Organic+Learning+for+Educators+-+Avoiding+Square+Pegs+in+Round+Holes

Take your conference experience with you throughout the year, heck, take it throughout your career. We will explore how to to tap the power of Internet applications to meet, collaborate and learn from other educators on anything, anywhere, and at anytime. Developing a personal/professional learning network (PLN) provides you with people, places and spaces to go to when you have a question, need or are just in search of a new idea or conversation around a specific topic. Participants will tinker with applications (Google, Twitter, Flickr, Skype, online education communities, and more) that immediately help them connect with other educators during the conference and beyond.

This session is meant to provide an indirect approach to learning within your classroom the direct learning is for you the educator. Chances are, if we're not learning, our students will notice. The traditional model of professional development is outdated in meeting the many needs of educators. media type="custom" key="4182113" Presentation Link: http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddpz26zh_200f872h6gh

Blogs
Some bloggers feel that reading is one of the most important keys to blogging. Reading other blogs can expose you to new ideas, meet other educators, make connections for classroom project collaborations.
 * Reading & Commenting**

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Look for a blogroll (related links) of other bloggers Note how they write with hyperlinks. Do they link a post from another blog site?
 * Suggestions:**

[|Twitter] is, at its basic level, a short messaging service similar to SMS texting or status updates in Facebook. The basic tenet is that a user "follows" updates of other users. Networks are built when those you are "following" begin to "follow" your updates.
 * Micro-Blogging**: **Twitter**

Get started by following these users (and those they are following) and organizations. [|@briancsmith] [|@tadgeobrien] [|@nyscate] [|@ascd] [|@isteconnects]

Wikis
Wikis provide a space for multiple authors, called editors, to collaborate on projects, creating living articles and document ongoing learning. [] http://streamteam.wikispaces.com/

**Skype & Google Talk**
Instant synchronous communication

http://talk.google.com http://www.skype.com

Social Learning Networks
Chances are if you are interested in a topic, there's a network or community built around that topic. Education is no exception. More and more networks are being built (this may or may not be a good thing) around a multitude of teaching and learning topics. The question is... what do you want to learn?

http://www.classroom20.com/ http://nyscate.ning.com

Facebook & Twitter
Why so popular? What is it about knowing each other's "status updates" that excites people?

http://www.facebook.com/ http://www.twitter.com/

Email
Think differently about your email. Your email can be your home base for managing messages and notifications from all the sites you find value in.
 * Use email to have sites reach out to you...
 * Google Alerts - http://www.google.com/alerts
 * Social Network Sites - e-mail notification
 * Blog notifications (comments too)
 * Filter email to folders or label

RSS
RSS is, in my honest opinion (IMHO), one of the most important technologies to be developed today. Much of how websites are structured and interacted with is based on XML from which RSS feeds are derived.

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Google Reader - [] ([|Subscribe to Brian's Shared Items]) Google Alerts - []

iGoogle
Use Google homepage (iGoogle) to centralize and gather information

RSS Gadgets - Add custom RSS feeds of your interest/need

Participate
Visit http://www.classroom20.com and start with the WELCOME! area.
 * How do you feel upon entering this site/community? Was it welcoming?
 * Was it intuitive? Are there helpful tutorials/places to ask questions?
 * What features of the network site stand out to you? What were you looking for but did not see?
 * How social is the site? How would you define "social" in regards to this site?

Read/Write with others online: ⁃ Comment on blogs ⁃ Write blog posts ⁃ Participate in a wiki ⁃ Participate in an online discussion

If you are blogging, try writing a blog post and including links to another bloggers post that you find of interest.

Other Resources

 * Google Tools (Reader, Gmail, Gtalk, etc) (http://www.google.com/accounts)
 * Flickr (http://www.flickr.com)
 * YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)
 * Skype (http://www.skype.com)
 * ITS Community (http://its.monroe.edu/community)