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Education Week published online 6.10.15 on why districts put OERs to work in their schools. Commercial publishers fighting back saying that curriculum is more than content; C.P.s offer "wraparound support" for their resources to educators.

wonderful article on differences between networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating drawn from work of Arthur Himmelman.  They add up:  exchange information, alter activities, share resources, enhance capacity for each player. 

Organizational Membership benefits from joining the American Library Association. Organizational Membership Benefits ALA encourages organizational members to investigate and engage with the resources and initiatives available to libraries of all types. Working to keep libraries strong. ALA works on behalf of all libraries in the areas of library funding, intellectual freedom, professional standards, and 21st-century literacy, helping create a future in which communities look to libraries and to librarians as vital, trusted resources. This includes making libraries eligible for funding to provide high-speed, affordable broadband service, and eligibility for other federal programs. Standing together in membership lets libraries, librarians, and other staff members access solutions and resources to address problems otherwise faced alone. Learn about all the ALA is doing to support libraries. Select a topic or just scroll down the page. Helping you serve your community Providing beneficial information & resources Offering Organizational Member Value Programs (MVP) NEW: ALA Web Badges to display on your website and use with your emails

Fascinating article by Marina Gorbis on Fast Company site regarding how we must be able to learn online in micro-learning episodes that may last minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. far removed from schools, MOOCs, and other structured and semi-structured curricula. Excerpt: "We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows. Instead of worrying about how to distribute scarce educational resources, the challenge we need to start grappling with in the era of socialstructed learning is how to attract people to dip into the rapidly growing flow of learning resources and how to do this equitably, in order to create more opportunities for a better life for more people." In the comments, this summary: "It doesn't matter if you are a physicist, chemist, sociologist, welder, mathematician, teacher, economist, lawyer, restaurant owner, farmer, trucker, whatever, the information most relevant and valuable to your employment is up to you to find! The task requires you find and digest information, on your own. This task used to be a pain, but now we have near-instant access to the entirety of information across the planet. The author is talking about making this access actually instant, not near-instant. Its really just an inevitable thing. "

Howard Rheingold et al has created this Google Doc that is updated regularly with resources that help you detect "crap" onlline info. The resources are categorized into subjects: identity; political; consumer/business; medical, images; urban legends, hoaxes and emails; journalism; collective intelligence and user-based detection; academia and education; events; miscellaneous; web sites; web pages; twitter; video

blog post by Sean Cavanagh, 6/19/15, EdWeek, with very interesting Prezi with sources for momentum in school districts to adopt Open Educational Resources (OERs) and how long it takes to make the shift. It doesn't save much money--they project $500,000 in savings over a ten year period if the district doesn't regularize and buy textbooks--in districts with $200 million annual budgets; need to do more research on why they choose OER. Do know that two huge OER interests are driving development of these resources but aside from that?

blog by Eli Dourado on March 6, 2013 on binge learning. Excerpt: A combination of technology (DVRs) and market service providers (Netflix, Hulu, On Demand) have transformed how and when and where we watch "television." I suspect that students want the same things. Technology and market forces appear to be reshaping how and when and where we learn. Perhaps we education providers should pay attention. But the kind of bingeing that people might like to do with online courses is entirely different. Most people who sign up for an online class at Udacity or Marginal Revolution University want to take the class for its own sake, not as a requirement for some broader credential. The point is not to learn and forget-it is to indulge an interest. This seems like a more natural way to learn than traditional educational structures can offer: develop an interest and mercilessly indulge it until another interest supersedes it. It is a method that conserves the mental energy associated with willpower, leaving more of the brain's resources to focus on the material itself. Since it relies on the student actually being interested in the class, it is hard to fit into a physical schooling environment, where classes have to begin on a schedule, go slow enough for everyone to keep up, and run in parallel with other classes. Online education also saves the resources associated with context switching. Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Each time a high school student has to change classes, she has to quickly stifle the thoughts and questions raised in previous classes to focus on the current class. She has to expend mental resources remembering where the previous session of the current class left off. And when she returns to the class that stimulated the thoughts that had to be stifled, she may not recall them. Far better to focus on-or even to binge on-one subject until she is at a good stopping point.

