Introducing the aPLaNet project!

Autonomous personal learning networks for language teachers (aPLaNet) is a two year EU project funded by the Life Long Learning Programme designed to encourage language teachers who don't normally use social media in their professional life to see the value of nurturing a personal learning network (PLN) and the benefits of doing so for their own classroom practice.

The core idea for the project came from a Skype conversation between Joel Josephson from the University of West Scotland  and e-learning consultant Shelly Terrell following the 2009 Virtual Round Table conference where Shelly showed Joel how to maximise his use of Twitter to connect with like-minded educators from around the world. Inspired by the effectiveness of this form of online mentoring, Joel decided to put together a bid to the Life Long Learning Programme along with seven partner institutions from across Europe and was fortunate enough to receive around 280,000 euros!

Here are two short recordings taken from the Virtual Round Table webinar referred to below where Joel introduces the project and talks about the value of having a PLN.

Download Joel_Josephson_introduces_aPLaNet_at_VRT

Download Joel_Josephson_on_the_value_of_a_PLN_at_VRT

With the funding in place, each team was assigned different responsibilities or work packages and began creating resources to support their different roles. Calls for associate partners were made in January 2010, and a year later the aPLaNet project website officially launched, followed by a Facebook page, Twitter account and Ning shortly afterwards. Using social media to build a community of like-minded educators around the project has resulted in over 140 institutions (associate partners) from 33 countries getting involved already!

It seems the aPLaNet team are using these drivers in the following way:

• Facebook - a directory of related news, events and blog posts
• Ning – a place to meet make connections, join sub-groups and access downloadable resources
• Twitter – a vehicle for sharing conversations and crowd-sourcing information from the community.

There is a Google+ site too and this duplicates some of the Facebook content.

Colleagues from the seven partner institutions have met up face to face three times so far in Barcelona, Athens and Brno and each time they have fedback progress to the associate partners via video-conference. To access these webinars, click on the following links. Please note you will need to sign up for a Wiziq account.

• Barcelona
• Athens
• Brno

In March 2011, the aPLaNet team comprising Shelly Terrell, Ann Forman, Joel Josephson, Marisa Constantinides, Graham Stanley and Cornelia Kreis-Meyer (Moderator) took part in an online panel discussion during Heike Philp‘s Virtual Round Table Conference and gave associate partners and other interested parties the opportunity to find out more about the project.

You can access the recording from here and here is Marisa Constantinides' prezi about PLNs.

In July 2011, the team carried out an online survey regarding the use of social networks amongst language teachers in the EU. The feedback collected using a Google Form was used to improve and extend the resources and methodologies being prepared and give an insight on how educators are currently using social networks.

One of the project's objectives is to make it easier for teachers to identify useful ICT tools for language teaching and to help teachers in this area, there will be guides, video tutorials and face to face training opportunities for them to get involved especially with respect to a PLN. Joel Josephson and his team are also going to create a Twitter tool called Language Resource Filter Application (LRFA) which will collect tweets containing the hashtag #lrfa.This could be a useful way of pooling resources although as Graham Davies points out curating the content may be time-consuming.

Another core objective is to facilitate a mentoring system via the Ning subgroups whereby volunteers choose to either mentor newbies or be mentees themselves. If they prefer, it is possible for mentees to go through the materials on their own as a self-access pilot and have a series of tasks to complete with a final evaluation. Please note due to the nature of the EU funding for the project, mentees have to come from Europe, but mentors can be from anywhere in the world.

To become a mentor or mentee, you need to sign up to the Ning, fill in your profile and join the mentor or mentee group. There are three ways in which mentors and mentees can find each other

1. Look for someone who is listed as wanting help in the mentees group. Contact them and offer to be their mentor
2. Be approached by a prospective mentee looking for someone to mentor them.
3. Be recommended by an aPLaNet partner to connect with a mentee or mentor

As a mentee, you will be expected to fill in a questionnaire so your mentor can analyse the areas where you need support. The job of the mentor is then to use SMART criteria to set objectives and provide the appropriate support so mentees don’t feel overwhelmed and can manage their time effectively. This could involve for example learning how to use tools like Twitter, Facebook and Ning so mentees can make connections with other like-minded teachers and in time become autonomous. Ultimately, the idea is to have an on-going cycle of mentees who become mentors themselves once they’ve been through the process.

Guides for being a mentor or mentee will be made available on the Ning very soon.

