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The five Cs below will empower educators to discover how they and their students can begin building personal learning networks specific to the learner's needs extending relevant learning connections to like-interested people around the globe.

Welcome to Smashwords! Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, agents and readers. We offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device. For readers, Smashwords provides an opportunity to discover new voices in all categories and genres of the written word. Once you register, the site offers useful tools for search, discovery and personal library-building. Each week we add new features based on feedback from members.

Cybrary Man's Educational Web Sites The internet catalogue for students, teachers, administrators & parents. Over 20,000 relevant links personally selected by an educator/author with over 30 years of experience. 

This information applies to 2012. I'm not sure if this will be an annual event. Connected Educator Month is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, and several organizations are sponsoring programs and activities, including AASL and SETDA, the State Educational Technology Directors Association. So what is CEM, anyway? "Online communities and learning networks are helping hundreds of thousands of educators learn, reducing isolation and providing 'just in time' access to knowledge and opportunities for collaboration. However, many educators are not yet participating and others aren't realizing the full benefits. In many cases, schools, districts, and states also are not recognizing and rewarding this essential professional learning. For these reasons, the U.S. Department of Education's Connected Educators initiative has made August 2012 Connected Educator Month. Throughout the month, there will be coordinated opportunities to participate in events and activities in dozens of online locations to develop skills and enhance one's personal learning network." As one ad for the program proclaims, it's "all of August, all for free, all online - shape the future of the profession." Explore activities in the starter kit at your own pace: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/38904447/starter-kit-final.pdf

World Read Aloud Day is about taking action to show the world that the right to read and write belongs to all people. World Read Aloud Day motivates children, teens, and adults worldwide to celebrate the power of words, especially those words that are shared from one person to another, and creates a community of readers advocating for every child's right to a safe education and access to books and technology.

The mission of Web 2.0 Labs is to continue to cultivate, incubate, and grow existing and future opportunities for peer learning in education. Educators, librarians, and students are given the opportunity to learn from and work with each other, and to promote the personal and collective value of that work through social media projects. 

Connecting K-6 Teachers With Great Books
My goal is to create a resource for teachers, home schoolers and anyone interested in quality books for children. Each title is one I have carefully evaluated and selected to support curriculum as well as your class read-alouds. Elementary school librarians are losing their jobs nationwide resulting in the loss of this valuable resource for students and teachers. I have 35 years experience working with kids and their books, so you can consider me your personal librarian!

STOP. THINK. CONNECT.: Protect Your Personal Information

This is from the website's About page: "The world is now more social. We share, we like, we tweet, retweet, link and generally exchange information on the social web. But how do you keep track of the things you like? Trunk.ly takes care of that for you. By connecting into your social networks, Trunk.ly monitors and collects the links that you find interesting across the social web. More importantly, it indexes the web pages these links point to and builds a personal search engine, so you never have to tag or describe a link again, you just search and Trunk.ly will find it again for you."

Kathy Otto, an Oregon school librarian, has a blog about incorporating children's books when teaching in grades K-6. "My goal is to create a resource for teachers, home schoolers and anyone interested in quality books for children. Each title is one I have carefully evaluated and selected to support curriculum as well as your class read-alouds. Elementary school librarians are losing their jobs nationwide resulting in the loss of this valuable resource for students and teachers. I have 35 years experience working with kids and their books, so you can consider me your personal librarian!" Check it out!