Professional Networking


Building Readership and Converation on your Own Blog

 

Steve Dembo, a highly-read ed tech blogger, has written a series of excellent posts on "30 Days to Being a Better Blogger".  Day #1's post is here

 

Teaching Blogs with high readership

 

          You can find great blogs in various content areas listed on this wiki, built as part of a project of a school leadership network.

 

A great example of how teachers can engage in rich professional development through technology can be found at this blog post.  Be sure to read the comments, too.

 

Technology

 

 Remote Access

     A middle school teacher in a remote town in Canada connects his students with resources around the world.

 

Learning is Messy

     A teacher in a Title 1 school with many ELL kids who uses technology constantly

 

Free Technology for Teachers

     A remarkable collection of free tech tools, often with tutorials.

 

Weblogg-Ed

     One of the best writers about how technology is changing learning and teaching.

 

Removing the "e" from E-learning

     Good writing about integrating technology into the school day.

 

Title 1 Teachers

 

 

In Practice

 

Learning is Messy  (remarkable media- rich projects are done in this classroom with very outdated computers)

 

 

Teaching ELL Students

 

Larry Ferlazzo  provides (almost) daily links to resources on the web for teaching ELL students. 

 

Nik's Quick Shout gives good reviews of tools to support teaching ELL students (and others)

 

Special Needs Students

 

All Together We Can   A good blog on adaptive technoogies for special needs learners.

 

 Content Areas

 

The Book Whisperer (a 6th grade language arts teacher)

 

Small Voices is the podcast/blog of a kindergarten class in Georgia.

 

Dy/Dan is an excellent blog about teaching math and about teaching in general.

 

General Interest

 

Blogboard (Teacher Magazine provides links to teacher blogs of interest several times a week)

 

The Tempered Radical  (a 6th grade teacher in North Carolina talks about the conditions of teaching today).

 

Teach Learn Connect The blog of a first year teacher who was in the UWB program only a year ago.

 

 

 

Also, check out the selected posts from blogs that Jane reads on the Jane's Shared Posts from Google Reader

page.  These update automatically when she marks something that she reads as "shared" so check back every now and then.

 

Social networks of teachers

 

At these sites,  you'll find groups of educators who have created virtual social networks (usually on platforms similar to MySpace of Facebook, only more private) to collaborate and to support professional growth.  You can join many of these.

 

Classroom 2.0  Is a rich and ever growing network of teachers exploring the uses of web 2.0 tools for teaching.

 

Setting the Standard is an incredibly rich social network of teacher leaders.  Here, they post there literacy lessons. They upload videos of themselves teaching math concepts.  They ask one another questions and discuss different approaches. 

 

Online Projects 4 Teachers is an network of teachers who want to build collaborative prorjects with other classrooms.

 

 

Social Networks in Education lists multiple social networks for teachers by grade level, subject area, geography.