Activating your network:

1. Engage in social bookmarking by participating in and creating groups & lists in Diigo.
2. Find a blog post or idea that’s inspiring, bookmark it and share it with your group (PLN). No more digging through endless emails to find that great idea from last spring that you need now. This saves time. 
3. With the same few clicks tweet it on twitter, update your Facebook status. More content for your PLN.
4. Scan twitter, Diigo group messages, and Facebook. Check out interesting links Retweet, share it with Diigo groups, update your Facebook status.
5. Scan your news aggregator (Netvibes, Google Reader, Paper.li). Read only the posts that most interest you. Share with your network, your PLN.

On Twitter

1. Create an account on twitter. Complete enough profile information so that people know who you are and what interests you have. Others choose to follow you based on your interests and your most recent tweets.
2. Follow your local language organization, National Language Resource Centers, ACTFL, and colleagues who are already on twitter.
3. Look at whom these organizations and your colleagues follow. Find others you might want to follow. By following others you are growing your PLN.
4. Click retweet to share something that you find interesting that was posted by those whom you are following. This may start a long stream of replies as your followers run with the idea, sharing the value of the resource you discovered.
5. Post a comment and a link to something interesting you found related to teaching and learning or languages. Send a link to a blog post that inspires you.
6. Post a question to your PLN once you have people following you.
7. Be picky. You don’t need to follow everyone who follows you. Block spam users such as companies that sell products that aren’t of interest. It’s about quality, not quantity.
8. Learn to use #hashtags in your posts. mashable.com/2009/05/17/twitter-hashtags/ #langchat is a hashtag used by language educators to discuss language learning/teaching issues. 

Check out these groups for people to follow:

• Twitter4Teachers: http://bit.ly/twitter4langteachers
• Thomas Sauer: http://bit.ly/langeducontwitter

On Facebook

You may have a Facebook presence already connected to friends and family.

1. Search for and join groups for the target language you teach and like pages for language associations and resource centers
2. Create a group of interest, such as French Music and invite your colleagues that teach French as well as your native speaker friends to join and contribute.