Enjoy!
Ira
CEM Tweeters provide some of ed-tech’s best resource lists on getting connected and digital literacies
By Meris Stansbury, Associate Editor
Read more by Meris Stansbury
EducationWorld has a list of five must-follow users to help you get in the pinning groove. As part of Connected Educator Month
(CEM), social media-savvy teachers and education professionals are
using Twitter, blogs, and publications to get information out as quickly
and easily as possible, and are using lists in many ways.
Browsing CEM’s Twitter, #CE12, the editors at eSchool News have highlighted some of the most popular lists Tweeted, as well as some that may be most helpful to our readers.
From educator-recommended apps designed for specific subsets of 21st
century literacies to 14 of the best ed-tech Tweeters, and from the
best CEM speaker quotes to the 10 technology commandments for connected
learners, these lists are classroom-tested and educator-approved.
Have a list you consult or know of a list that’s popular among peers?
Be sure to provide your links and recommendations in the comment
section!
[In no particular order]
To celebrate CEM, the NYT asked every educator who has written a
guest post for their publication to detail “one important thing you’ve
learned from someone in your personal learning network” and “what one
person, group, or organization would you recommend every educator add to
his or her PLN?” The list provides more than 100 people, organizations,
sites, and other resources readers can learn from, as well as shared
insights on how to learn from them.
Adam Heckler, a twenty-something who works in ed-tech where he
advises K12 schools on how they can better integrate technology into
their environment, says he has a long commute to work and likes to use
those 45 to 50 minutes to listen to some innovative and helpful ed-tech
podcasts. From ISTE to EdReach,
topics range from flipped learning to ELA, and much more. Heckler also
has many more quick-hitting lists and discussions that can be found here.
Knowing who to follow on Twitter can be invaluable for educators—a
fact that Educational Technology and Mobile Learning also realizes. In
this list, these ed-tech Tweeters are among the most prominent in the
field and their tweets can save time and energy. One of the Tweeters
listed, Tom Whitby–a professor of education, founder of #edchat, the
education PLN Ning, and the Linkedin group ‘Technology-using
Professors’–is one of the main Tweeters on CEM and has provided many of
these lists as well.
This list is useful when it comes to knowing what it means to be a
connected educator. OnlineUniversities.com’s Justin Marquis Ph.D. pulls
his commandments from Fractus Learning’s “The 10 (EdTech) Commandments”
that he says have a lot to do with helping educators be successful in a
connected educational setting; however, “as the focus of online learning
should be on the students themselves, some tweaking…turns them into a
handy guide for the successful connected learner in the digital age.”
Though OnlineUniversities.com focuses on educators, SmartBlog on
Education focuses more on the student side of connected learning,
understanding that “today’s students can communicate, collaborate,
cooperate, and connect with the world in meaningful ways…” The blog
explains that it’s up to the educator to support students in doing this
effectively.
Following their advice for a connected students, SmartBlog on
Education also provides a list that highlights what Linda Yollis—an
elementary school teacher for more than 25 years—calls “meaningful ways
to engage and motivate” young students. Yollis began her blog, Mrs.
Yollis’ Classroom Blog, in 2008 to share activities with parents, and
over time it has become a centerpiece for the classroom: students help
manage the blog and are learning the basics of how to comment, and that
audience matters.
Langwitches, an education Flickr group, posted a straight-forward
chart of education apps for specific skills/literacies. Literacies
include: Information Literacy, Media Literacy, Network Literacy, Global
Literacy, Create/Critical Thinking, and Communicate/Collaborate. Each
skill/literacy has nine apps listed.
Though Pinterest may still be considered a great place to post
wonderful recipes for peach cobbler, it’s also becoming a place for
innovative educators to post thought-leading ideas. “The key is to
follow others who actively use Pinterest to collect great classroom- and
education-related resources and ideas,” says EducationWorld. “Who you
follow really matters because it directly influence the quality of
content you see when you visit Pinterest…we’ve put together a list of
five must-follow users to help you get in the pinning groove.”
Sandifer, who runs the blog ‘Change Agency’
to write about “education reinvention, evolution, and revolution,”
blogs almost once a day about CEM, providing a wrap-up of the day’s key
take-aways from sessions and forums (she also provides great lists on
other CEM education topics). In this post, Sandifer lists some of what
she considers the most inspiring, or accurate, quotes from CEM leaders
and participants.
