COMMENTS FOR TEACHERS 2

For this assignment's Comments For Teachers, I was assigned to http://jasontbedell.com Mr. Bedell has written several blog posts (13 so far) on something called Professional Development 2.0. I was only required to read the most recent post, but to get a full understanding of the idea, it was recommended to read all 13. I am glad that I did. I learned about so many things I was unfamiliar with. He explains social networking and social bookmarking. He talks about how to connect to teachers from around the world and how to share resources with other educators to broaden their own style of teaching. He goes into explaining what an Educator's PLN (personal learning network) is and how it can help students to grow and learn. By you yourself broadening your teaching methods, you are helping your students to become better learners. Mr. Bedell goes into explaining what some of the different networking sites are such as Twitter, Delicious, Diigo..to name a few.

September 22, 2010-How Social Bookmarking Works
In his most recent post, Mr. Bedell goes into full explanation as to what social bookmarking actually is. Having so much information and so many useful sites and resources from other educators, it is extremely difficult to remember them all. In social bookmarking, instead of "bookmarking" or "adding to your favorites" on multiple web browsers, here is a system where you can organize and process information and links all in one place. While doing so, you can access your bookmarks from any computer, anywhere. You have the option to make your files public which also allows others to access your saved links as well. How it works is you or the other person has to add the other to your personal network to be able to access them. This way, you can share any interesting information, link, or resource with other educators or anyone else from anywhere. Delicious is the most popular and easy to use social bookmarking site. Another popular one is Diigo. In Diigo, you can not only bookmark sites, but you can highlight certain sections or add your own notes. Instead of organizing into folders, you add tags. For each category, you can type in as many tags as you'd like. This way, if you find a good site from someone else in your network, you can add it to your own library for later access. I suggest checking out Mr. Bedell's blog if you are unfamiliar with how social networking works. There is a ton of useful information and he really breaks it down so you can actually understand what the concept is all about.
How Social Bookmarking Works

October 1, 2010-Professional Development 2.0-the Ebook
In my previous post, I mentioned that Mr. Bedell had made several posts on his idea Professional Development 2.0. When I went back to his blog this time, he had put all of these ideas and then some into an E-book. The E-book was great, much easier to read. In addition to his explanations on social bookmarking, PLN's and such, he added a tremendous amount of information. He talked about how any educator needs to be a Reflective Educator. A reflective educator is one who is open to constructive criticism, someone who can reflect on his methods and styles of teaching and be able to analyze himself, finding his own strengths and weaknesses and how he can improve. Mr. Bedell goes into talking about blogging, what it is, how to do it and the benefits of blogging. Here he states four valid reasons that one should blog; Accountability, Transparency, Community, and Validation. He talks about Conferences and Unconferences. An Unconference is basically the same idea as attending a Conference but with some major differences. A Conference is usually only open to educators, very expensive to attend, whereas an Unconference is open to the public and usually free. He gives resources on where to find Unconferences or how to start your own.

I think that the end product, the Ebook, looked great!!! Everything was stated very clear. For anyone that is curious as to what a PLN is, social bookmarking, networking, all of the things we are learning in this class, this book is really informative and goes into great detail. What I really like about it is that he explains AND illustrates, by example, how to do EVERYTHING. You should really check it out. These are things we are learning and experimenting with in class, but after reading Mr. Bedell's E-book, I really have a great understanding of how it all is put together and works. Professional Development 2.0-the Ebook