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Essentials for the "Wired" Teacher
by Jon Orech

I decided to avoid the obligatory “What-I-Learned-at-NECC” post, primarily because I did learn so much, and one post would not do justice. Instead, I would like to share my thoughts on a conversation I had with a colleague I met via twitter.  He asked me: “With all of these Web 2.0 tools, and everything else out there, what does a teacher absolutely need to be “wired.”  Great question.  So I decided to put together a list of absolute essentials for today’s teachers.

Connect: Social networking sites like twitter and nings like Classroom 2.0 offer great places to connect with professionals throughout the world. While twitter permeates all professions and interests, you can choose to “follow” educators, see whom they follow, and, well, follow them (I’m jorech, fyi). The easiest way to describe Steve Hargadon’s Classroom 2.0 is that it is “Facebook for teachers.”  Everyone begins with a homepage, and there are opportunities for connecting with teachers who share common interests.  There are even free online webinars conducted by fellow users.

Subscribe: RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a great feature that allows you to have information from frequently-updated sites sent right to you, as it is published  Google Reader is my choice.  I recommend you subscribe to a couple blogs of educational leaders you admire, (I follow David Warlick, Will Richardson, and Alan November) and at least one news source you usually read.  Lee Lefever has a great video tutorial about exactly what RSS is.

Master Google: OK, we all use it, but make sure you know how to search like a pro.  Here are a few ideas that will really help: 1. Make a custom RSS feed. First, search a topic, click “news” then “sort by date” then click “RSS” on the bottom left. Copy and paste the new url in your RSS aggregator (like Google Reader).  2. Limit searches by domain or geographical origin. After your search terms, type “site:” search followed by either domains (“org” or “edu”) to search for only those sites OR use a country’s two-letter code  to return news items only from that country. 3. Use the “options” feature after a search.  This will give you access to valuable applications such as the “Wonder wheel” or “Timeline.” Try it! These are just a couple of the many hidden search features that Google offers.

 “Socialize” your favorites: Social bookmarking sites such as Delicious or Diigo allow for two distinct advantages. First they enable you to organize and access saved web pages from any computer.  The second is that you can view and share bookmarks with anyone else you add to your network. (again, I am jorech…feel free to add me.)You know those educational leaders you follow on your Google Reader?  Imagine being able to see what web pages they are saving. Or how about this: Imagine students conducting research, and instead of turning in an annotated bibliography, all you need to do is check their sources on line. Also, think how this would facilitate collaborative research or sharing of data. One more hint: Delicious has a two other features: “Search” and “subscribe.”  “Search allows you to type in a tag and it will find related pages saved by you, your network, or EVERYONE on Delicious.  This way, you are searching those sites that somebody else felt were important enough to save.  “Subscribe” is almost like a mini-RSS feed.  As sites are saved with a particular tag, they are sent to you instantly. While Delicious is a bit simpler to navigate, Diigo allows you to highlight saved pages and even place “sticky notes” on your saved pages.

Find a home:   Whether you use a blog, wiki, or webpage, I strongly recommend having a personal homepage.  This space may house a blog, links to other resources, and files you want to keep for others to use. Wikispaces, Blogger or Google Sites are three places to get started.  A new player on the scene is Issuu, which allows you to publish and save just about anything on line…try it!

Of course there is the ever-growing list of specific Web 2.0 tools, gadgets, and programs that you may use. However to get started the above “essentials” are enough to get you going. If you already use one or two, try another one. If you use none, pick one and dive in, the water’s fine.