Social Media tools-- what else is New?

Blogging is an art that requires dedication. Finding a topic that will be of general interest is the key. For example, I am preparing a speech for 100 people about social media and how we use it in education. We used it in three ways: communication one-on to many, communication many to one, and communication many to many.

I watched the video the networked student in youtube. The Networked Student was inspired by CCK08, a Connectivism course offered by George Siemens and Stephen Downes during fall 2008. It depicts an actual project completed by Wendy Drexler's high school students. The Networked Student concept map was inspired by Alec Couros' Networked Teacher. I hope that teachers will use it to help their colleagues, parents, and students understand networked learning in the 21st century. This was a case in 2008. I decided that I would like to update what is explained in that video to 2011. I prepared my own version of that presentation with the new tools we have right now, I am pretty sure that in two years more someone else will need to update it.

I made a list of the resources mentioned in the video and I added a new ones that are currently in use. Here is my list, I would like to encourage you to review it.

In the video a student is asked to write a research paper.

A. Searching and Researching

He went to the library, now most of the institutions have digital libraries. I believe teaching students how to search in those academic databases is very important, and also teaching them how to find peer reviewed articles.

uses of online libraries, or libraries or search engines such as google scholar.

uses of other search engines such as yippy.com yippy is searching engine who groups the data in clusters...pretty useful...watch out google!

B. Sharing

Students use now social bookmarking websites. The most popular right now is delicious.com you can create an account and have your favorites websites.

Blogging. Blogging is a way to share information and discuss different points of view with others.

C. Looking for experts

Students can know use open sources which give them access to the best professors in the word. all their classes and lessons are in a web for anyone!, one of the most popular is MIT open source - check it out at http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Podcast. U itunes of apple contains several podcast prepared for the best professors in the world in different topics. Dowling college's department of education, leadership and technology (department that I am currently the chair) has a podcast website as well.

Learning using technology

I always wanted to blog. I think it is time to start. I have begun several blogs but I usually abandoned them after a while. Life gets in the way, or I became very very busy.

What I have been doing that I become so busy? well, first of all two years ago, I was elected chair of the department of Educational, Administration, Leadership and Technology. As a chair of the department I wanted to boost the technology section of this department.

We have two instructional technology advance certificates, with few graduates, I decided we need to modernize the certificate, find the best professor in the area, and redesign the curricula.

A big task, but with great collaborators. At the same time, I went to a second task, and that was to develop the technology plan for the School of Education. It was a very rewarding experience. The product of this work was two things: A. School of Education has now a Technology Plan B. The Advanced Certificate in Computers in Education is now in place!