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Since online networks and communities have opened new avenues for teacher professional development and connectedness, it is of paramount importance for us to explore the ways on how to make the best use of them. From my standpoint, it is not sufficient to introduce or sign up for them, we, at the same time, need to think how to maximize and optimize our experiences on such platforms. At the end of the day, we may find ourselves on the margins of such communities and networks only consuming or wandering aimlessly. :)

Teachers and administrators can use Mobilskole from their mobile devices to quickly and easily send information to parents and students about attendance, grades and school events, among other things. Mobilskole can be used for urgent communication between schools and parents about emergencies and school closures due to weather. System provides templates for standard messages, including reminders for parents, information about school field trips, and internal communications among school employees.

Caution! The link above is not a infographic, you may be bored while reading! Technology has a giant potential to support education. There are some examples of using technology to find solutions to educational process.

"You don't need strong technical expertise to build a community for your local neighbourhood. The online home of all things Harringay (you may say Harringay Green Lanes) with a good mix of Hornsey and Crouch End."

I loved how the guidelines are given as ingredients using the 'cooking' metaphor for 'supporting learning community'

As you may have noticed in Schlager & Fusco (2003), an online community of practice was developed for education professionals to ease their interaction. For further consideration, you can check it out.

It is an online community of practice (oCoP) for ICT teachers in Turkey. Although there are many oCoPs in Facebook, this forum is quite active and several messages are sent every day.

This is a community for ELT teachers in Ankara. There are some news and seminars here. You can easily be a member.

The new community provides easy online tools for educators to engage in lively discussions organized by topic, find post and rate AP classroom-ready materials and related resources, browse the curriculum framework and share strategies, and connect with colleagues and grow your personal network. Getting Started

I do not know if a similar guide is available for Turkish teachers, but the General Teaching Council for Scotland has prepared a guidance document to help Scottish teachers with "identifying potential dangers, offering some guidance about how to avoid them and providing a context for responsible, professional use of electronic communication and social media." The guide concludes as follows: Before posting materials online stop and ask yourself: (1) Will the content reflect poorly on you, your school, employer or the teaching profession? (2) Is your intention to post this material driven by personal reasons or professional reasons? (3) Are you confident that the comment or other media in question, if accessed by others, (colleagues, parents etc) would be considered reasonable and appropriate?

If you want to look at Turkey's case about CoP check Bahar Baran's thesis and her publications.

Deniz, congratulations!!!! I've put this in my reading list.

This is the abstract of a research study . In this study they invited a research panel (six researchers) and an expert panel (54 science-related educators) to propose and validate the framework of TPACK-practical. They applied two rounds of anonymous communications and Delphi survey techniques; identified a total of eight dimensions of TPACK-practical and corresponding indicators and rated them as having high levels of importance. They found disciplinary differences between the different groups of experts. Their findings suggest that the structure and content of subject matter shapes not only the way they teach with technology but also the thinking logics they build longitudinally from their learning experiences

While I was doing research on TPACK, I saw that validity of TPACK-practical model was examined in Turkish context.In that study, it was revealed that the adapted form of the survey exhibited the same item-factor harmony and structure as the original form. Here is the link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131515001189

OK, so you know about all of these great tools out there that can transform teaching and learning in your classroom but all you have is an ancient PC in the corner of your room. How can you effectively integrate technology with this dinosaur? Hopefully this post will help.

Thanks Hatice, The link provides some onlinetools and some strategies to use them. I have now added this to my bookmarks since I was already looking for online tools for sharing, communication, collaboration and reflection for my classes. Edublogs and Typewith.me seem to be pretty exciting to use :)

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