Building a PLN in my PLE

I have been digesting the reading/information that I have done over the past few days to gain a perspective on my PLE and PLN.
I have been thinking, and comparing my newly developing Personal Learning Network with my existing networks eg.my role as a mum required the development of various networks such as school, soccer, playgroup, mothers group and my existing friends.
These networks took time & effort to build but I used the social tools that I was very used to...face to face skills like smiling, chatting, asking questions, listening etc. to build these relationships.
My developing online network has required me to use new/unfamiliar tools so there has been a steep learning curve to manage the tools Twitter, Blogger, then I had to put the effort into building the relationships by reading blogs, commenting,

I have listened to last Fridays session which provided a discussion on the semantics of PLE or PLNs and use of the word 'personal'. There were also some other good references to follow up.
Stephen provided the analogy of think of this course like football or politics, don't try to follow every aspect just follow the team/party or player that you enjoy the most to get the most out of it. This is encouraging as I am finding that I am briefly running my eyes over 'The Daily' email which I use to navigate to the info I need eg.recordings. I have saved The MOOC (Moodle course homepage) and the PLENK2010 blog as tabs in my home pages for quick reference but I am just finding The Daily to be a good jumping off point, which is unusual considering I normally do anything to avoid reading emails, already I am changing my ways, let's see how long it lasts.

Getting started - albeit a little late

#PLENK2010 commenced on Monday however the intro Elluminate session was held on Friday, so I have missed the first few days of activities for the course but am getting into it ..right now!

I am amazed and excited by the number of participants in this course and very much looking forward to learning & challenging myself to get involved.

I have created this dedicated blog to the course so that I can attempt to delineate my thoughts from #FO2010 blog however I am sure there will be many cross references in future posts.

I have read the how to instructions am going to listen to the recorded session from Friday, then I am going to attempt to add my blog to the RSS feed for the course. I can only hope that in weeks to come I will look back at this post and realise how far I have come in my technical ability. I am also going to commence using del.icio.us to track all the reading I will be doing.

I am keen to read the thoughts of other participants in the course by way of their blog posts, not only to involve myself in the thinking and discussion of the course but to improve the way I communicate my thoughts in blog posts ie.layout, writing style, being clear and succinct.