Different levels of blog badges from bronze to platinum will be awarded to mentors according to the number of mentees they have. Mentors can have as many mentees as they feel they have time for.

aPLaNet Mentoring workshop

The British Council in Barcelona is responsible for the mentoring side of the project and the first orientation meeting took place on 23rd November 2011. It was delivered by Graham Stanley from the Brno meet up and the webinar can be accessed here.

At the end of the session, we had the opportunity to make comments and I suggested it would be a good idea to encourage mentors and mentees to record their exchanges so they could refer back to useful conversations and possibly share the highlights with the community.

Download Joe_Dale_in_aPLaNet_mentoring_session

In this clip, Graham talks about the project at the 2011 IATEFL Besig Summer Symposium in Preston.

The mentoring pilot begins January 2012 and resources will be available in Bulgarian, Czech, Greek, Spanish, English, Romanian, Turkish, German, French and Italian.

aPLaNet presentation

Here is an example mentor presentation from one of the partner institutions and this clip filmed in Brno gives a nice overview of the project to date.

Undoubtedly, one of the challenges to the success of aPLaNet will be encouraging enough mentees to sign up. Joel Josephson recently wrote a guest post on Shelly Terrell’s blog concerning this very issue. He feels the two main reasons why teachers don’t use social media to connect with other educators around the world is time and privacy. Trying to reach people who don’t know about the power of PLNs or who feel they don’t have the time to engage with social media may be problematic. I hope not, as I think the premise of the project is fantastic. Time will tell though.

Joel describes a PLN as being:

"like a language teachers staff room and a supportive educational authority in one. It is a global community of language educators, just like you, that have come together to support and help each other improve and update their language teaching by using and sharing the resources that are constantly being developed on the Internet." (Joel Josephson 2010 - taken from the Associate Partner form from Graham Stanley’s post)

In the article, Social Networking - How it is shaping my professional development, Marisa Constantinides is equally enthusiastic about the value of a personal learning network:

"I am now involved in many exciting new collaborative projects, simply by being part of this global conversation. For example, by engaging with my peers on Twitter, it has become possible for me to work on aPLaNet, a major EU funded project which aims to help teachers in their autonomous professional development through the use of such social networks as Facebook, Twitter and Nings." (Marisa Constantinides Autumn 2011)

Anne Foreman, another of the official partners described PLNs as "Do-IT-Yourself Professional Development" in her presentation REAL TICE | Making sense of chaos | Madrid which I love! I also liked the text chat comment from RaquelEFL in the Virtual Round Table session where she quoted Alexander Graham Bell and described the following as a PLN Mantra!

"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds."

In conclusion, I encourage you to listen to this 50 minute podcast interview I recorded over Skype with Graham Stanley from the British Council in Barcelona (No 2 in the picture above!) as it gives a comprehensive overview of the aPLaNet project and fills in any gaps I may have missed in this post!

