elegantly organized set of infographics detailing the step-by-step process of using Twitter and making it work for you. Here are some of the key questions answered in the set of graphics by Cheryl Lawson below. Some tips are geared towards businesses but I know that many of them will benefit the Edudemic audience too!
"we've compiled a list of some of the tech tools, including some that are becoming increasingly popular and widely used, that should be part of any teacher's tech tool arsenal this year, whether for their own personal use or as educational aids in the classroom."
Teachers in our district, especially freshmen teachers, have a ton on their plates this year. Between the new curriculum and teaching a classroom full of freshmen with laptops, our staff is swamped! That is exactly the reason why starting a PLN today is a good idea. A lot of people might feel that they don't have time to take on one more thing right now, but developing a PLN will actually make things easier for teachers in the long run.
"There are a lot of gadgets out there, right? Shiny new products with fun, useful, or amazing capabilities are being churned out at quite the clip. They're available for use in workplaces, schools, and at home, and the scope of what we can do with all these neat devices is only expanding. So, we know that students are connected - Very Connected. They have computers, smartphones, tablets, and a variety of devices in between. But just how connected are they? And what does this mean for teachers?"
"Although LinkedIn gets a lot of love as a professional social media site, Twitter is a force that can't be ignored by up-and-coming young professionals. It's a great place to get connected and informed, and an especially good resource for growing professionally. But how exactly can you use Twitter for professional development? Check out our list to find 25 different ways."
"There's a whole galaxy of terminology that you should know about when it comes to education technology. From PLNs to Blended Learning to Synchronous Online Learning… it can get overwhelming. Dubbed the EdTech Cheat Sheet, I think it's one of the most useful infographics out there today. You should consider printing this out and keeping it handy should you ever come across some crazy term that doesn't make sense to you."
Like a superhero, the U.S. Library of Congress has just swooped in and unveiled an enormous new (and free!) resource that's all about the Common Core. It's located at http://www.loc.gov/teachers and worth checking out.
"With recent upgrades to the Google Drive app on the iPad, it is now a viable solution for student portfolios that can be created in their entirety on iPad. Everything that is created by a student can be uploaded directly to their Google Drive account and into a "Portfolio" folder that can then be shared with any one of their teachers."
"You may be thinking 'why do we need another tablet - there are already too many!' You're not wrong. But there are some notable features that are pretty interesting. Basically, the Amplify tablet is specifically built for classrooms."
"Rather than banning social media from the classroom, many secondary schools are reaching out to students on Twitter, Facebook and a host of other services - and it's working.
From daily questions to pertinent updates, here's what the top schools, teachers and administrators are doing with social media."
"The study consists of 1,575 interviews with students, teachers and parents in the U.S., China and Germany regarding their options about the role of technology in education and learning, including practices, preferences and priorities."
"The overarching theme now of Learnist and Lore (aside from the first letter of the names) is that these sites are designed to function just like the most popular social networks in the world … except they were built just for teachers and students. To me, that says that it's a very exciting time in edtech as companies are able to finally leverage the resources and data from the Facebooks and Blackboards of the world … then turning this into a very useful new tool that can be completely tailored to the education audience."
"Below you'll see a guide to who is using social media (pretty much everyone is aware of it) to which actual social networks they prefer.
Surprising Info
Most teachers don't use Twitter. They opt for Facebook and YouTube by a large amount
LinkedIn is preferred over both wikis and Twitter
Just about every social network can play a pivotal role in education, so it's time to start learning about all of them!"