Blogs give readers a firsthand look into the sometimes messy world of teaching

By Eddy Ramírez

Posted September 19, 2008 [online @http://www.usnews.com]

When he started his blog, Teaching in the 408, language arts teacher Kilian Betlach tried at first to remain anonymous. He identified himself only as "TMAO," and he withheld all names, including those of his students and his school. But it didn't take long for teachers and administrators in his district in San Jose, Calif., to stumble onto his blog and realize he was the author. "Just discovered your blog," one teacher wrote in response to a post in which Betlach went off on a school official who had spoken during a gathering. "I think I was sitting in front of you at this assembly," the teacher said. Betlach replied that "bridging the electronic divide is a little spooky."

I admit that I was skeptical about spending time in both North and South Dakota showcasing Web-based technologies to leaders and staff as a potential membership organizing tool.

Techno-demographics illustrate for both Dakotas a largely senior member population. In addition, state legislative mandates for EdTech are less than on par with other more progressive and populated states. For North and South Dakota, these two factors would seem to suggest that membership’s interest in learning about and engaging in how to use new technology to connect with their association might be, at best, an uninteresting proposition.

I recently received the following note and it reminded me that sometimes we need to take the time to review what is familiar to us and to make sure we look at our work with the eyes of someone new to the Gateway. I have included my answer as a way of reviewing just how easy it is to join the Gateway and to be able to take advantage of the personalization features.

Met with over 12 SDEA local presidents to promote use of social media tools to organize and engage local leadership and members.

State SDEA President Sandy Arseneault created a State Presidents social network as a tool to help local presidents across the state stay connected to SDEA and network with each other. The network currently connects over 30 local presidents to the state office. The network is a private space and only visible to those who have been invited by Sandy.

[view presentation to local presidents]

In keeping with Jermaine Coleman's campaign promise to leverage technology in an effort to increase communications among student members and leaders, the NEA Student Program now hosts a social network that allows members to share pictures, videos, and music as well as create sub-Networks (Groups) for private group conversations. Members can also host chats, create forums and post news items.

Since its creation one month ago, the Network hosts over 100 student members from across the country and 7 state chapter groups: Nevada, South Dakota, Michigan, Ohio, Washington, Nebraska and Wyoming.

Visit the NEA Student Program Network

Grand Forks ESP local launches social network to organize and communicate with members. The 15-member network managed by Special Education Paraprofessional Laurie Holcomb enables video and photo sharing, chat, forum discussions and a calendar for announcing association events.

Washington Post and other partners like The Guardian plan to help people track and participate in election 2008 coverage.

The http://election.socialmedian.com site aggregates news and user-feeds related to the election and enables users to join in the election coverage and discussion. The Washington Post created the SN site to enable people to track all the election news from thousands of news sources as well as from Twitter feeds, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, and more all in one place, and (importantly) to join-in and add their own feeds from their favorite sites to provide user reports leading up to and on election day.

You can sign up for the page immediately and add your feeds. Add your Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blog site etc. and we'll automatically add your relevant contributions on those sites to this page.

Starting Wednesday users will also be able to easily grab a widget of this page to put on your own websites and blogs. The WashingtonPost and The Guardian are just two of the first websites that have signed up to use this widget. The widget will highlight user submitted news and reports. This is a great way to get your election day coverage on these and other leading sites.