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Free Platforms

EdWeb provides a social network built around free webinars on a variety of topics.

Teaching Channel provides a variety of high-quality videos that demonstrate best practices in innovative teaching.

AchieveTheCore is a platform dedicated to helping teachers implement the Common Core Standards. It appears to be a fairly new site but has some good examples provided within it.

Blogs

Sir Ken Robinson’s blog

Barbara Bray is a leader in the personal learning space

MOOC Platforms

Coursera offers both self-paced and asynchronous courses on a variety of topics but they do offer many specifically for educators as well. Coursera offers course credit or certification for many of their courses as well and is highly regarded in the online learning space.

Udemy offers courses in a variety of areas as well. They do not offer any certification and are generally more of the “how-to” nature but they are affordable and to the point. These types of courses make sense for a specific skill or hobby development.

Udacity offers courses with a technology focus. Their courses are meant for people looking to advance their job skills in the tech industry. While they do not target educators, it seems like educators could benefit from these skills.

Edex offers all kinds of courses sponsored by Berkley, Harvard, MIT, and others.

Education Portal offers courses in everything from business to Spanish. I used it for a Praxis practice course and it was very helpful. There is a monthly charge for this platform.

Specific Courses

Mooculus is a self-paced calculus course offered by a dynamic Ohio State professor. It blends lectures with practice tasks.

Podcasting with Garage Band for Teachers is exactly the type, of course, Udemy is good for because it is specific and concrete. It is self-paced and can be done anytime.

Podcasts

The following educational podcasts are ones that I find myself listening to either because they usually provide immediate value (something I can implement that day) or they stretch my thinking. I have added other resources that list many more podcasts that are available for personalizing your professional development.

I just discovered Teaching and Learning Talkradio and they are addressing so many topics related to school transformation. This superintendent and assistant superintendent promote this podcast as being about leadership but so many of their interviews are with major transformation leaders who are in the midst of really transformational school change.

Pushing the edge is a podcast the promotes transformation and questions the status quo. It’s about educational change, being uncomfortable, and stretching your thinking.

The teaching bites podcast is focusing on “quick wins” for teachers in the ed-tech world. They provide tools, strategies, and hacks that can be learned quickly. These strategies and tools are meant to increase teacher skills in using technology in the classroom and make teaching and learning more efficient.

BAM! Radio Network is curating some of the best podcasts I have heard yet. They have a wide variety of podcasts that cover a diverse range of topics.

K-12 Greatest Hits: The Best Ideas In Education is a podcast that provides quick, ten minutes or so, bits of information that usually address a specific concept, skill or strategy. The fact that these ideas are relayed in a fairly brief and concise manner makes it very useful and accessible given every teacher’s time constraints.

Check out this Opencolleges page that offers 50 educational podcasts with links and this teachthought page that focuses on teaching in the 21st century.

Here is a recent article on teaching and learning podcasts that are worthwhile from Edutopia

Twitter PLN

Twitter is an amazing way to connect with educators from all over the world. Twitter can be used to organize resources with the use of hashtags. The search bar can be used to find tweets that have used a particular hashtag. Twitter chats allow educational leaders from across the globe to share ideas and develop a learning network. Chats happen at a specified time. A group of people meets on Twitter, using a common hashtag, to discuss topics. Unlike the faculty room, Twitter is a very positive place to be. Until I started participating in chats, I didn’t understand how Twitter could add to my learning but it has been stimulating and I love the fast-paced nature of the chats.

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, start by creating a Twitter account. Once you create an account, try following some well-known educators that you like. Think about the authors of books you have read or educational leaders in your state. You can follow these people even if you don’t know them. Once you have followed people of interest to you, your home feed will become more interesting and you will discover others to follow. Check out the basics of Twitter language before posting.

If you want to participate in chats, you will also want to create an account on a platform that organizes your Twitter chats into columns. I recommend Tweetdeck. These platforms allow you to follow one chat in a column so you are just looking at one conversation at a time. Chats are identified by hashtags (#) followed by a descriptor.

Favorite Chats

There is a Google Doc with all the education chats but here are some of my favorites:

Monday:

#stuvoice is all about students involvement 8:30 EST

#colchat is all about the culture of learning starts at 9 EST

#resiliencechat happens at 10 EST so I generally miss it but it is a good one about resilience

#plearnchat occurs at 7 EST every other Monday

Tuesday:

#edchatma I’m not from Ma. but I really like these guys starting at 9 EST

Wednesday:

#ntchat Starting at 8 EST, this chat supports new and pre-service teachers

#sblchat Standards-based learning chat starts at 9 EST

Thursday:

#whatisschool starts at 6 EST and addresses a variety of issues. It is popular and fast-paced.

#edchatme is another one of my favorites and happens at 8 EST (I think)

Friday:

Weekly break

Saturday:

#satchat starts at 7:30 a.m. EST. It’s a little early for me but I like reading the feed.

#Nt2t New teachers to Twitter chat starts at 9 a.m. EST

Sunday:

#nbtchat No box thinking chats is one of my favorites. It starts at 8 EST.

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