Personal learning networks (PLNs) developed out of the idea of building a personal
learning environment (PLE), which is built out of a collection of web tools set up and
owned by the learner. In this way, the ‘management of learning migrates from the
institution to the learner’ and learning also ‘evolves from being a transfer of content
and knowledge to the production of content and knowledge’ (Downes, 2007: 19).
Since 2007, the focus has shifted to PLNs to reflect that most of the learning in a
PLE comes from connecting to other people. An example of the increased interest
in using PLNs in language teaching is the aPLaNet project (www.aplanet-project.eu),
which aims to help teachers build their own PLNs for professional development.