21st century Teacher: Your personal professional development network

Professional development needn't be an end-of-week chore or achieved by attending courses.

Join Ewan McIntosh, National Adviser, Learning and Technology Futures, for an overview of how you can connect with teachers worldwide in a personalised professional development network.

It's becoming a regular meme amongst connected teachers from around the world: ' I've never learnt so much so quickly, or had so much fun in my professional development, than I've had connecting and learning with others through blogs, podcasts and wikis.'

This session will provide a novice and beginner's overview of free social media tools which any teacher can harness, linking into Learning and Teaching Scotland's ICT in Education website and providing some ongoing online support for participants.

Find out what basic online skills you need to acquire to understand this virtual Web 2.0 world, and learn how Ewan created a personal network of peer support across every continent. Importantly, learn some tricks about how to cope with the rapid innovation on the web in 2008.

Further tips can be found on LTS's ICT in Education website (http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/ictineducation, the CPD Scotland site: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/cpdscotland/, and on Ewan's blog: http://edu.blogs.com/.

Find out more about Ewan. http://edu.blogs.com/ewanmcintosh/.

Ewan McIntosh is the National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland, the education agency responsible for curriculum development, and a member of the Channel 4 Media Advisory Board.

As a teacher of French and German in the high school sector and an educational technologist working with children aged 3-18, he frequently gives talks and workshops around the world, trying to find new and better ways of using emerging technologies in education.