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PLN? What is it? Why should I use it?

One of the major ideas that I've come across in my experiences in the food industry is the massive amount of information you need to process through.  Previously I was in a regulatory position (reviewing FDA, CFIA, Mexican, Korean, Japanese, EU, so on and so forth as customers needed food laws) where I had so much data I had to sort through that the excel sheet I was using for compliancy standards was massive and growing out of hand.  I also do the same for my current position, now that I gather data from a multitude of forms, I have to spend the time sorting, correcting and filtering through the data to get what I want from it.

So how did I do this?  I learned a new program that could get this done for me, Microsoft Access.  How did I learn it?  Well, I didn't spend a certain amount of money that I had previously for other Microsoft products teachings (which I found extremely lacking to apply to what I wanted).  I used blogs, forums, wiki's and knowledge troubleshooting sites.  I taught myself how to use Access to build forms, how to code using Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) so that I could have something that did all this sorting and querying through this data for me.  

This brings me to reference what I'm writing this blog post regarding, something from Catlin Tucker, 5 Reasons Teachers Should Create a PLN Now! (https://catlintucker.com/2011/08/5-reasons-teachers-should-create-a-pln-now/).  In this Blog she highlights one very important item I continue to follow every day, Keep Learning.  I plan on continuing to learn how to use new programs or how to make some code in VBA work for me because it makes my life easier and the lives of those around me easier as well, if there's a problem I think we should be able to code a solution for it.

While we're out here for the purposes of teaching others, it takes a fondness of learning ourselves that we can pass on to others to really get this across to others.  If we're in a professional setting, training others on how to perform an action or learn a skill but we're not enthusiastic about it, is that person going to become enthused as well?  Perhaps they will more likely fall asleep or lose interest and our training has failed before it could even be used.  One of the realizations that I've come to is that in order to educate others, I have to also concentrate on educating myself which led me to resume my Bachelors degree work and get back into school, specifically into the Workplace Training and Leadership degree here as Idaho State University.  

While I'm just starting, I hope that you can feel free to come back and visit this site often and let me know if you're interested in any information I can provide.  Classmate or not, feel free to ask me if there's anything technology-wise I've experience or have thoughts on and I would like to look into it with you.

Thank you!
Gordon Paustian

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