Download Graham_Stanley_on_aPLaNet

Summary

• introducing the aPLaNet project and explaining what the acronym stands for
• explaining the reasons for launching the project as a way of bridging the gap between those language teachers who use social media and those who don't
• promoting the concept of using a PLN and particularly Twitter as a professional development tool and showing the benefits of doing so
• piloting a mentoring and self-access approach
• explaining what is a personal learning network, the origin of the concept and the value of having a PLN
• maintaining contacts and support through a PLN instead of being tied to a PLE, VLE via an institution
• ways in which PLNs can help professional development
• the target audience for aPLaNet - language teachers who are experienced and inexperiend users of social media
• the challenge of finding mentees
• involving colleagues through face to face workshops as well as online mentoring
• becoming a mentor or mentee by joining the aPLaNet Ning and going on to the next step
• explaining the self-access option and carrying out a webquest
• translating the resources into a variety of languages and encouraging MFL teachers as well English teachers to get involved
• making the Ning the hub of the project
• where the idea for the aPLaNet project came from
• bringing together seven partner institutions for the eu bid
• asking for associate partners in January 2010 and seeing a great reponse
• the benefits of the partner institutions meeting up face to face and agreeing on the first steps
• preparing for the life of aPLaNet after the end of the project in order to make it sustainable for years to come
• explaining the resources in more detail: (Mentor and Mentee support guides, feedback questionnaires, teacher diary template which can be completed online or on paper, 150 page teacher reference guide, series of online workshops which will be recorded, webquests, video tutorials)
• explaining the differences between the mentor and mentee questionnaire and the importance of collecting data about the use of social media by language teachers to update resources and improve the effectiveness of the project
• explaining what are the markers of success?
• creating a cycle of mentees who become autonomous mentors themselves
• presenting the results of the project at an aPLaNet themed conference in Istanbul in September 2012 and feeding back on what has been achieved
• following the progress of the project and involving associate partners via webinars to maintain interest
• the importance of creating a community spirit around the project and drawing on members' PLNs
• sharing Twitter lists of UK language teachers and world language teachers in the first mentoring workshop webinar
• creating a report on the use of social networks amongst language teachers based on the feedback from the July 2011 survey which fed into the section on social networking in the teacher guide
• crowdsourcing colleagues for recommend resources and links before creating the mentor guide and seeing a great response
• drawing upon the "generosity and volunteer spirit of all of these wonderful language teachers all over the world"
• clarifying that during the life of the project, mentees are expected to be from the European Union due to the nature of the funding, but mentors can be from anywhere in the world
• rewarding mentors with different blog badges (bronze, silver, gold and platinum) which denote the number of mentees each mentor is supporting
• giving a t-shirt prize to the first mentor who mentors eleven mentees and achieves platinumn status!
• presenting aPLaNet at the Virtual Round Table conference 2011 and trying to connect with as many language teachers as possible and keep their interest
• explaining how the Language Resource Filter is designed to work as a way of crowdsourcing useful language specific resources and making them available on the Ning
• finishing off with some thoughts on quotes from Joel and Marisa about the value of PLNs
• seeing a PLN as a virtual staffroom full of connected, helpful and sharing language teachers
• giving a heads up to the MFL Twitterati!
• find a world of opportunities arising by simply posting on Twitter
• getting involved in the iTILT project about helping language teachers make the most of interactive whiteboards
• being asked to speak at a conference through Facebook
• using Twitter can open up a whole new world to language teachers and broaden their horizons exponentially - they can find answers to pressing questions 24/7, help another colleague in return, gauge opinion and discover a neverending stream of useful information from their online community
• concluding remarks

I hope you've enjoyed learning about the aPLaNet project and hearing testimonies of others on the value of personal learning networks.

Here are a couple of presentations which may just do the trick if you're not convinced already!

Building a Personal Learning Network

View more presentations from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

I encourage you to get involved with the aPLaNet project. It could be a wonderful opportunity for you. Developments in the new year are sure to be out of this world! Follow that pilot!

If you can't wait until then though, check out this Scoop.it! magazine I've curated which focuses on PLNs and Twitter as professional development tools. Enjoy!

Comments

[Joy Eady]

Hi Mr Dale:)
My name is Joy Eady and I am in EDM310 with Dr. Strange at the University of South Alabama. I will be commenting on your post and then publishing a summary of your post and my comment to my blog in the next two weeks. You presented a great deal of information in this post I was very overwhelmed, but all of it was very useful and beneficial in every single way. I greatly appreciated all the links you provided within your blog post. Links come in very handy when you have no idea about the information being presented. I think that the aPlanet project is a great project and so glad that is was able to get up and running and have so many supporters and people that wanted to be involved in a great idea as this one. I think it is amazing all the things that have came out of this project. I loved all the testimonies from people who this project has helped. It is really a remarkably project. Thanks for introducing me and filling me in on basically everything there is to know about the aPlanet project. I really enjoyed learning about it.

[Brandy Douglas]

Hi, my name is Brandy, I am a student at the University of South Alabama. I just wanted to say that this was an amazing idea on how to get teachers involved with using social networking in the class. It is especially great that you have people who are willing to mentor others and help them get started. I know that with someone like me who is just starting to get a degree in education it can be a little overwhelming to find out where to start. Thank You for sharing this.

[Jessica La Force]

Hi, I'm Jessica La Force and I'm a student in EDM 310 at the University of South Alabama. I personally really enjoyed reading this because I intend to be a Language Arts teacher. This has a lot of great information for those of us who are looking to be teachers. Thanks so much for sharing. You can find my personal blog here. Also my twitter address is @jgjl37. Would love you to check out our blog.

[Victoria]

Hi Joe,
Thank you so much for sharing so many great resources about aPLaNet with your readers. It was very helpful that you included links and embeded videos straight into your post so that I didn't have to hunt them down. I really like that. I am currently studying to become an educator, and I had never hear of aPLaNet before and after reading about it I think it is a great project. Social media is a great tool to use in many different aspects. This is such an amazing way to get others introduced to it.
Thank you again for sharing, Victoria