Using Social Media to Enhance Your Professional/Personal Development

What a GREAT webinar we held today!!!

This was our opportunity to contribute to the  University of Northern Iowa Hot Topics in Education webinar series. Robin Galloway and I are gave this webinar on May 26, 2011 from 3:30 – 4:30.

Here’s the Link to the actual hour-long webinar that you will be able to watch through Adobe Connect (You don’t need Adobe Connect to watch this, however):
 
Using Social Media to Enhance Your Personal/Professional Development 

This webinar was our opportunity to explore how today’s professionals need to take responsibility for their professional development. We introduced a variety of ways that people can facilitate their own professional/personal development by getting involved in educational learning communities. Some existing online communities were cited and then we shared some tools they can use to create/enhance their own personal learning networks.

Here are some of the resources:

Distributed-Learning Communities as a Model for Educating Teachers (Dede) 

Online Education Communities
Classroom 2.0 – An active education community with over 56,000 members.
1:1 Laptop Schools – An education community dedicated to connecting and inspiring educators in 1:1 schools.

Twitter
Twitter for Teachers – Terrific intro video to show how teachers can use Twitter.
Twibes – Search Twitter Groups that fit your interest.
Listorius – Lists of twitter-ers who are sorted by areas of interest. Great place to find people to follow.
How to Use Twitter to Grow Your PLN | Edutopia  – Lists of educationally focused twitter chats.
#edchat   .    #edchat website – An active Twitter chat list.
Tweetchat – This site helps you get involved in Twitter chats.

Blogging
Cited blogs:
Dr. Z Reflects – Blogging for understanding about ed tech, learning and life (Leigh Zeitz)
Cool Cat Teacher – Vicki Davis shares her life and ideas about teaching and learning.
2 Cents – David Warlick pontificates about social media, education and learning.
Angela Maiers – Angela shares her ideas and experiences about working with teachers and students.
Blogging Resources – Resource page on Dr. Z’s ActiveWeb20 wiki.

Social Bookmarking
Diigo – Bookmark, share, highlight and notate your favorite places on the web
Delicious – Another bookmarking site.
Social Bookmarking in Plain English – Explained in simple terms.
Social Bookmarking Resources – Resource page on Dr. Z’s ActiveWeb20 wiki.

Virtual Events
TED Talks – Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world.
Hot Topics in Education: Professional Development Webinars –
K-12 Online Conference – Online conference where presenters submit 20 minute presentations that can be watched anytime. This site has 5 years of videos.
Flat Classroom Conference – Website for the Flat Classroom Conference in Beijing this past February.

Organizing Your PLN
iGoogle in Plain English – 50 second intro to iGoogle
RSS in Plain English – Real Simple Syndication explained in simple terms.
PLN Resources – Resource page on Dr. Z’s ActiveWeb20 wiki.

The webinar was attended by a number of teacher, students and life coaches from multiple states.
Please keep in touch with Robin and myself:

What additional sources to you suggest? Add them to our learning community through the comment section below.
Z
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