Keeping Current with Educational Resources

Abstract

From the presentation given on May 24, 2006 for Teacher Professional Development Day: "Are you so busy that you don't have time to find new resources for your classes or keep up with your own professional development? Do you find great resources and then never have the time and ability to find or check them again? Wonder what other teachers are doing and thinking but never have enough time to chat? Have you heard your students talking about Blogger, Bloglines, and del.icio.us and wondered what they are and how you can use them? The latest web tools, like blogs, RSS (Really Simple Syndication), and social bookmarking and other personalized information services, can help. They can bring information to you automatically rather than you having to search for it and can let you know what a community of teachers is reading, thinking and talking about all with minimal effort from you. In a little over two hours, this hands-on workshop will show you how to:

? Find and read educational blogs in order to keep up with current educational thinking and resources ? Find and subscribe to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds which arrive like your daily newspaper in web-based tool called Bloglines in order to have information and curriculum resources come to you automatically ? Use social bookmarking tools (particularly del.icio.us and Scuttledu) in order to save and access the Internet resources you find from anywhere and to find out what other educators are interested in ? Create a blog using Blogger software in order to communicate with other teachers and your students