Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Back to school, are you ready? I am and here's why

It's that time of year, back to school!  How many of us are ready?  We've read professionally, learned new web 2.0 or technology skills to share, and took advantage of the myriad of PD available, live and online.  If you did, good job; now is the time to figure out how to most effectively share this with your teachers.  Will you have a 10 for tech, a ten minute overview of a new tool you have learned?  Or maybe an enticing email teaser, if you plan with me you will find out about .....?  Maybe you are like me and you are a blitz bomber; just bound in to a planning meeting with "Ooohh, look what I have to share with you!  And, I brought candy!"  Whatever your style, remember it is not really professional development unless you use what you've learned.
Here's one great tool I use: Scoop It (http://www.scoop.it/).  You set up the topics you want searched, and this program culls the Internet for possibilities, puts them together in a magazine-like forum, and delivers it to your email box for you.  You then get to decide what articles/links work for you and you add them to your page.  People can follow you, I think this would be great to collect information for a particular course project.  In the past I have used it for "women in the military" when a student was doing a research project, I have a technology in education page, inquiry in library, and others.  I love that new material is collected and sorted for me; and it also provides a place to save this info so I can find it again!
Any great tools you have discovered this summer? Please share!

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