DIY Professional Development for Lifelong Learners Like You – Part 3: Online Reading Communities

Here are some online reading communities that can feed your reading life:

Nerdy Book Club: Are you looking for a network of librarians, teachers, authors, reviewers and parents who share your unabashed joy for reading? Look no further than the Nerdy Book Club, a new blog that invites readers to write blog posts and reviews. The major beliefs of the Nerdy Book Club are:

If you read, you are already a member of the club.

Every reader has value and a voice in the community.

Skim the extensive blog roll for the best reviews and commentary about reading and books.

(Twitter hashtag: #nerdybookclub)

Titletalk: Titletalk is a monthly Twitter chat that takes place on the last Sunday of every month at 8 pm EST. Each monthly discussion explores one reading topic like reading alouds, picture books, or launching a year of reading. The first half of Titletalk involves a conversation about instructional practices, resources, and ideas for working with young readers. The second half of the chat is a flood of suggested books from participants that relate to the chat topic. The Titletalk wiki houses archives of every chat, so you can access the information when you cannot attend.

**Because the last Sunday of December this year is Christmas Day, this month’s Titletalk will take place on Sunday, December 18th.

For tips on how to participate in a Twitter chat, check out Colby Sharp’s tutorial at the Sharpread blog.

(Twitter hashtag: #titletalk)

The Centurions: At the end of each month, almost 800 Facebook users converge on the Centurions page to share the books they have read over the past month. Centurions challenged themselves to read 111 books in 2011, but the page provides an excellent source of book recommendations even if you don’t reach this goal. Growing beyond the monthly tallies, Centurions post book suggestions, opinions, and questions all month long. Add Centurions to your New Year’s resolution list and join the new challenge in 2012.

LibraryThing: LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth.

LibraryThing is a full-powered cataloging application, searching the Library of Congress, all five national Amazon sites, and more than 690 world libraries. You can edit your information, search and sort it, “tag” books with your own subjects, or use the Library of Congress and Dewey systems to organize your collection.

If you want it, LibraryThing is also an amazing social space, often described as “MySpace for books” or “Facebook for books.” You can check out other people’s libraries, see who has the most similar library to yours, swap reading suggestions and so forth. LibraryThing also makes book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of the other libraries.

Shelfari: Shelfari is a community-powered encyclopedia for book lovers. Create a virtual bookshelf, discover new books, connect with friends and learn more about your favorite books – all for free. (Owned by Amazon.  I’ve read a few comments saying that Shelfari sends them a lot of spam)

goodreads: A social networking site for readers, I consider goodreads my reading brain. I would never be able to track or categorize the books I read without my goodreads shelves and my goodreads friends provide an endless source of recommendations and reviews that inform my reading plans. You can also follow authors’ reviews and blogs, enter giveaways and contests, or create book discussion groups. (I’ve read some comments that Good Reads is also a source of spam).

Source: The Book Whisperer

Safe(r) Searching for Students

Ask Kids is the kid friendly, kid safe version of the popular search engine Ask.com. Ask Kids is divided into five categories of which one is a general search option. The five categories are School House, movies, games, images, and video. The School House category provides students with suggested topics and links to resources for those topics. The School House also serves as a general search tool. In the other search categories Ask Kids makes suggestions for search refinement. A great aspect of the search results that Ask Kids provides is the option to refine searches based on a student’s age.

DIY Professional Development for Lifelong Learners Like You – Part 2: Twitter

Professional development in your district not quite targeted at your needs, wants and desires?  I don’t know what I’d do without Twitter.  For example I found this thought provoking video via Twitter – FabLab

“…The most remarkable experience I have on Twitter, and it’s right up there with the very best learning experiences I’ve ever had over my lifetime as an educator, an astrophysicist, and a learner, is #edchat. Every Tuesday night at 7:00 pm Eastern Time, I join hundreds of educators from across the planet that get comfortable in front of their computers–a very local and personal experience–and have a global, free-for-all conversation about education. The operation of Twitter as the vehicle for communication quickly recedes into the background, and you enter into a world of rapid-paced vibrant conversations with folks as committed as you to sharing important ideas. You leave with new thoughts, new directions, a reinvigorated sense that the issues of importance to you are also important to others–providing a common bond, and you embrace friends you’ve never met but that you deeply understand….”   Read the rest here ==> The Remarkable Power of Twitter: A Water Cooler for the 21st Century by Jeff Goldstein – Director, National Center for Earth and Space Science Education

Usually we think of following people when we think of Twitter but it can also be used to share information about any variety of topics.  They key is, Hashtags.

Hashtags provide a way for others who are interested in a particular topic to follow topics rather than each other.

Here’s a brief video about Twitter, how to set it up and why you would want to.   Twitter Tutorial

Step 1 – You’ll need a free Twitter account.

Step 2- Search for hashtags that match your interest

Here are some suggestions:

#atplc  All about PLC’s

#elemchat Discussions for Elementary education

#mathchat Provides a forum for anyone involved with mathematics

#4thchat Discussions for 4th grade teachers

#edchat The Educator’s Personal Learning Network

Here is a website with many more hashtags Educational Hashtags

Step 3 – You can use a service like TweetDeck to read multiple topics

Step 4 – If you want to follow people here are some you may want to follow: Top 25 Educator Tweeters

Step 5 – Want to go further?  The Innovative Educator

60 Inspiring Examples: ” Teachers around the world have found innovative ways to use Twitter as a teaching tool, and we’ve shared many of these great ideas here with you. Read on, and we’ll explore 60 inspiring ways that teachers and students can put Twitter to work in the classroom.”

Twitter Livebinder

DIY Professional Development for Lifelong Learners Like You – Part 1: Blogs

You don’t need to wait for the next staff meeting.  Blogs are great sources for your own self-guided professional development.

1st – You’ll need a free Google account.

2nd – You’ll need to activate Google Reader

3rd- You’ll need to subscribe to some good blogs, just click on the big red Subscribe button in Google Reader.   You could type in (copy/paste) any of the following blog titles to get you started.  Or search Google for blogs that pertain to subjects you’re interested in.

All About Comprehension

A Year of Reading

Lit for Kids

Mother Reader

Two Writing Teachers

Catching Readers Before They Fall

Weblogg-ed

The Teaching Palette

4th- Read some blogs for awhile, check out the blogrolls of the blogs you like, try subscribing to some of those.

5th – Don’t like a blog after awhile, unsubscribe

6th- You may want to use a management service like Reeder.  I use Reeder so that I can easily keep up with my favorite blogs like “Making Connections with Room 209” and “Fisher’s Landing Elementary Room 208” from my iPad, iPhone or computer.

Enjoy.

“The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.” – Oliver Wendall Holmes