When I was offered a chance to share a blog post on a topic of
my choosing, I thought for several days about what I would like to share and
what information I would have liked to have when I started delving into the world of Ed
Tech. It was hard to know where to start looking as I was used to staying in
my classroom and within my department. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to connect
with other, better teachers than me (a lengthy list!), I just didn’t know where
or how to start. The best I can do is tell you what worked for me to start this
search.
Of course there are excellent teachers next door to me and
there are some easy ways to get better professionally by connecting with them
in several ways; however, this post focuses on online connections. I’ve found
through several years of lurking and listening that there is a plethora of
educational resources and connections to be made out there on the internet. It
was sometimes difficult to sort through the mess to get to the gold nuggets.
To save you a little time in looking, here is my curated,
partially annotated list of Ed Tech names to follow or otherwise look up on
whichever platform you use. I’ve used Twitter handles because all of these
people have a twitter account, while not all of them have a website or Pinterest
etc.:
Here they are:
○
A teacher at Luther Burbank High School and his blog
has a huge amount of lists with links to resources on all topics from student
motivation to ELL to subject matter and beyond. If you search for one person
based on this post, find him and you’ll see most of these other names and
resources on his blog.
○
A middle school teacher in Wisconsin. Her blog
covers all sorts of practical “how this worked in my classroom” topics. I also
enjoy her reflections on teaching and the issues she’s dealt with and how she
dealt with them.
○
Instructional Tech Director at Natomas Charter. I
participated in several sessions he ran at Computer Using Educators
conferences. He has useful insights in integrating tech into curriculum.
○
An educator and author, his website
for teachers is an amazing encyclopedia of links to resources on nearly every
topic that you would ever teach from K through 12 and beyond. This is a summer
project to explore just one topic that he has combed through for us.
○
A former science teacher, now Instructional Technology
Specialist. Her several blogs (here’s one) and websites are useful in science
and also because she has real classroom experience of integrating tech tools
into her science curriculum without making the tech the focus of the lesson. I
met her at a CUE conference also.
○
An online professor at Oklahoma University. Here is
just one of her many pages - if you are really
serious about teaching online or flipping your class in any capacity, check her
out.
○
An EdTech coach in Fairfield. A great local resource
on integrating technology and especially on using google apps for education in
your classroom.
Keeping up with Ed Tech and knowing which tool will fit best in
your classroom and your practice is difficult. If you take a few minutes a
month to see what some of these folks above and below are trying and succeeding
with, I hope it will save you as much time as it has me instead of searching
from scratch with nowhere to start.
Wisdom may be knowing how little we know, and I would say that
wisdom is knowing where to look for the answers you don’t already know. I hope
I’ve given a couple more options of where to look when you don’t have the
answer already.
In the list below I have not annotated which levels and/or
topics these educators work in, in the hope that not knowing will open a person
up to more ideas from outside the normal places you look. Afterall, on the
internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
Honorable Mention (in
no particular order):
Cate Tolnai @CateTolnai
