Plurk This, Twitter!

I was very happy and surprised this week when I saw that Miguel Guhlin had become a fan of mine on Plurk. We follow each other on Twitter but I just recently pulled my Plurk friend request from Miguel thinking he had given up completely on Plurk. But enter Kevin Honeycutt and his presentation at TEC-SIG (Texas Computer Education Association’s conference). KevinH is my friend on Plurk. He is everyone’s friend (everyone in my PLN is a teacher or in the education field). I have never met KevinH in real life but he has met many of the people I personally know on Plurk. KevinH is a Plurk Evangelist. He speaks at many conferences and always promotes the Professional Learning Network that I am part of on Plurk. He is one of the people I ask when I need technology help. Check out Miguel’s recent blog post:

Plurk This, Twitter!

I agree with Miguel, my network on Twitter was bigger too but I was missing the personal threaded type discussions. For me it was always hit or miss on Twitter. I was on Twitter almost from the beginning and I was following so many non-educators that I was getting bogged down, then the marketers started spamming, and celebrities started racing to get the most followers. The more popular Twitter became the more I lost interest. I started to Plurk in 2008 but was not real active until a couple of educators introduced me around in their PLNs, and that was all I needed. The number of people I follow on Plurk is still not as large as those I follow on Twitter and Twitter is still my network of choice during conferences (gotta love the backchanneling that goes on at conferences) but my contacts seem more like relationships on Plurk and my Plurk PLN rocks!

Online Graphical Dictionary

Here is one for your visual learners.  It is an online graphical dictionary (check out the word graphical) called Visuwords, and it is pretty cool.  I am not sure it will replace a traditional dictionary or dictionary.com, but I love how it moves!  The neat thing is even though it is graphical, you still have to read!  Again, I found this by following someone's twitter post... more professional development!

Where did you get your professional development today?

It is called eduwiki.us. I was checking out some of the workshops that will be available during the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference (PETE&C) coming up in February when I came across this little gem. It is a wiki but it is so much more than that, it is a gateway to finding and using technology in an education environment. It also has a book club, and lots of how to videos. I have spent about 2 hours on this wiki and I have only scratched the surface! There is an online virtual meeting on January 16th. I think I am hooked!

Learning to Podcast

Please don't laugh... this is my first attempt at making a podcast. It is my hope that I will be able to do Reader's Theatre with my students and make this podcast the first of many. I found the Alphabet Rap Reader's Theatre online. I thought it was very cute and recorded myself. It is not perfect but it is my hope that my elementary students listening will be able to create audio better than their school librarian... here is my first humble effort... now to download it to my iPod! BTW... the picture is of a class pet... Munchy.
:-)

Click To Play

Tutorials For Free? Check out Teacher Tube!

There are a lot of free sites and free tutorials online that will help you learn technology. My idea is that if you give teachers the sites, they will take the time to learn the technology as long as someone is giving them some kind of credit for it. You know how us teachers are, we need to get credit for things we do on our own time. Most teachers would jump at the chance to learn technology if it was easy and they didn’t have to go anywhere or stay after school and they got professional development hours for it.

Maybe this is not the best example of a PowerPoint tutorial because there is no sound but it is free and posted online. If you are illiterate you could watch this video and get the general idea of how to play with the technology. Just click the link: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=8a1b48987a18d831f633.

I also wanted to add this video by having you go to the site to introduce a fairly new tool for teachers. It is called Teacher Tube. I have been a stalker at this site since there were only 2 videos posted to it. It is a great place to look for teaching videos. I love the math raps. It would also be a great place to post videos that you use in your teaching. The best part is that at my school Teacher Tube is not blocked but You Tube is blocked. Check it out and see if this is true for your school.

Lets get out there and promote these free online tutorials to our teacher staffs. Librarians get techie and start posting some tutorials for your teachers to use and learn from. Want teachers to use the technology in your building? How about videotaping your students using the technology? Or have your students make “how to” videos for teachers to view at their leisure, and give teachers professional development hours for viewing them. What about the students? Give them extra credit, community service hours, or make it a graduation project. Remember in the world of technology, our students are the natives and we are the immigrants! Our students have a lot to teach us and as we are teaching them to be lifelong learners, we can set a good example and learn from them!