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great blog post by Maryellen Weimer on why teachers need to think about learning, their own PD to start!

Blog post by Lisa Lane on her Program for Online Teaching class to teach people new to teaching online to articulate their pedagogy for teaching online. She explains how it started as a SMOOC (small to medium) online class in the middle of the quickly paced MOOC movement and how she wishes she had never categorized it as a SMOOC at all (even though it was open to requests to participate). Instead she views it is a class (with textbook and syllabus) guided by the facilitator and content and scaffolded with sequence and mentors/moderators, etc. However, she reverted to the more traditional model as the class was underway. September 4, 2012

Blog by Kevin O'Keefe, "Real Lawyers Have Blogs," on the topic of the law, firm marketing, social media, and baseball, February 23, 2014. O'Keefe reviews a study by Gerry Moran on using social media to teach, not to sell. Other key points that O'Keefe makes: Build a large social network of people modeled after your customers and their influencers. 75% of B2B decision makers use social media to learn. (wonder where this stat comes from?) Pass on valuable information. Don't use your social media and networking channels to promote yourself. You want to be known for handing out knowledge and not brochures. Use social so that people will want to visit with you in person. 73% of customers are willing to engage with you on social media, so the opportunity is there. Use social media to teach, not sell. Selling is best done face-to-face. However, Social Media Today reports B2B buyers look at an average of over 10 digital resources before ever making a purchase. Since customers need to learn before they buy, use this opportunity on social media to connect. Teach and connect with today's technology. Connect and get on the radar of your customers and potential networks by retweeting, sharing, commenting and favoriting others' content. Develop Insights. Before you teach and connect with your customers, you need to listen to the customer and their customers. Social is an excellent listening tool. Be a publisher. In addition to curating and passing on the great content to your network, create your own assets on a blog. Organizations who blog get clients. Later Excerpt: Over the years LexBlog as been all about helping lawyers understand how to use the Internet in a real and effective fashion so as to grow their practices. By sharing information from third parties along our own insight via blogs and other social media we established a reputation as trusted advisors. Even when I reach out to meet with lawyers and law firms I have never met f

Blog post by Jenny Mackness on April 24, 2012 announcing a MOOC on First Steps into Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, #fslt12, running from 5/21 to 6/22. Raises issues of how to engage with learners who may not be well-grounded in technology yet who might want to participate because of content, finding the right balance. Will offer certificate for "assessed" learners. Excerpt: "This is an exciting but rather daunting process. We have had lots of interest, with people from all over the world expressing interest in different aspects of learning and teaching in Higher Education. I am beginning to realize the amount of work that must go on behind the scenes in the other MOOCs I have attended. We have deliberately chosen to distribute the course across different platforms - WordPress (for the Home site), Moodle (for the course), Blackboard Collaborate (for the live synchronous sessions) and we are still discussing whether or not to have a separate wiki site, or to go with the wiki in Moodle. The reason for this decision (i.e. the different platforms) is that we hope to introduce participants new to teaching in HE to the idea that learning can take place in a variety of online spaces. Access to our WordPress site has been open pretty much from the word go, and now access to the Moodle site has been opened, despite the fact that neither of these is yet ready. For me, this is a new way of working and takes a bit of getting used to (heart in your mouth stuff!). Finally, we are conscious that the course has been designed to attract people for whom this way of working and the technology involved might be completely new -so we have to achieve the right balance between providing enough structure and support and encouraging open academic practice and independent learning - one of the many tensions involved in designing a MOOC."

A Guide to New Theories, Methods, and Practices for Open Peer Teaching and Learning, written by the 21st Century Collective, which includes Cathy Davidson. Includes contributions organized by Motivations, Provocations, Invitations

A Guide to New Theories, Methods, and Practices for Open Peer Teaching and Learning, written by the 21st Century Collective, which includes Cathy Davidson. Includes contributions organized by Motivations, Provocations, Invitations

from Te@chthought.com: Terry Hick updated the 2013 version of this infographic on 5/21/15. Mirrors Seek, sense, share and the digital literacies in Net Smart. Good site for teaching and learning, although k - 12 focused but relevant to most teaching, I think.

blog post by Marilyn Achiron citing Tyler Cowen, economist at George Mason University in VA on teaching yourself to learn, July 29, 2015. We have cited Cowen in our blog posts at least once. He is a Uber fan and favors marketplace economics for settling competitive battles. He also embraces ongoing, online learning that people set up for themselves.

