Kathy Schrock shared how overwhelming it can be as a educator when information is coming from administration, other teachers and students. If you have a plan in place to conquer information overload you will overcome! The networked teacher can look like this:
Image by: Alec CourosaKathy took stock of her email and looked at the categories they fell in. She realised that many of the notices could be deleted without even reading. Every email has labels or filters you can use.
Here are her suggestions:
Monitor your email for 2 weeks.
Create applicable folders or labels.
Look for the "filter" instructions.
Create your filters or rules.
Monitor the folders for two weeks to make sure everything is going where you want.
Re-evaluate or add rules.
If this seems overwhelming try ONE rule or label in your filter.
Having a smartphone is information and organization at your fingertips. Kathy's dream is for every student to have internet access 24 hours a day. She thinks all educators should have one. Watch the video she made to convince you.
News Readers - RSS feeds send the information to your inbox instead of you going to look and see if something new has been posted. Here are some you can use Netvibes, Pageflakes, Google Reader and Bloglines. Watch this quick video to understand RSS feeds:
Kathy spoke quite a bit on PLNs - Personal Learning Networks that you connect up with on Twitter, Facebook, Nings. She spoke about privacy and maintaining a personal profile and a professional profile. These are an important way to add the power of what your network members know to what you know.
There was so much she covered I cannot do it justice! Please visit her wiki for more information. Kathy rocks!
Here is her wiki for this session.
