Tool 2

OK, maybe I'm being a slight overachiever on this one, but I had already done pretty much everything included in this Tool. I did enjoy watching the Diigo video. I've used Diigo for years, but there were still a few features I hadn't tried before. In case you didn't find it, there is a Diigo Educators account available. I love this feature because you can set up classes with specific links for projects, student accounts, make the link collections public or private to just your students, and best of all it's free. If you look for me on Diigo, my user name is gaildunnnms.

I have been subscribed to several groups including Diigo in Education, Educators, and of course Northbrook Middle School. I have also been following Vicki Davis, otherwise known as CoolCatTeacher, and Maggie Tsai for quite some time. If you have never read or subscribed to Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher blog, I strongly recommend you do so.

I set up my Google Reader to start gathering feeds for me. I have another reader I had been using, but with us migrating so much into the Google platform, it made sense to switch to that one.
I also enjoyed checking out the initial posts from some of my school team as they begin working through the 11 Tools and left comments for several.

I started with the district's 23 Tools a couple of years ago, created a blog, and used it for both the original 23 Tools and the follow-up 11 Tools. Feel free to take a look if it will help you. I also used it for postings for my graduate courses, so anything there that starts with LU is a post for Lamar University, and not the Tools postings. At first I was quite nervous about actually publishing posts, very strange for those of you  who know me, but after posting a few and finding out I didn't drop dead from embarrassment, it started getting much easier.

One thing I have definitely learned in the last couple of years is that a Professional Learning Network (PLN) is vital for today's teacher. There is just too much information out there, and no matter how much you know, there is always more to learn as well as the constant changes in how things are done and what to use for specific purposes. Getting yourself set up to receive good, useful information is half the battle. (The other half of course is organizing and using all those wonderful new ideas!)

On to Tool 3!