Technology for Teachers

MP3 (Audio Podcast) File of this Posting

Yesterday, after a workshop that I’d attended, I had a list of books to order.  Well, the list totaled up to a bit more than I wanted to spend at the moment.  The books were in regard to educational leadership and it got me to thinking…. boy it’d be nice if I could list all the books I have (leadership specific) online for other educators  to borrow and in turn for them to list and share theirs with me.

I knew off hand that a few people I knew probably had the book that I was looking for…..  this in turn got me thinking about social networking and the possibility of there being a site that could do exactly this.  I really didn’t feel like digging through the billions of pages on the internet to look for this type of site, especially since I had no idea as to what exactly I was looking for.  So i hopped on to twitter (another social networking site) and asked my list of followers if they had any ideas, here’s  picture of that original question:

within minutes I had a response pointing me to a site called "Shelfari".

Right off the bat, the nice thing is that Krisitin (khokanson) saved me the time and effort needed to find and preview this site.  So far, with Shelfari, I’ve been able to create an online "bookshelf" that lists the books that I’ve read, I’m reading, I plan to read, I own, my wishlist, and my favorites.

Also, in the time that it would have taken me to locate this type of site, I’ve been able to create a group as well.  The group I created is called "K12 Administrators".  Time will tell how well this site will work but all indicators point to it being able to do exactly what I was looking for…. and that is provide an online place where a K12 Administrator could discuss and share professional resources.  If you have time I encourage you to check it out.   You can access my bookshelf and groups at the following page: http://www.shelfari.com/smartinson

Here’s my wish list: