PLN (Personal Learning Networks) have grown in prominence and importance tremendously over the last few years and with good reason. They are a great way to extend your professional network beyond your physical environment and tap into a huge wealth of knowledge about your profession. This makes them one of the most effective autonomous means of developing your own teaching in a way that is most immediate and relevant to your ambitions.
Building an effective network though, is dependent on knowing the right places to go, which tools to use and how best to use them. With technology changing and new tools developing so rapidly, this can be a challenge to keep up with.
With this in mind I have launched this quick research survey to find out where you prefer to build your networks and what the pros and cons of each of those networks might be.
Please feel free to add your suggestions, pros and cons, and vote for the ones you find most useful. You maybe asked to register when you submit and idea, but you can just click on the X in the top right hand corner of the window and continue.
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I hope you find this information useful and continue to build your network.
This is a post that I have been trying to find time to write for over a year now and the urge and urgency to write it has grown every time I go to conference and every time I hear a few irritating comments.
The comments usually fit into one or more of these categories
Where is all the new talent?
Why aren’t there more women speakers around?
Well technology that’s for the guys.
I think that more than anything, after this years' IATEFL conference these kinds of comments should stop once and for all.
So I’ve chosen focus this post on just a few of the many great tech savvy speakers, teachers, tweeters and of course women from this years conference. Shelly Turrell & Ozge Karaoglu One of the great presentations that everyone was talking about this year was by Shelly and Ozge. Ozge based in Turkey and Shelly based in Germany were reporting on a project they created between their classes of young learners. They shared the results of their work and information about the kinds of tools and the issues involved in running a project of this kind with young students.
Shelly publishes her own blog ‘Teacher Reboot Camp’ which focuses not on technology, but on the pedagogical exploitation of technology with students. So be sure to check that out.
She is also one of the most prolific EFL tweeters with a huge following on Twitter, so if you are thinking of growing your PLN then her twitter page would be a great place to start. http://twitter.com/shellterrell
Ozge also has her own blog 'Ozge Karaoglu’s Blog' where she writes about and reviews Web 2.0 type tools for learning with a particular focus on using these tools with young learners.
You can also add Ozge to your PLN and start following her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ozge
Marisa Constantinides Marisa was just one of the stars of this years’ Pecha Kucha presentations (20 slides in 6.40 minutes). You can watch the Pecha Kuchas here: IATEFL 2010 Pecha Kucha
Marisa also has her own blog ' TEFL Matters' where she publishes information on language teaching, teacher education and new technologies. Marisa is a teacher trainer and also runs a busy teacher training school in Athens. Among the things you can find on her blog are links to her recent presentation on animating course books with digital materials and some of her reflections on being an online teacher in a virtual world.
Burcu Akyol Burcu was also one of the star presenters at this years’ Pecha Kucha event and she opened the event with 20 slides of 20 seconds about how Twitter had effected her professional life and its impact on conference events such as IATEFL and the recent ISTEK International ELT Conference (27-28 March 2010 ) which she helped to organise in Turkey.
Burcu also publishes her own blog 'Burcu Akyol's Blog' on a range of teaching and ELT related topics and I can highly recommend it particularly if you are looking for somewhere to find information about building your PLN.
Yes you’ve already guessed that she too is prolific producer of tweets, so be sure to add her to your network. http://twitter.com/burcuakyol
Petra Pointner Among Petra’s striking contributions to this years’ IATEFL conference was her presentation 'What students can get out of Twitter' on her use of Twitter with her students. Petra talks in this interview about how she became interested in Twitter and how it has impacted on her professional life. Interview with Petra Pointner
Karenne Joy Sylvester Last but by no means least is Karenne Sylvester. Karenne’s presentation was on working in educational online communities and she explored some of the issues involved in being an e-moderator and working online with learners.
You can also see Karenne doing, what for me was one of the highlights of the entire conference, her Pecha Kucha presentation on the history of the English language.
Karenne also writes her own blog 'Kalingo English' which explores many of the pedagogical issues surrounding the use of educational technology with a particular focus towards business English. It’s a great read so do check that out.
So here are just six of the many great women who were presenting at IATEFL this year. I have picked these six, not just because they are women, not because they blog or tweet and not because they use technology, but because all six are primarily great teachers and educators with great ideas that they want to share and because they critically apply their knowledge of education to the way they exploit technology with their students.
For me this is of key importance and significance. Technology was a huge feature of this years’ IATEFL conference and it’s very easy to be blinded or pulled along by the technology, but in the work of these six women there is for me some sign of the beginnings of a state of normalisation of technology in language teaching. A state when we can move past talking about technology and get back to talking about teaching of which technology is just a normal part and an enabler in that process of learning. I'm sure that time of normalisation will still be a long time coming, but it's great to see that at least it's beginning.
