Ongoing Networking Opportunities
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Subject: [PD 5026] Ongoing Networking Opportunities
From: Jackie A. Taylor
Date: Wed Aug 4 09:20:33 EDT 2010
Dear All,
I'd like to share some examples of networking opportunities in education.
#Edchat
Ed Chat is a way to keep up with important educational discussions on
Twitter. Most are K-12 related. It is both ongoing and synchronous. They
schedule an evening Twitter chat on Teacher Tuesdays. During this timeframe,
they discuss a topic they previously voted on every Monday. They use the
hashtag #edchat to keep a record of postings. They also use the hashtag any
day or night when tweeting about education. Last night's #edchat was on
using social media in professional development, see here for the
conversations: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=edchat. They share their
Twitter ID's on one page so they can easily find one another:
http://edchat.pbworks.com/Who-are-We . Laine helped me get connected w/these
instructions from their blog linked above:
How Do I Keep Up with #edchat
You can easily keep updated with #edchat topics by doing any of the
following:
- Setting up a column in your Twitter browser for the search #edchat.
- Subscribing to the feed through your RSS reader (see info at link above).
- Clicking on this link (http://search.twitter.com/search?q=edchat) to view the updates on a website.
- Clicking on the hashtag of any tweet that has #edchat.
Jackie's Note -- Some small group participants arranged synchronous meetings
these last two weeks. Do we want to find a chat room (perhaps not Twitter,
but another chat forum) to have regular chats on topics voted on by
participants?
Tapped In
Tapped In is an international education Community of Practice (CoP). AALPD
has a virtual office there, though it needs dusting off. Tapped In allows
for threaded discussions and has a chat room. We could resurrect the office
if others would be interested in using it. Tapped In also sends monthly
e-updates. They used to meet weekly (is this still accurate?) and they
schedule virtual conferences during the summer.
Tapped In features
- Virtual buildings with public, group, and personal rooms
- Group creation and management
- Event rooms with registration, sessions
- Calendar system
- Job bank
- Guests and member access
- Student accounts
Communication:
- Text-based chat and private messaging
- Threaded discussion boards in every room
- Conversation transcripts automatically emailed
- Messages saved for someone who is not logged in
Information sharing and retrieval:
- File and URL storage in personal and group rooms
- Room "sticky notes" for posting welcome messages, agendas, etc.
- Group and member directories
- Search for members and other resources
Webheads in Action
The Webheads are a world-wide, cross-cultural, and vibrant online-community
of educators with an open enrollment for anyone who wants to join. There are
many sites by and for Webheads
<http://64.71.48.37/teresadeca/webheads/wia-index.htm> . Their site lined
above is an attempt to create a Webheads 2.0 portal for our amazing
community. More about the Webheads in Action
<http://webheadsinaction.org/about> .
Electronic Village Online
This is a way to bookend a national or international conference to extend
the learning experience and provide opportunities for others to participate
who cannot travel to conference.
The CALL Interest Section <http://www.call-is.org/moodle/> of Teachers of
English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL <http://www.tesol.org/>
) offers language teachers world-wide the opportunity to participate in the
Electronic Village Online (EVO), a professional development project and
virtual extension of the TESOL Convention. The intended audience for this
project includes both TESOL convention-goers and those who can participate
only virtually. Interest Sections, Caucuses, and other member groups of
TESOL in particular are invited to sponsor sessions related to the
convention.
The Electronic Village Online Sessions
For six weeks, participants and ESOL experts can engage in collaborative,
online discussion or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and
scholarly benefit. These sessions will bring together participants for a
longer period of time than is permitted by the four-day convention and will
allow a fuller development of ideas than is otherwise possible. Sessions may
be on any topic in ESL/EFL and are free and open to all interested parties.
Session leaders (moderators), who must be TESOL members, will receive
hands-on training in online discussion management and the use of Yahoo!
Groups, and they may be asked to help train future session leaders.
Moderators need not have previous experience in online teaching. Sessions of
EVO must be sponsored by an Interest Section, Caucus, or other member group
of TESOL. For further information, please read: What is EVO?
<http://evosessions.pbworks.com/What-is-EVO>
What are other CoPs or networking opportunities do you know of in education,
or in adult education? How might we better tap into our own collective
experiences to learn together?
Thanks,
Jackie Taylor
PD List Facilitator
Jackie at jataylor.net
