A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system that helps people take control of and manage their own learning. The rise of Twitter (www.twitter.com) and other social networking tools has made it easier for teachers to manage their own learning and professional development, and communicate with others in the process. How can we help learners to do the same?Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Stanley, Graham

English

El Servicio de Difusión de la Creación Intelectual

 
Puertas Abiertas, n° 6, 2010. ISSN 1853-614X – UNLP. FAHCE. Escuela de Lenguas 
http://www.puertasabiertas.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ 
 
Before and after Twitter: Personal Learning Environments 
(e-conference on the use of PLE / PLN in English Language Teaching presented at 
IATEFL Harrogate 2010) 
 
 Graham Stanley 
British Council 
 
A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a system that helps people take control of and manage 
their own learning. The rise of Twitter (www.twitter.com) and other social networking tools has made it 
easier for teachers to manage their own learning and professional development, and communicate 
with others in the process. How can we help learners to do the same? 
 
Introduction 
We live in a very interesting time. It's a time of rapid change in technology. For 
many language teachers, the change is happening in the classroom too, as 
computers, interactive whiteboards and the Internet have started finding a place in 
our teaching context.  For those teachers yet to experience this, the change in our 
learners, in what they do outside of class, reflects a new way of doing things.  
Changes in technology also mean many of us have a new world of information and 
contact with people all over the world. Many practitioners have started to wonder how 
best to take advantage of these changes. A good place to start is through online 
networks. 
The power of online networks means so much that we are just beginning to 
take advantage of as teachers: we have a new world of information and 
recommended resources at our fingertips; we are always just a short step away from 
being able to share our ideas with colleagues from around the world; we can turn to a 
variety of other people from many different backgrounds and countries for help, 
advice, and opinions. And this is surely just the beginning. As Kevin Kelly (2010) 
writes in his new book, 'What Technology Wants' : 
 
“I saw online networks connect people with ideas, options, and other people 
they could not possibly have met otherwise. Online networks unleashed 
passions, compounded creativity, amplified generosity...Online they 
collaborated, cooperated, shared, and created in myriad unexpected ways.” 
 
 
Puertas Abiertas, n° 6, 2010. ISSN 1853-614X – UNLP. FAHCE. Escuela de Lenguas 
http://www.puertasabiertas.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ 
 
This is all very well, but how can you get started? One of the easiest ways for 
teachers to start is by using a PLE and by building a PLN.  
 
PLEs and PLNs 
 
A Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is a flexible system that helps people 
take control of and manage their own learning. It consists of a number of different 
tools (a blog, wiki, social networks,  etc.) that a teacher or learner chooses, around 
which he or she builds a group of people that can be turned to for knowledge, help, 
advice and support. This is the teacher's or learner's Personal Learning Network 
(PLN) . There has been a considerable rise in the number of English language 
teachers using the micro-blogging service Twitter (www.twitter.com), which is an 
online social network where people express themselves through brief statements 
(called tweets) of no more than 140 characters. This tool has started to make it 
easier for teachers to manage their own learning and professional development, and 
communicate with others  in the process. There are fewer English learners who are 
using Twitter at the moment, but I believe teachers can help learners help 
themselves through building their own PLE. 
 
Teachers who tweet 
 
In Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point, the figure of 150 (Dunbar's 
number) is mentioned as representing the maximum number of individuals with 
whom a person can have a genuine social relationship. Gladwell says, 'putting it 
another way, it's the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining 
uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar.' Some people are 
now questioning whether this number is being changed by today's social media. The 
interesting thing about Twitter for teachers is that it's bringing people together who 
wouldn't normally ever meet online. Unlike previous specialist email groups and 
communities of practice which are usually private and centre around groups of 
teachers with special interests or from specific countries or areas, the  PLN that 
teachers build around the people they know on Twitter is public, more general and 
monitoring of keywords (called hashtags in Twitter because they are usually prefaced 
 
Puertas Abiertas, n° 6, 2010. ISSN 1853-614X – UNLP. FAHCE. Escuela de Lenguas 
http://www.puertasabiertas.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ 
 
by #) means that through serendipity your PLN can include strangers who provide 
answers to questions and/or links to resources. 
Appealing to teachers in my PLN before this article, and asking them to 
describe how thing had changed since Twitter was illuminating, a wide range of 
responses were received. Here are a selection: 
 
● #beforetwitter I didn't know your whole life story, #aftertwitter I know where 
you live, what car you drive and the colour of your socks 
 
● #beforetwitter I had a limited network, #aftertwitter I have access to my 
network's network 
 
● #aftertwitter suddenly many opportunities have opened, resources are plenty 
 
● #beforetwitter I used to go on the web, #aftertwitter the web is brought to me 
 
● #beforetwitter my staffroom consisted of 15 teachers, #aftertwitter it has 
spread across the globe with 100s of colleagues  
 
● with Twitter you get much quicker feedback, much more immediate than with 
blogging 
 
● #beforetwitter cold, boring, stressful #aftertwitter warm, reassuring, engaging, 
energising, motivating, creative 
 
● life #aftertwitter means having a constantly updated global resourceand a 
motivated staffroom 
 
What became clear from the many comments is that building a PLE with 
Twitter at the centre has given those teachers who have done so a very useful 
network of people they can turn to, for all manner of different reasons. 
 
