Karen Benson (@eslkazzyb) and I recently delivered a short workshop on “The Networked Teacher: Making a PLN work for you” at the UECA PD Fest in Sydney. We are planning to develop parts of the workshop into downloadable materials for interested managers/senior teachers/trainers to use for in-house professional devlopment, so look out for that. As part of the workshop, we asked participants to complete a few sentences about what they wanted from their network. Here is a sampling of what was said*:

(*in one or two instances the wording has been changed for reasons of clarity)

I want to learn more about . . .

• management in ELT
• ways of presenting material and grammar in student-centred and helpful ways
• the active classroom
• using technology to engage and simplify learning
• using Twitter for chats more easily
• the #AusELT resource wiki
• student engagement using technology
• how to teach pronunciation
• new ideas/activities in the classroom
• blogging
• how to observe/being observed in teaching practice
• writing and publishing worksheets and activity sheets
• blended learning
• finding ELT work

I want to talk to people who . . .

• are heads of centres
• are involved in English programs at universities
• are interested in being positive and creative and inventive in their teaching
• are interested in maximising student benefit and enjoyment in the classroom
• are inspired by the ELT/ESL world
• are experienced teachers who use various forms of classroom technology
• are more experienced than me
• want to share and talk about learning and student motivation
• I can help and learn from
• teachers and managers in the ELT sector
• are also fairly new teachers
• are interested in designing PD systems/workshops/plans
• have experience and expertise in my areas of interest
• are professionals in the field of ELT
• share my research interests

I want feedback/advice on . . .

• dealing with relationships between universities and their English language centres
• English program outcomes at the university level
• reflection
• strategies I use in class
• how to improve my teaching
• career advancement opportunities for teachers into management and other related fields
• developing online courses
• dealing with challenging situations
• effective strategies to limit the use of L1 in a multilingual classroom
• job-hunting skills

I want to be able to . . .

• focus on strategies/solutions
• share ideas and learn from fellow colleagues
• get enough courage to contribute/participate in a Twitter chat

A huge thank you to all the lovely people who came to the session and contributed their ideas. We (or you!) can put forward many of these as poll topics for future Twitter chats. I’m particularly interested in the “I want to talk to people who . . .” section though. In a networked community all of these are possible; each person can build the network that best suits their purposes. Hope to see you out there!

This post by @sophiakhan4