Twitter, without a doubt, has become the social network for educators to take their professional development into their own hands. Twitter allows teachers to connect with other educators from around the world, join discussions related to their interests and have a steady stream of resources (to help them teach and learn) available to them whenever, whereever and however.

TED talks with collections of resources and related links 

by Morag

What if our starting point was to reconceptualise them as anytime, anywhere data collection, content creation and learning tools?

Google and Facebook 'personalize what you see' 

Clarifying the blurred lines between cyber-bullying and social responsible digital citizenship.

Hashtags provide a way for others who are interested in a particular topic to see what you have to say even if they're not following you.  In other words, it allows people to follow topics rather than each other.  

The Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrates how teachers can use technology to enhance learning for K-12 students. The TIM incorporates five interdependent characteristics of meaningful learning environments: active, constructive, goal directed (i.e., reflective), authentic, and collaborative (Jonassen, Howland, Moore, & Marra, 2003). The TIM associates five levels of technology integration (i.e., entry, adoption, adaptation, infusion, and transformation) with each of the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments. Together, the five levels of technology integration and the five characteristics of meaningful learning environments create a matrix of 25 cells

The introduction of social media means parents need to supervise their kids' use of the technology though they may not know much about it themselves

the importance of educators using twitter - two excellent short videos

The video is a great way to introduce kindergarten through third grade students to online safety.  I like how this video compares the online world with the real world.  This helps students understand the rules in a way that goes deeper than just following the rules because we say so.

possible summer professional learning

Youtube has a great tool called Spotlight that lets you make any video interactive. It's really handy for lessons and quizzes. Essentially, you can ask students a question - or a series of questions - and when they answer show them a personalized video response according to how they did.