For those of us, trying to get back into work mode after a long weekend, a little light humor … this is obviously a spoof …
This video on collaborative planning would be funny, if it wasn’t so accurate … Ok, it’s funny. Happy Monday!
From a school librarian who’s blog of book selections is read around the country to a kindergarten teacher turned top executive at a major digital education resources company who’s extolled the value of educational social networking along the way, this year’s “20 to Watch” list are movers and shakers in the education area who are as cutting edge as the technologies they utilize.
Check out these remarkable individuals and their impressive biographies. They will be recognized at next week’s T+L Conference in Phoenix.
In the meantime, view Paul Andersen’s collection of instructional videos he posts on YouTube, called Bozeman Biology. No wonder he was also named the 2011 Montana Teacher of the Year.
Below is one of Anderson’s videos that has received 7,969 views. Clearly Anderson doesn’t have that many students, so it is great to know that so many other are watching!
Social media is huge. All of us are constantly plugged into more and more social networks every day. On an average day, we will tweet about our blogs, Digg a couple news articles and post YouTube videos to our Facebook pages. Facebook is the No. 2 website in America, according to research house Alexa.com, and its fastest-growing demographic is people over age 35. So why aren’t schools using more social media?
The easy answer is: because interactions between schools and social ![stockvault_9853_20080130[1]](http://leadingsource.asbj.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/stockvault_9853_2008013011-300x203.jpg "stockvault_9853_20080130[1]")
networking sites have not gone so smoothly in the past. Two court cases in different Pennsylvania school districts where students posted defamatory comments about their principals on social networking sites show how sticky the situation can become. What’s more, the decisions in the two cases (J.S. v Blue Mountain School District and Layshock v Hermitage School District) were at odds with one another, proving that we have a ways to go before we can come up with hard and fast rules about how to use and regulate social media in schools.
But let us imagine that instead of being used by a couple students with smartphones and grudges against the administration, these sites were being used in a professional manner by educators.
On his blog AssortedStuff.com, Instructional Technology Specialist for Fairfax County Schools Tim Stahmer said that the district’s PR department is circulating a document that details how they would utilize new social media.
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