Social Networking: Yahoo! for Teachers

Yahoo! recently released a new social network for teachers allowing them to share learning materials.

Once you have an account, you will be able to explore projects added by other educators by state, grade level, and subject.

You can also connect with other teachers at other schools in your city, county, state – or anywhere!

What looks most interesting is the Gobbler, a tool that allows teachers to build a project by saving images, clippings, links, and other information from websites to your projects in Yahoo! Teachers. You can also create handouts or worksheets using the document creator and add it to your project. All your projects can be saved in a portfolio and shared with other teachers, and they can share their projects with you.

To get an account and check out this new network, go to the Yahoo! Teachers home http://teachers.yahoo.com/ to sign up for an invitation. You will be sent a password for the Beta site. The Beta site will then allow teachers to register for an account.

For Media Specialists: I Wish My Job Came with a Handbook!

Guess what!

For some of us, it does!!

YOU ARE THE KEY…

A Handbook for Georgia School Library Media Specialists

http://www.clayton.k12.ga.us/departments/instruction/mediaservices/handbook/

Education/Library Resource: Book Central

OK, I got sucked into this site. As soon as I saw it, I felt a compelling need to find a good book to read (but that could be near-graduation mania!).

Scholastic’s Book Central is a fun site for book news, reviews, and book recommendations for kids. Oh, and the rest of the site looks pretty interesting, too!

http://www.scholastic.com/titles/index.htm

Does anyone else have great sites to help kids find books?

Courtney

Technology Resource: Why Netcasting to Teach?

I like this quick and easy overview of podcasting – well, netcasting (?). There are several good ideas for how to use them to teach, and I like the brief explanation of how to “do it yourself.” Nice, simple explanation!

http://www.k12handhelds.com/podcasting.php

So, why did I say netcasting?

Ever since Apple started claiming trademark infringement for using the term “podcast,” I have heard some interesting discussion about it. Leo Laporte has started using the term “netcast” to refer to all of the shows on the TWiT Netcast Network. Robert Scoble suggests using the terms “audiocast” and “videocast” instead.

I personally have been trying to say “netcast” as a general term, but I like using the other terms to differentiate between the two – because it matters to those of us who only have time to listen or to those of us who like the visual. I listen to audiocasts while I’ve driving to work, but I can watch videocasts on my home television, so I like to know the difference before I download it.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what you call them, they can be a wonderful tool for teaching and library instruction!

So, are any of you using netcasting to teach your users? If so, please tell me all about it!

Courtney