Resources for Teachers 
 
 
Puertas Abiertas, n° 6, 2010. ISSN 1853-614X – UNLP. FAHCE. Escuela de Lenguas 
http://www.puertasabiertas.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ 
 
Let's focus on one of these. The recommended teaching resources you find 
through Twitter often have far more value than those you find through Google 
because they have been tried and tested in the classroom by someone in your 
network. Often relying on your network is now even a better bet than taking advice 
from an acknowledged expert.  This curious fact was revealed by James Surowiecki 
in his study called 'The Wisdom of Crowds' (2004).   
Surowiecki shows that the aggregation of information in groups, results in 
decisions that are often better than could have been made by any single member of 
the group.  This works when the crowd is a 'diverse collection of independently-
deciding individuals' and when this is the case, they are likely to make certain types 
of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts. In our case, you 
can add 'about classroom resources' after the word 'decision'. 
 
Building your network 
 
The value of a tool such as Twitter, and of your PLN, is of course totally 
dependent on the people you have in your network. As Surowiecki shows, it is better 
if your decisions are taken by a very particular type of crowd, so you should aim to 
build a large and diverse group of people from different countries and walks of life 
(not just people like you).  This is why I believe Twitter shows most benefits when you 
start to connect to a very large number of people. I have a network of over 3,000 
people, which I have built organically over the course of almost four years of Twitter 
use, adding people gradually. I don't recommend people try building a very large 
network very quickly, but I do think that following 100 people to start off with is a good 
idea. How can you find people worth following? I recommend starting with a list of 
friendly Twitter educators people that Barbara Sakamoto has created : 
http://twitter.com/barbsaka/starter-pln. 
 
Twitter is not Email 
 
Twitter is also only going to be useful to you if you start using it on a regular 
basis. The first thing you should do is to stop treating Twitter like you do email. You 
should not expect to read all of your messages. If you treat Twitter like a global online 
staffroom, where you join in the conversations when you have time and want to, then 
 
Puertas Abiertas, n° 6, 2010. ISSN 1853-614X – UNLP. FAHCE. Escuela de Lenguas 
http://www.puertasabiertas.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ 
 
it will also feel more like fun and of use than an obligation. I also recommend you 
start to participate in some of the discussions that teachers have on Twitter, so that 
people get to know you. Often these are ad-hoc and impromptu, but perhaps the best 
place to start is with an organised discussion. ELT chat is probably the best one, as 
they have a website to help you and also archive previous chats : http://eltchat.com/. 
 
 
Students who tweet 
 
Can the idea of using a PLN with Twitter at its centre be used to support 
language learning as well as teacher development? I decided to ask some of my 
young adult students if they wanted to use Twitter. Making it optional meant that only 
10% of them decided to do so. Since then, however, I have seen the number grow to 
20%. Apart from connecting to me and each other, they have found other people in 
their own networks that also use Twitter and some of these are English speakers. 
How are they using the tool? Apart from tweeting in their own language, they are also 
using English, and I have seen a number of them use Twitter in the following ways: 
 
● to help each other with grammatical questions  
●  to chat to each other in English in a light-hearted way   
●  to chat to English-speaking friends and contacts  
●  to ask me about information regarding English class and exams 
●  to respond to some of the things that I have been tweeting about. 
 
What conclusions can be drawn from this? 
 
It's early days, but Twitter is being used for teacher development and this 
should continue to grow. Twitter also shows promise as a tool for informal learning 
with language learners.  
 
References 
 
Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point. London, Abacus. 
 
 
Puertas Abiertas, n° 6, 2010. ISSN 1853-614X – UNLP. FAHCE. Escuela de Lenguas 
http://www.puertasabiertas.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/ 
 
Kelly, K. (2010) What Technology Wants. New York, Viking. 
 
Pegrum, M. (2009) From Blogs to Bombs: The Future of Digital Technologies in 
Education. Western Australia, UWA Publishing. 
 
Surowiecki, J. (2004) The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the 
Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and 
Nations. London, Little Brown. 


Before and after Twitter: Personal Learning Environments (e-conference on the use of PLE / PLN in English Language Teaching presented at
IATEFL Harrogate 2010)

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Before and after Twitter: Personal Learning Environments (e-conference on the use of PLE / PLN in English Language Teaching presented at IATEFL Harrogate 2010)

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