ISTEconnects guest bloggers wanted!

I am taking the lead in ISTE's blogging effort in advance of NECC09 on a relatively new blog, ISTEconnects.org. I have this role in the six months leading up to the NECC 2009 conference in Washington D.C. One of the things I would really like to do with the blog is amplify and share innovative classroom practices with educational technologies. (This is not a place for vendors to toot their own horn, however.) Among other things, I am looking for classroom teachers and instructional leaders to share their experiences using educational technologies with ACTUAL students, whether they have gone well, poorly, or in-between. These ideas can also be technology use examples from professional development as well as the classroom, and contexts can be college/university as well as K-12.

A good example of a post guest post on ISTEconnects (so far) is Neil Stephenson's post "The Many Roles of Skype in the Classroom" from February 15, 2009. I'm posting this as an open invitation to guest blog on ISTEconnects, whether or not you'll be able to attend NECC09 this year in person or not. We're using Wordpress for the ISTEconnects blog, and guest bloggers can register for their own account on the site and submit blog posts for review.

If you're interested in guest blogging for ISTEconnects under the guidelines I've outlined here, please setup your own login credentials, and then share your guest blog post directly on the site. You will be able to login to the administrative dashboard of the site and view the status of your own posts, as well as correct any typos if needed.

We're using a commercial Wordpress theme on the site (THiCK) which uses custom-sized images in the background of the homepage area for each post when it's the "latest" entry. (width=595, height=270) You are welcome to create and submit your own image to use with your post, or I'll be glad to help you with that. Please send me a direct message or @reply on Twitter or email me at wesfryer [at] pobox [dot] com when you submit a guest post to give me a heads up, and let me know if you need image help with your post. You can also contact Joe Corbett, who is the community manager for ISTEconnects and is managing the ISTEconnects Twitter account. Also please include your contact and bio info in a short sentence or two in your post as Neil did on his guest post. Your post will go into a moderation queue, and our blogging team reserves the right to make some edits / adjustments to your post if needed. Let me know if you have questions.

ISTE has provided a fantastic opportunity to showcase and amplify innovative classroom practices using educational technologies, and I hope many educational innovators will take me up on this invitation to share ideas on the ISTEconnects "blog stage." :-)