to Bruce Reicher (@breicher), fellow NJ educator who is enjoying the podcast and let us know by tweeting to us @PodcastPD. Thanks for listening Bruce!
• Shout out to Tina Monteleone (@tinamonte), another NJ educator, she’s a MS technology teacher and college professor who has enjoyed the launch and beginnings of this podcast!