This article has a great list of new trends in the culture of learning. The trend that I found most surprising and relevant to PLN's is the formal education is no longer the majority of our learning. As stated in the article, "learning now occurs through communities of practice, personal networks, and work-related tasks."

The value I found in this article is that the author describes the additional two benefits traditional personal development cannot. They are that a PLN allows an educator to completely personalize their training and "the "network" portion of a PLN indicates the high degree of symbiotic relationships that such personal development depends on."