Heather Ross

Geoff, that's brilliant! I'll have to try that some time.

We had an instructor who wanted something like that in an online course because they thought it would be a good way of conveying information. Fortunately we talked them out of it.

I suspect that Jennifer and I use many of the same tools, but here's my list anyway.

For my own professional development:

• My blog - I learn from myself (reflecting, reading old posts) and others who post comments.
• Google Reader - How I follow the blogs that I read.
• Twitter - although not as much as I did, and not even close to as much as most of the people that I follow do.
• E-mail - I'm a bit old fashioned in some ways

To pass on knowledge for the professional development of others:
Again, my blog, Twitter and E-mail.

• PbWiki - I use wiki's when I give presentations so that attendees or others can refer back to what I was talking about at any time. They can also pass this information on to others. This is my latest wiki for a presentation I'll be giving later this month.
• My podcast - not many episodes, but I've been busy.
• Jing - I use it to create screencasts of how to use certain tools.

Yes Jeff. As Jennifer pointed out, this community is a great example of VPD.

I think that there are also several blogs out there where the "owner" will post something and several people post responses that include suggested resources (much as people do on SCoPE).

I think that we're all surrounded by VPD, but just haven't realized it.

Deirdre, did you know that if you contact the folks at Wetpaint and let them know that your wiki is for working with students (of any age) they will remove the ads.

It's interesting that mentoring, at leas the way you describe, is a two-way street. You learn from each other as opposed to it being in a single direction.

I believe it was Lao Tzu who said something along the lines of if you learn something and never pass that knowledge on to others than the knowledge you gained was waisted.

I think that any learning that involves learning from others (F2F or some method of distance communication) that doesn't involve formal workshops, classes or conferences can probably be considered VPD (Jennifer, correct me if I'm wrong).