DV for Teachers

50 Best Blogs for Education Leaders | Online Universities.

An exhaustive list, nicely categorized, of blogs with valuable resources for policy makers, teachers, professors, grad students, educational technologists and anyone with a serious interest in where education is going.

Whether you want to be a teacher, principal or even an educational policy-maker, learning all you can about the field and how to be a more powerful leader while you’re still in college is essential. These blogs will fill you in on the latest news, provide inspiration, and ensure that you are up-to-date with the latest educational technologies so you can be the best education leader you can be.

I’m working on resources for a Social Networking Workshop this weekend for Georgia State’s College of Education Alumni Club. I came across a great blog post that covers a lot of detail about LinkedIn, the focus of my talk. Kalinago English is Karenne Sylvester’s blog about teaching English around the world – she’s from the Caribbean and is now based in Stuttgart. Her post about LinkedIn for EFL teachers covers the ground so well for teachers, I’m going to base my talk on it with her permission. In addition, here’s her very good LinkedIn profile, too. Think of her profile and her blog as excellent examples of what social networking is for: an open and generous demonstration of expertise. It’s an invitation to you as well. If you invite the world, they might actually come—and then the sky’s the limit.

Thanks, Karenne!

Other great resources after the jump.

Great resource for making your presentation slides look better. Remember though – your presentation is not your talk! Design comes after writing what you’ll say.

Lifehacker—SlideFinder Helps You find Inspiration for Your Next Powerpoint Presentation.

Alrighty, back at work at Georgia State, and a first working post. With so many people wigging out about Apple’s purported tablet computer, here’s a savvy weigh-in from yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed:

Before the integration of the iSlate and iTunesU it was never possible to bring all the course and learning materials to one device. Course readings and video delivered through the browser were often difficult to navigate, and the reading experience was relatively poor. But with the iSlate and iTunesU it will be possible to download all the course related materials, hosting them locally for easy viewing and reading. At the same time, the browser experience in the iSlate will keep what is good about a Web based learning system – the ability to interact and communicate. Combining both the reading/viewing experience not browser based, with the collaboration/communication experience browser based will converge these activities into one device.

via Blog U.: iSlate / iTunesU / Higher Ed – Technology and Learning – Inside Higher Ed.

If you’re looking for effective software, of all kinds, to use to run and teach in classroom, The Freewares of 2009 has a lot to offer you. It’s a month-by-month listing of the author’s favorite free software. Each item has a thoughtful comment about using the software, often with first-hand reporting. A very valuable year-end list.

Via My Apple Menu.

Wordle is great for making word clouds, which you can use in your classroom in many ways. Ellen sent me this

really useful little tip that opens up all sorts of new possibilities – a way of including phrases in word clouds. Look below and you will see what I am talking about. The phrase that Sylvie demonstrates is “Once upon a time”.

Read the details at Jamie K Eddie’s A really useful Wordle trick, and her neat-o followup tip here.

We knew this day was coming, and it’s about time. Teachers Using Cell Phones For Class Lessons, Homework.

Quick, to follow up on later: 10 useful Twitter presentations. Have a Twitter account? It’s a heck of a lot more than what some celeb had for breakfast. You can use it to create an almost instantaneous professional network that can give you the help you need when you need it. Check out these presentations to learn more about how it can work for you.

Update: More on Twitter! Mashable, the social network site about social networking (meta meta meta meta, on and on), gives us this on Twitter for Beginners, and the fine folks at Twitter themselves give us a nice look at what Twitter can do for business. If it works for business, it can work for education too. Read up on this and you’ll get an idea.

I think jose. I do. I met him – only briefly – when he recorded an interview Ellen and I did last weekend at the National Storytelling Festival. The organizers of the festival were collecting peoples’ stories from their own experience in Jonesborough and at the festival over the years. The first time I went, 11 years ago, I had a memorable time and was part of a great onstage story. I’ll tell that tale here another time, but I want here to point to Jose’s site, which documents his many interests, achievements, and areas of expertise.

If you’re i his area, check him out, and if you’re not, check his site – there’s lots he knows about and can help you with.

Think Jose!

Mashable, the relentless site for news on social networking and blogging tools, today posts Back to School: 10 Terrific Web Apps for Teachers.

I would love to hear if any classroom teachers are using any of these.