Resource from one of the Jane Hart participants about infographic profiles. Good resource, easy to follow, clear.

report by National Council of Nonprofits on using a network approach to leverage resources & knowledge-worth checking out

Great page on digital footprint with resources by HUHS (Hartford Union High School) Library Media center. Has links to excellent resources, too.

Excellent page from Rheingold's social media classsroom wiki on interactive media resources that his learners may use to present knowledge and engage active participation.

This article on Resource Link, September 21, 2011, captures the learning environments we wish to bring to businesses, nonprofits, and membership associations. "Social Media - what do you need to know? In the 21st century, learning networks are richer than ever before. Social media, including tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn allow connections with professionals to be developed in offline and online worlds in new and exciting ways. No longer are we limited geographically. Social media allows us to connect not only to those we know, but also to those who we don't know, but who share our passions, our interests and our profession. Despite never having met in the physical sense, it is now possible to share links, comment on educational research, debate, collaborate and create new knowledge with individuals no matter where they are working." Another excerpt: So….Social Media and Professional Learning Communities? What is the connection? A school which is a professional learning community focuses upon removing the walls between classrooms (metaphorically, in all cases, physically in some!), encouraging collaboration, dialogue, ready access to colleagues and an openness to challenge understandings and current 'accepted' knowledge. Excerpt: Roberts and Pruitt, in their book Schools as Professional Learning Communities (p3, 2009) quote research that suggests that the major obstacle for schools who wish to develop as learning communities is the provision of resources such as time to collaborate, leadership support, information and ready access to colleagues. Social Media is not the total answer; but in schools where money and time are in short demand (and which school isn't in this situation?), they can go part of the way in meeting these needs. 1. social media providing to time to collaborate 2. social media providing leadership support 3. social media providing information 4. social media providing access to colleagues

Great post on Resource Link, October 19, 2011, on value of twitter to professional learning community building. Found it via my Twitterers. Research has identified six 'common patterns of participation' for users of Twitter: Sharing Knowledge and Resources - sharing links to blogs, images or video clips of interest. Monitoring Educational New Sources - sourcing professional readings and research Digitally Attending Important Conferences - sharing thoughts and reflections from professional development sessions or conferences. Encouraging Reflection - engaging in a reflective conversation with others Gathering Instant Feedback - turning to Twitter as the first point of call when needing answers about their practice Mentoring Colleagues - turning to Twitter to find a digital mentor for yourself or a peer. (From Ferriter, W. M., Ramsden, J. T., & Sheninger, E. C. (2011). Communicating and Connecting with Social Media. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press.) How to get started: 1. Set up a Twitter account 2. Find people to follow 3. Learn some hashtags #_____ 4. Manage your posts

Fascinating and scary look about how the internet and the access to the widest range of resources imaginable, many of them beyond the scope of our individual capacities, is changing the role of classroom teacher to facilitator, and the role of pastor to facilitator through multi-site transmission of the sermons delivered by the best faith orators. Makes me wonder about WLS facilitation, too. Atlantic, Michael Godsey, march 25, 2015.

Excellent blog post by Mindy Jackson on why less is needed more than ever before in terms of content, July 7, 2014. She explains why practice is more important than content. She writes in a less is more manner, too. Found her via Jane Hart's blog. excerpt: Just-in-time knowledge resources combined with a self-service model is the answer to course content glut. Text is a resource. Practice is instruction. Focus online learning programs on practice rather than knowledge acquisition. Create a risk-free tryout environment, contextualized to performance needs. Enable learners to sip from the fountains of knowledge, rather than to drown by a fire-hose of information. Knowledge is readily accessed. But experience is earned.

Last month was National Women's Small Business Month - one of the fastest growing segments of the small business community. Today, about 30 percent of small businesses are owned by women, compared to about 5 percent in 1970 - that's 7.8 million businesses growing at twice the growth rate of men-owned businesses.

Resources page on MailChimp including mobile devices

Resources from a presentation by Amy Gahran, mobile/digital media consultant and contributor to the Knight Digital Media Center at USC Annenberg website, 4.3.2013

Offers resources, "MindTools", for leadership, team management, strategy-setting, problem solving, decision making, project management, time management, stress management, communication skills, creativity techniques, learning skills, and career skills.

Jane Cravens' page on telecommuting with links to dozens of other resources