webdoc is a social platform empowering people to express themselves and interact with others online in ways that haven’t been possible until now. It’s a place where social conversation is rich and happens just like it does in real life: spontaneously around people, events and topics.

"This qualitative phenomenological study involving in-depth interviews with seven educators in K-12 and higher education examines the role that the microblogging service Twitter plays in the formation and development of Personal Learning Networks (PLN) among educators. A double hermeneutic data analysis shows that Twitter plays a role in the formation and development of PLNs by allowing educators to; engage in consistent and sustained dialogue with their PLN, access the collective knowledge of their PLN, amplify and promote more complex thoughts and ideas to a large audience, and expand their PLN using features unique to Twitter. This research also examines the nature of a PLN and shows that participants believe their PLN extends beyond their Twitter network to encompass both face-to-face and other ICT mediated relationships. Secondary research questions examine how Twitter differs from other social networking tools in mediating relationships within a PLN, what motivates an educator to develop a PLN, how trust is established in a PLN, what the expectations of reciprocity are within a PLN, and what is the nature of informal learning within a PLN."

Clint Lalonde

"What with the Internets being all over the place and everyone getting all their knowledges from web-o-matic sites, it’s only reasonable to think that old fashion 85-pound history textbooks are on their way out. There are plenty of reasons to get jazzed about digital textbooks; they’re lighter, generally cost less, are lighter, can be ctrl+f searchable, and most importantly, let you do other things in class while pretending to look at your textbook. Also, they’re lighter."

The Blended Learning Toolkit is a free, open repository of information, resources, models, and research related to blended learning. Funded by a Next Generation Learning Challenge Wave 1 grant, the Toolkit is a collaboration between the University of Central Florida and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. In this section you will find introductory information about blended learning and the Toolkit.

"Instructors constantly report they spend too much time trying to manage and facilitate their online courses rather than teaching its content. Nights are consumed trying to keep up with what’s happening online and staying one step ahead of their students. Whether you are a new or returning instructor to online learning, this book helps you tackle this teaching environment by providing 39 tested strategies for reducing your workload. The Moodle Learning Management System, will be used to provide examples of course delivery that will impact your teaching life, (they can also be used within other LMS's)."

The Lesson activity provides a tool to build asynchronous, adaptive course content within the Moodle learning management system. It offers instructors and students so much learning flexibility that once the basics of designing and building a lesson are grasped, instructors will take it, run with it, and never look back. Students will (if you design and use it properly) love you for it, as it provides an adaptive online learning environment that tends to be sorely lacking. While the Lesson activity takes some initial planning, if used to its potential, you will stand out from the crowd of online educators!

The Bloomfire team wishes you a happy New Year! May 2011 be filled with exciting learning, and may this list help us start strong. If you’d like to add your favorite resource, please do so by leaving a comment.

iUniv is a service and platform that formulates social learning by using visual and auditory content provided online by institutions such as universities and other organizations. Self-learners can enjoy these contents (video and audio) and use the Fusen (foo-sen) to study and share with their fellow users.

A University of Colorado at Denver student in Joni Dunlap’s learning design course has a question about embedding music into a slideshow presentation for an assignment he was working on. He tweets about it and immediately hears back from people in the community of practice who offer resources that help him quickly complete the task. The example is powerful because not only did the student learn what he needed to know – in this case how to embed music – but he learned something else as well. He learned the value of engaging and collaborating with professionals who work in the field or who share similar interests. During the recent online seminar Web 2.0 Tools for Lifelong Learning in Online Courses, Dunlap, who serves as both an associate professor of instructional design and technology and the assistant director for teaching effectiveness at CU-Denver, explained how she uses a variety of Web 2.0 tools to help students develop lifelong learning skills.

This handbook introduces educational practitioners to the concepts and contexts of digital literacy and supports them in developing their own practice aimed at fostering the components of digital literacy in classroom subject teaching and in real school settings.

The handbook is not a comprehensive 'how to' guide; it provides instead a rationale, some possible strategies and some practical examples for schools to draw on. The first section details the reasons teachers should be interested in digital literacy and how it is relevant to their subject teaching. It looks at the increasing role of technology in young people's cultures, the support they may need to benefit from their engagement with technology and the way in which digital literacy can contribute to the development of subject knowledge. The second section discusses digital literacy in practice and moves through a number of components of digital literacy discussing how these might be fostered in the classroom.

A Bloomfire is like your very own mashup of YouTube, Yahoo® Answers, and Facebook – with your people in it, and your logo on it. It's a website geared specifically for easily sharing knowledge and the discussions that surround it. Invite members to find and follow experts, ask questions, and share with others - upload documents, videos, or presentations, record a video with your webcam, or create a screencast on the fly.

Here, we look at what blended learning is, why it’s spreading, and how it works in real and virtual classrooms. Join the conversation on blended learning below.

Instructional Technologist Marta Masterson is used to some skepticism when students see her syllabus. A lot of them have never heard of Web 2.0 technologies like Diigo, Glogster, Prezi, and PBworks. For some, the thought of using any technology they can't access from their phone breaks them out in a cold sweat. For others, there's a very real concern that investing hours into Web 2.0 projects could result in waking up one morning to discover the cloud ate their homework. Masterson said she has faith that the four technologies she finds most useful in the classroom aren't going anywhere. She's willing to back that faith up with examples of real world success in using Diigo, Glogster, Prezi, and PBworks as teaching tools.

Technology skills are essential to a successful future, according to students surveyed in the second annual 21st-Century Classroom Report, a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 high school students, faculty and IT staff. Ninety-four percent of students said learning and mastering technology skills will improve their educational and career opportunities, and 97 percent of faculty agreed.

Despite those results, just 39 percent of students say their high schools are meeting their technology expectations. Noted one student, “I don’t want to type things just to say I used technology; I want to be doing something I couldn’t do without it.”

The report, released today by CDW Government LLC (CDW-G), provider of technology solutions to government, education and healthcare customers, seeks to understand how students and faculty want to use technology, measure how classroom technology is evolving and identify opportunities for continued growth.

Faculty and IT staff are making a concerted effort to advance technology in the classroom, CDW-G found. Today, faculty say technologies such as wireless Internet, interactive whiteboards and digital content are essential to the 21st-century classroom. Just one year ago, faculty limited must-have technology to an internet connection, teacher computing device and LCD projector. This year’s survey also found that 64 percent of IT staff say the technology at their high schools is cutting edge or current, up from 41 percent in 2010.