Article by Jeffrey R. Young, June 9, 2015 in the Chronicle of HE on incentive value of badges for professors to take teaching workshops. Should we offer a badge for ECO completers? "Still, badges are probably more valuable to professors than are the paper certificates that Kent State traditionally gave to those who completed training workshops in the past. "It's an easy way for a professor to show that I'm that type of faculty member that goes and does faculty development," said Ms. Kelly."

interview with CEO and founder of Skillshare, Michael Karnjanaprakorn on adapting and learning new skills on your own

Blog post by Lisa Lane in her (Online) Teaching Blog, June 25, 2011 She reviews Pink's book on A Whole New Mind. Excerpt: "Accumulation -> Meaning Pink says the predominance of the baby boomer mentality means that the goal of accumulating meterial goods is changing to the desire to find meaning in life, a kind of "post-materialism"." For each chapter on these aptitudes, Pink provides resources and tips to develop your own brain along the new lines. Thus we go from theory in Chapter 1 to a series of storied examples, then each chapter ends with self-help advice. (It's already pretty light - I find it very funny that there's a "Summarized for Busy People" version available.) But the mental yoga commercial was a distraction from the main idea. What's significant here is that right-brained, big picture, contextual, design-based thinking will likely be increasingly respected in our culture.

A community of adjuncts for adjunct teaching at colleges that uses crowdsourcing to collect data for the field, research issues, and get and give advice. Something like this could be adapted to provide value for other part-time workers be they professional or not, such as baby boomers shifting into retirement (what would such a site or community be called?), contractors, etc.

Nellie Deutsch is a wonderful educator using the WizIQ platform for helping people learn all kinds of things. This one is focused on the virtual classroom and has a list of learning objectives that might be adapted for our beta test work group as what they will learn while they are helping us with the website/program development issues.

Written by Yuhyun Park , the chair of infollutionZero Foundation. Great graphic of the digital literacies children must learn as "they spend, on average, 7 hours a day in front of screens from television and computers to mobile phones and various digital devices." He defines these skills as Digital Intelligence, or DQ: Digital Safety (behavior risks, content risks, contact risks), Digital Security (password protection, internet security, mobile security), Digital Emotional Intelligence (empathy, emotional awareness/regulation, social and emotional awareness), Digital Communication (online collaboration, online communication, digital footprint), digital literacy (computational thinking, content curation, critical thinking), digital rights (privacy, intellectual property rights, freedom of speech), digital identity (digital citizen, digital co-creator, digital entrepreneur), and Digital Use (screen time, digital health, community participation).

Letter to the editor in response to a NYTimes article by Bill Keller that touts the benefits of online learning, and the need to adapt to new technologies, not just teach the same way and put it online.

Good argument for online learning and the use of new teaching methods when using technology.

Blog post by David Truss, Pair-A_Dimes, January 4, 2011, on learning at work by professionals, i.e., teachers. Has much more good stuff to say than this excerpt but I find this useful for Information Overload. Another term I ran across lately--practical obscurity--in relation to why we are now part of NSA's scope--because costs have fallen so low to monitor so much behavior online--voice and text--that what was once unavailable without a lot of costs is now quite feasible for someone to monitor, such as NSA, Google, Facebook, etc. Excerpt: "I read a post recently by Jeff Utecht, whom you have worked with, that said this: "Today at school I answered personal e-mail, updated my Facebook status, Tweeted, looked up flights for winter break, and even read articles that didn't pertain to school. And they say we're becoming less productive at work. What really is happening is the line between our work life and our social life is becoming blurred more and more every day." and he continues: "Sure I use some of my work time to do social things, yet I get home from work after 3pm and answer work e-mails, text faculty members about a computer problem, and work on lessons and things that need to be done. So it's an even swap. I'll use some of your time, you can use some of mine.""

byline similar to WLS-- Learn. Teach. Lead

Blog post by Meenoo Rami, October 22, 2013. "How can you make the most of social networks? The main thing: Explore. Whether you choose to use Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, blogs, or other forms of virtual communities, read a lot and let the good stuff lead you to more good stuff (and good people). The second thing: Look for community-and if you don't find it, build it. When I realized there was no Twitter chat for English teachers, I launched (and have maintained for past three years) #engchat, which has given me many rewards for the time and effort I put into it. Every Monday night at 7 p.m, ET, dozens of teachers of English come together to discuss topics such as social justice education, teaching grammar and vocabulary, and balancing the canon with contemporary fiction in our classrooms. Even outside our Monday night chats, the hashtag #engchat helps teachers to pose questions, share lesson ideas, and exchange relevant resources with others who share similar interests. "

blog by Ross Brenneman, August 12, 2015 that elevates tension between student-centered and teacher-led learning and includes rationale on why people need to be able to learn informally after they finish school.

8 ways to think about tech in ways that actually improve the classroom by Laura Moorhead from ideas.ted.com. Although geared toward k-12, this has some good advice for teachers such as not co-opting the social media most used for personal connections and fun (FB), no app is going to do everything, sharing ones passion and exploration with students is a good thing, and bringing in social learning is key - let the students explore and help each other. The technology and apps should support them to do this, not drive the content.

Great article on why more progress in the classroom isn't happening with student-centered uses of technology. June 10, 2015 Edweek, quotes Larry Cuban.