It's hard to escape networking these days with the internet. PLN or personal learning networks have become popular among educators. They are basically people that you exchange information with and this usually takes place online. By using VLE or virtual learning environments, it's pretty easy to exchange ideas.PLNs allow you to work on your professional development, find resources, learn new ideas, network, keep up-to-date about the lastest news in your field, among other things. TEFL teachers have really taken to PLN.
Blog Carnival: You can just read it or write your own post and have it be included in the carnival. Here's the ELT Blog Carnival and upcoming topics for it.
Blogs: Start following a couple of blogs and commenting on them. You'll get to know the blog writers and other readers that way. If you don't have a blog, consider starting one. Edu Blogs is probably the largest blogging community of educators out there.
Facebook: Join groups or networks and actively participate in them.
Linkedin: Complete your profile and start connecting with people. You might want to consider becoming a LION (LinkedIn Open Networker) and accepting any and all invitations that aren't spam. Joining networks and participating in conversations can help.
Nings: EFL Classroom 2.0 and the Educator's PLN are good places to start.
Podcasts: The itunes store has good podcasts, some of them are even free.
RSS: Allows you to follow blogs easily.
Social Bookmarking: You can see what other people are reading online and also share your bookmark list with others.
Skype: You can talk to people around the world.
TED: Lots of great presentations by famous people.
Twitter: Short and sweet, you can share ideas anytime, anywhere.
Web 2.0: This is basically a combination of many of the ideas here, social networking, blogs, wikis, videos, etc, all in one place.
Webinars: Some publishing companies have free webinars that you can attend as long as you sign up.
Wikis: More and more groups are creating wikis in order to gather information in one place.
Youtube: You can subscribe to channels, watch the latest presentations, and comment on them.
