Teachers and Students Using Social Networking

Doug Johnson did part of a webinar on Constructing New Learning Landscapes and talked about essential conditions. One thing he promoted was the need for networking guidelines for teachers, especially as many of us did not grow up in a networked environment. Take a look at Mankato School District's proposed guidelines for teachers.

Value of a Personal Learning Network

David Warlick in his 2 cents Worth Blog recently talked about The Teaching Profession. Think about the conditions he suggests help define what a teacher is and does in this technology-rich, information-driven, and rapidly changing world as you are developing your personal learning network and thinking about the types of learning that can take place using the tools we are testing out in this class.

More Education Blogs

Although this list is over a year and a half old at this point, it may still have some blogs of interest to you as a teacher.

50 Must-Read Up and Coming Blogs by Teachers

Teachers as Learners

Will Richardson, in his blog webblog-ed, recently posted about new roles for teachers. He said, "We still need to be teachers, but kids need to see us learning at every turn, using traditional methods of experimentation as well as social technologies that more and more are going to be their personal classrooms." I think this provides a basis for what we are doing in this class - learning to create our own learning networks in a networked world. This can help us understand how our roles as teachers are moving toward facilitating conversations among our students and with people and resources outside the classroom. It is worth reading the entire post and the related links at Teachers as Master Learners.

Teacher uses of social media professionally

WGBH recently did a study of how teachers currently use social media in a professional context and projected uses in the future. Through these focus groups they found that teachers want to find high quality materials for their lessons. They see three main purposes for social media:

• "Finding appropriate rich media resources, activity ideas, and lesson plans more efficiently.

• Learning from and communicating with other educators.

• Storing, organizing, adapting and sharing rich media resources and related materials in one place."

WGBH Teachers' Domain Pathways Stage II Evaluation: Focus Group Report