T21-3 Management

With the constant stream of new developments in technology, how can a busy teacher keep up, or at least keep informed of developments that they could benefit from? Web 2.0 tools can help you here! One popular solution is to subscribe to selected blogs or podcasts from people who are keeping up to date with new developments. These people in turn get many of their news items from subscribers who tag them with social bookmarking tools.

Finding blogs and podcasts that suit your needs can take a while. A Google search would be a good place to start. Sometimes an episode will refer to another blog or podcast that suits your needs even better so you might switch.

A major benefit of podcasts is that you can listen to them with a phone or MP3 player while traveling to work, walking, cleaning the house or weeding the garden, unless you have young children with you during those times. ITunes provides an excellent management system for use with iPods. iTunes store has many good podcasts on a wide variety of topics and the iTunes application handles subscription and provides an easy way to copy episodes to an iPod.

Educational podcasts typically have a companion blog site where "shownotes" are posted for each episode. These shownotes will include links to websites referred to in the podcast. While listening to a podcast there may be a few items which you wish to investigate further so you would go to the website and find the relevant links.

In addition to looking in the iTunes store, you may like to investigate these links.

• The Edtech Crew: http://www.edtechcrew.net/ This is a conversational podcast from Victoria, Australia.
• This Week in Tech Network: http://twit.tv/ Leo Laporte started with a single tech podcast and has a network of podcasts.
• Shambles Blogs by Teachers: http://www.shambles.net/pages/staff/blogteach/ The site has a long list of teacher blogs
• Creating Lifelong Learners: http://www.needleworkspictures.com/ocr/blog/ Matthew Needleman is a well known educational blogger. He created the video Mr Winkle Wakes which we saw in week 1.
• If you do not find one that suits you, try searching for one using your own criteria. There are plenty of alternatives out there.