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January 2007

Features

YAHOO! For Teachers: Connecting

Educators, Sharing Knowledge

Insight

GETEX: SYNONYMOUS WITH

Cover story - Feature EDUCATION

Perspective
YAHOO! FOR TEACHERS:CONNECTING
Moving Towards a Model For Open
EDUCATORS, SHARING KNOWLEDGE Content Provision Through ccLearn

Case Study
“The basic idea of the Web is that of information space through which people can communicate, but
communicate in a special way: communicate by sharing their knowledge in a pool. The idea was not just Bridging the Digital Divide for
that it should be a big browsing medium. The idea was that everybody would be putting their ideas in, Humanitarian Purposes
as well as taking them out.” Tim Berners-Lee
Opinion
Derek E. Baird, M.A.
Reaching Out Through Mobile

In July of 2006, Yahoo! invited a cadre of teachers, Technology with the Humble SMS

media specialists and librarians to spend a week on the Interview

Yahoo! campus and working together leverage the
technology and social media know-how at Yahoo! to A Common Certification Bridging
support educators in the classroom. the IT Literacy Divide

Letters
The teachers came from urban, suburban, wired, not-so-
wired, public and private schools located all over the San Call for letters
Francisco Bay area. There were veteran and mid-career
teachers.We had first year Teach for America (www.
teachforamerica.org) teachers and educators entering their final year of teaching.

Teachers talked.Yahoo! listened. For us, one of the most surprising findings was that teaching is a very isolating
profession.Our cadre of educators also told us there was never enough time in the day to get everything done and
that collaboration between teachers, even at the same school,was difficult.

Most importantly,Yahoo! and our cadre of educators spent time in active dialogue,working together to chart a
course that will lay the foundation for a new way of teaching and learning in the 21st Century classroom.
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Over the course of the next year, our team at Yahoo!

continued working with our original group of teachers
and has incorporated their feedback into Yahoo! For
Teachers.

At the NECC 2007 conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Yahoo!

offered the first public sneak peek of Yahoo! For
Teachers. The feedback from teachers at NECC 2007 was
phenomenal.

Educators from Gilbert, Arizona to Stockholm, Sweden

crowded around the booth and watched us use the
Gobbler to easily collect, organize, and annotate resources from any page on the web.

While at NECC, thousands of educators

signed up to join the Yahoo! For Teachers
community and are now creating,
publishing and sharing their knowledge with
educators around the globe.
In addition, educators saw first hand how
they could use Yahoo! For Teachers to
collaborate with teachers from down the
hall or Down Under. Like our original cadre
of educators, teachers have caught the
vision of how social media tools can be
leveraged to support and connect the
teaching community.
ABOUT THE GOBBLER:
The gobbler is a widget that helps grab text, images and links
from a page, and drop them into Yahoo! Teachers projects. The
actual widget works in a way similar to Google Notebooks,
except that it also stores metadata on type, educational level,
and subject. The Gobbler can also instantly share the
information gobbled with any teacher also a part of the Yahoo!
Teachers network. More information on the Gobbler, along with
a video of the tool in operation, can be found at Bill Scott’s
blog at http://looksgoodworkswell.blogspot.com/2007/03/
yahoo-teachers-and-yahoo-gobbler.html

There's a quote by Margaret Wheatley that the Yahoo! For Teachers team hopes will become the foundation of this
global educator community: “Living systems contain their own solutions.When they are suffering in any way - from
divisive relationships, from lack of information, from declining performance - the solution is always to bring the
system together so that it can learn more about itself from itself.

Somewhere in the system there are people who have already figured out how to resolve this problem. They are
already practicing what others think is impossible.”

-Dr.Margaret Wheatley (http://www.margaretwheatley.com) The Yahoo! For Teachers cadre helped seed a new
community that we expect to be the start of something powerful. But Yahoo! For Teachers is about more than
technology, it’s about connecting colleagues, sharing knowledge and building a community.

And we want you to join us. If you or someone you know is a teacher, let’s “work together to bring the system
together.” Let's use the power of the web to empower and connect the knowledge network that exists in the
education community. Let's work together to share our ideas and make the seemingly impossible, possible.

Note:Yahoo! For Teachers is currently in closed beta. If you are an educator and would like to learn more about
Yahoo! For Teachers, or request an invitation, please visit http://teachers.yahoo.com

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Related Resources
YAHOO! FOR TEACHERS at http://teachers.yahoo.com/
YAHOO! GROUPS > YAHOO! FOR TEACHERS at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/yteachers_community/
JUMPCUT GROUPS > YAHOO! FOR TEACHERS at http://www.jumpcut.com/groups/detail?g_id=A093642069FB
11DB90FB266C9A2E700D

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