For those unfamiliar with the term 'professional learning network', it's essentially personalized professional development-- PPD! It's an online community that you create for yourself in order to get the support that you need. It's completely teacher-driven.

Before I delve into the how-to's, it's important to ask the other question first--Why? Why create a PLN? For me, it boils down to three reasons: passion, purpose, and productivity.

Passion: it's the reason why we're all here right now at 8AM at an NSTA science conference. We all have passions for science, for teaching, and for learning; and we're all here to share those passions with one another. We're here to find our people, our tribe--to make those connections with one another.

PLNs allow us to make those connections with each other, and bring those connections wherever we are.

Now we get to the question, How? With so many social media tools out there, it can get very overwhelming. We eliminate that anxiety by focusing on a purpose. What are your PD needs right now?

Forming a clear cut objective will help you focus in on what types of social media tools you will use.

Having a clear purpose will allow you to narrow down, and pick the right social media tools. This leads to increased productivity, and maximizes the potential of your PLN.

It's important to note that your purpose should not remain static. Your purpose and your social media tools should change as you learn from and grow with your PLN.

For example, as a first year teacher, I was hired at a school without a mentoring program. My purpose with social media and PLNs was initially to find a mentor who can help me survive my first year.

In my second year, my purpose shifted from networking to resource-sharing. I wanted to improve my previous lessons, so I turned to resources such as the NSTA Learning Center, email list-serves and Nings.

A NIng is a customized social network; some very popular education Nings are Classroom 2.0 and Curriculum 21.

When I got to my third year of teaching, my purpose changed again, this time from resource-sharing to reflection. I wanted to improve and get new ideas for more effective science teaching strategies.

My use of social media led to more conversations online with my PLN through Twitter chats, forums, and blogs.

Here's a screenshot of my Tweetdeck, with some of the hashtags and conversations I follow on a regular basis.

Jerry Blumengarten (@cybraryman1) has an extensive collection of educational hashtags and calendar of educational chat times listed on his website.

How do you get a PLN started with social media? What should you have in your toolkit?

Personally, I use 5 basic tools to set up and maintain a PLN with social media.

Collect your information--articles, blog posts, videos--and house them in one place with a news aggregator like Feedly. Cull your resources and save the ones that are important to your PD in an online library, with a social bookmarking tool like Diigo. Use tags and lists to sort your resources.

Next, share the wealth by retweeting your resources through Twitter or writing about them in a blog post. Complete the circle of learning by passing on what you have learned to others in your PLN. Make the sharing process easy and automatic by utilizing an archiving tool like Evernote.

Here's a screenshot of my Feedly account, which was connected to Evernote. I was able to bookmark and archive a video on Evernote, and quickly share that resource on ALL my social media accounts in seconds.

With the vast amount of information you gather daily from your PLN, it's important to systemize how you collect, go through and share your resources with others.

Now that you have your toolkit, what else should you do? I suggest creating a professional username that you can turn into a brand for yourself.

Create a "home base"-- an online space that houses all of your social media links. It can be a Google Profile or a LinkedIn resume. The point is to have all of your tools available in one place.

Next, link all of your tools together and make the process automatic so that you're not overwhelmed with too much information. Use your PLN and the social media tools to connect!