Your Professional Learning Environment

I'm getting ready to do a session on web 2.0 and professional development next week and it's made me think a lot about professional development in the last month or so. With web 2.0, there's no reason to not be involved in your own professional development. I've discovered that professional development no longer happens just through formal courses, workshops, training events, etc...

The best of the best in your field are easily accessible via web 2.0 apps. This is so true for education and technology. Most all of the experts have their own personal blogs, many are on twitter and have thousands of followers, they participate in social networks, online webinars and podcasts and many if not most of these are FREE! So what's your reason for not getting involved??

Don't know where to start. That's what I hear from most people. I've created a few handouts on getting started with your own Professional (or Personal) Learning Environment and staying current.

PLE's: Tips and Getting Started Information for Creating your own Personal Learning Environment [PDF]: http://www.icc.edu/innovation/PDFS/resources/PLEs.pdf

Using Technology to Stay Current: Online Resources to Customize, Collect and Organize Current Information [PDF]: http://www.icc.edu/innovation/PDFS/resources/UsingTechnologytoStayCurrent.pdf

I also wanted to share some of my best or favorite resources that I use in my own Professional Learning Environment to learn and stay current, you can find that at
http://www.netvibes.com/bthat

I'll also get my blogroll updated with some of the best education and technology bloggers on the web.