noTLB website

Last night I was rereading Bradbury's 1953 short story, The Murderer, to prepare for Monday's undergrad class. No, I'm not trying to glean a new teaching strategy to use on undergrads. We are finishing up Tapscott's Grown Up Digital and preparing to write short stories about the classroom of the future. My iPad incessantly notified me of incoming emails as I was reading. I was starting feel just like the Murderer, people keeping in touch, "mauled and massaged and pounded" (Bradbury, 1983, p. 244). But a portable diathermy machine would not be a solution to interfere with today's communication.

I pondered declaring email bankruptcy, but that didn't seem to be a responsible thing to do mid-semester. I went back to my tried and true method (and psychologically more manageable for me): Sorting the From field in alphabetical order and starting with the Z's.

When I got to the A's (and all of you A's who heard from me between yesterday and today can attest that I did reach the 'bottom' of my list), I came across an email from Nisha Arnold, subject: Education. Now I get a lot of educator and researcher stuff....attend the e-learning conference in Madrid!, publish in The Journal of School Nursing (figure that one out), ASCD breaking news....you get the idea. So "Education" as a subject line is a bit too vague to warrant anything more than DELETE. However, in the body of the text, I spotted 'noTLB.' Well a good ITSer never lets an abbreviation or acromyn go by without understanding the meaning.

noTLB=no Teacher Left Behind

noTLB is 'FREE website that helps ensure that no teacher is left behind by cataloging the online education community, and presenting it to you in a user friendly fashion.' It is wiki-like, blog-like, social, and collaborative. I especially was interested in the Free Tools/Software link under the View Resources tab. It is similar to a link provided by Aeronia Poole: the Emerging Top 100 Tools for Learning in 2011, rated by educators all over the world.

Take a look at noTLB if you have time. There are thousands and thousands of online resources for teachers but I thought this one was interesting in its organization and collaborative activities. Will educators participate? How long will this website be relevant? Is it relevant, useful, necessary? Is it too much information? Too much connectiveness? Time will tell.

Reference
Bradbury, R. (1983). The stories of Ray Bradbury (4th ed.). New York: Knopf