Great+Ideas

=How Do You Come Up With Such Great Ideas?=

Laptop Leaders Academy Mitchell, SD June 2010 Martin Sieverding martin.sieverding@k12.sd.us

There is an abundance of information on the Internet. The problem is trying to find what is useful to you. This session will discuss RSS feeds, teacher-based social networking sites, and other web technologies and how they can be used by teachers to gather information on current topics and trends in education.

**Really Simple Syndication**
Using Really Simple Syndication (RSS) you can bring many new posts to you. You will have one location to view at least a summary of all the new posts from the websites you wish to watch. This makes things quick and easy.

RSS in Plain English from CommonCraft
There are many RSS readers available and you can find them with a simple search on Google. Several that I have looked at include: Bloglines - www.bloglines.com- Easy setup and use Google Reader - www.google.com - Create a Google account, then the Reader account Internet Explorer - Built into later versions of IE, easy to use but tied to a particular computer Grazr - grazer.com Can create a widget to imbed in your own webpage

A list of my current RSS feeds and a brief description of each one.

**Social Bookmarking**
Once you start locating new and exciting sites to use in your classroom, you will need to be able to store those in a place that is easily accessible. And while you are at it, why not be able to share those easily with your colleagues? Social bookmarking does just that. Again, there are many sites that will do the job. These sites are web-based so they are available to you anywhere not just on a partcular computer like your Favorites in Internet Explorer. Below are two examples

Delicious - delicious.com - Allows you to store bookmarks using tags and descriptions. By using tags, everyone's bookmarks are searchable by anyone. You can also easily share your bookmarks with others in your network. Diigo - diigo.com - Not only does this site bookmark but it will allow you to highlight portions of the webpage as well as leave sticky notes. I have not used this particular site but it seems a bit more complicated than Delicious.

**Personal Learning Networks**
Now that you are getting organized and finding the information others are posting helpful, you may want to consider taking the next step. Whether you realize it or not, you have already started to create your own personal learning network or PLN. Using your PLN you will be able to Connect, Collaborate, and Contribute. In a way, you are already connecting with others. How would you get to the collaborating and contributing? 1. Join a social network. There are plenty around but choose one that will benefit you professionally. [|**FaceBook**] may be great for the social part of you but something like [|LinkedIn] is much more professional. [|**Classroom 2.0**]has been a great source of discussion and ideas for many people. Then become a part of the discussion. 2. Create your own blog and start writing about the things you do in your classroom. **Blogger** and **Edublogs**are two possible blogging websites for you to use. Don't forget to set up your RSS feed so others will be able to follow your posts. 3. Microblogs such as **Twitter** and Plurk can also be great sources of information and avenues for contributing to the knowledge of the whole.