?

It took me a lot of thinking for writing this blog post on Topic 3. Maybe because I am experiencing a ‘bloggers block’ ? I was not sure whether such a term exists to define my situation but yay here it comes. When I did a little digging, I found this website that may be handy if you are having a similar syndrome (https://problogger.com/battling-bloggers-block/) as there are some tips to overcome it. To be honest, I did not refer to those tips deliberately but what really helped me to start from the second guided question (the ones who are not familiar with ONL yet, there are some guiding questions that we can refer to for writing our blogs) and remember the term (academic crush) when I used back then to define my special interest on an academician’s work. I guess it worked for me to develop a PLN at that time.

Photo by Omar Flores on Unsplash

It all started when I was writing my PhD proposal, and I read many of the published materials of this particular ‘crush’. Later, I had the chance to travel (it was possible to travel at that time:)) all the way from Ankara to Portland for a conference. I listened to the presentation of this person and during the coffee break ( this was one of huge conferences in our field and they served really good stuff), I got all my guts up (support from my friends as well), I personally met this person and had a chance to discuss the presentation and some other related work. Once I mentioned some particular interest in some of other works, I was offered to send an email asking some materials. Hooray! I got the materials and some more insights from the email. We exchanged a couple of emails for a possible exchange program, but it was not possible at that time.

Another PLN opportunity emerged from a possible sabbatical leave for a year. I sent an email to one of the prolific professors (back then I thought I had a slight chance) with whom I share common research interest. This resulted in having an acceptance, now I am in Spain for my postdoc for a year. This lead to a collaboration between ourselves, and I hope it will bring more opportunities.

The ONL journey also offered to build a PLN thanks to my group members. Since I am writing this post between two topics (3 and 4), I can bring some ideas from the latter. As for the design of blended learning, the topic’s presenter suggests to share some pieces of role with designers, tech experts and so on. If I need some suggestions for possible tools, I will definitely consult my group members ( especially Christian as he is a guru :))

I say that PLNs can be used to give talks to the lectures for learning processes. For example, one of my colleagues in Turkey invited his networks to his PhD course every two weeks. For this to accomplish, synchronous video call technologies such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams can be used. Other than that, I frequently come across some live events on Instagram to give a talk or lead a discussion on academic topics. Personal tools can be turned into more formal spaces to facilitate learning in the end.

Happy networking.

The impact of having “academic crush”