Creating your PLN (Personal Learning Network) with a Mentor helping you out in your first steps | TeachingEnglish | British Council

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Creating your PLN (Personal Learning Network) with a Mentor helping you out in your first steps

Submitted by Marisa Constant... on 30 January, 2012 - 17:23

Readers of this blog and colleagues I interact with every day on Twitter and Facebook, on Ning and Grou.ps, on LinkedIn and group.ly, on wikis and blogs, will probably feel this is one post too many on the value of creating a Personal Learning Network and maintaining contact through all these social networking sites.

This is not about preaching to the converted, then, but about converting more teachers and bringing them into a digital family of ELT educators who are passionate about their jobs and committed to Continuous Professional Development.

aPLaNet - Autonomous Personal Learning Networks for Foreign Language Teachers

For the past year, I have been working towards achieving this objective with a wonderful team of European educators from the following countries and institutions and would like to urge readers to join us in helping mentor new teachers become more active members of an online ELT community.

University of the West of Scotland, UK

ISTEK Schools, Turkey

British Council, Spain
EuroEd, Romania
Sofia University, Bulgaria
Language School Pelikan, Czech Republic

CELT Athens, Greece

How you can get involved

Become a mentor if your comfort level with Twitter, Facebook and Ning is very good.

Become a mentee if you would like to learn how to use these social networking tools for your own free and autonomous professional development as a foreign language educator.

Please watch this short screencast introducing the concept of Personal Learning Networks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_OvzhBSyuo

And if you would like to learn more about the objectives and resources which will be made freely available to all foreign language educators please visit http://www.aplanet-project.eu/

Where you can join

Join our Ning Community http://aplanet-project.org/

Join our Facebook Group http://www.facebook.com/aplanetproject

And spread the word to those colleagues who are not part of this wonderful and sharing community of ELT educators.