Staying+Current

Staying Current
Constructing Your Personal Learning Network


 * Formal Organizations**
 * [|ALA] - American Library Associations. There are specialized branches focused on schools ([|AASL]), youth services ([|YALSA]), and children's services ([|ALSC])
 * [|ISLMA] - Illinois School Library Media Association.
 * [|ICE] - Illinois Computing Educators. ICE has regional groups around the state as well.
 * [|ISTE]- International Society for Technology in Education.
 * [|LISSA] - Library and Information Science Student Association.


 * Professional Journals**


 * Networking** – Professional vs. Social Networking
 * [|TeacherLibrarianNetwork Ning] - Ning is a netowrking site where you can create a network. You can also look for existing networks. There can also be sub-groups within Nings.
 * [|ISLMA Facebook Group] - While this group isn't super active, it is an example of one of many library interest groups within the social networking behemoth.
 * In Illinois, the library systems also offer valuable opportunities for networking. My system, NSLS (North Suburban Library System) has both face-to-face and online COPs (communities of practice) for librarians.

**Importance of Play and Making Time**!

 * 15 Minutes a Day – [|Helene Blowers and her Library Bytes blog]
 * Idea of using tagging in social bookmarking or in your aggregator to save things for play
 * Erin’s Rule of Thumb – when I start to hear and read about things three times. It is time to pay attention and check it out.

Use RSS – Real Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary - to have content delivered to YOU. Separates content and format Here's another video from [|Common Craft] called //RSS in Plain English//: media type="custom" key="3577978"
 * Reading Blogs and Monitoring the Information Landscape**

A couple of choices for Readers (or aggregators) you could use:
 * GoogleReader - []
 * Bloglines - []

The following resources were created by Katie Kirsch and Erin Wyatt as part of a day long pre-conference workshop for the IL-TCE conference in February 2008.
 * Blogs for school librarians. http://web20andschoollibraries.wikispaces.com/Blogs
 * RSS Feeds and Readers for school librarians. http://web20andschoollibraries.wikispaces.com/RSS+Feeds

Twitter is a form of microblogging where messages are sent in no more than 140 characters. Here's another video from [|Common Craft] caller //Twitter in Plain English//: media type="custom" key="3578072"
 * Twitter**

Lucy Gray's post of recommended people to [|follow on Twitter]. Let's take a look at [|Twitter].

[|PageFlakes] or [|iGoogle] or [|NetVibes] pages
 * Customized information environments**