Member Activities, Event and Services

• Live, interactive interviews with education thought leaders
• Live webcasts from conferences, colloquia & special events
• Online conferences and panel discussions
• Professional Networking
• Member-directed surveys, polls, and referenda
• Best practice case studies
• Emergent knowledge sharing
• Online voice-based discussions & live debates
• International working groups, team activities, & member think tanks
• Showcase projects and paper presentations
• Education news, research & peer reviews
• Education market & trends analysis
• International coverage
• Research results dissemination
• Networked communities of practice

About LearningTimes Members

Members come from a wide variety of disciplines and professions within the world of education, including higher education and K-12 faculty, staff, and administration, educational and web publishing, local and national education departments and bodies, technology providers, corporate training, nonprofit learning consortia and associations, libraries, museums, tutoring, continuing and professional education, and public television, just to name a few. Among these groups, many members refer to themselves as students and lifelong learners.

LearningTimes is a Free Community

LearningTimes is supported completely through external sponsorship and the time and expertise graciously volunteered by its members. LearningTimes depends on the support of external sponsors to keep access free to members, and the generosity of its members and contributors to maintain the ongoing breadth and quality of education-related programming.

Once in a while, LearningTimes may make its members aware of education-related fee-based services, events or programs on behalf of LearningTimes sponsors that the Editorial Board deems to be of value to members. If we post such items, we will also try to negotiate discounts for our members. While LearningTimes will never compromise its editorial objectivity and standards to garner sponsor support, it will provide appropriate opportunities to thank sponsors for keeping LearningTimes free to members.

Who Produces LearningTimes?

LearningTimes is produced by an accomplished, international Editorial Board, with invaluable guidance from its distinguished Advisory Board. The Executive Producer is Jonathan Finkelstein, a recognized expert in online educational community building and synchronous communications. He is joined by academic, technology, and corporate leaders from various disciplines within the worlds of higher and K-12 education, corporate training, publishing, library services, museum education and lifelong learning. Together, these individuals represent academic, teaching, learning, marketing, sales, technical development and corporate leadership sides of the industry.

How are LearningTimes.org and LearningTimes.net related?

LearningTimes.org is the flagship community of The LearningTimes Network, a set of vibrant online learning communities. LearningTimes, LLC joined other founding sponsors to create this community as a free and open resource for professional educators to meet, collaborate and learn from one another online.

LearningTimes, LLC is a privately held organization that is actively engaged in designing and building learning programs, online conferences, communities and events, as well as the platforms, environments, applications and marketing strategies that make them successful. The LearningTimes Network is growing rapidly, and new communities, online conferences and working groups form all the time. The LT Network is the fastest growing set of communities for learning professionals on the web today.

How to Join

Joining LearningTimes.org is free, and it takes just a minute to join. Simply click on the "become a member" link on the left side of any page of this site and complete the free sign-up process to set up an account and password.

LearningTimes Email Policies

E-mail is a vital tool in maintaining connections between members and web-based communities. The LearningTimes community is setup to allow you to set your own e-mail preferences that allow you  to stay as connected to the site as you would like. For example, once a registered member, you can opt to receive or not receive via e-mail: daily, weekly or monthly site activity summaries; new responses to posts you make to discussion boards; and reminders about live webcasts.

From time to time, LearningTimes will send out important community announcements (i.e. news about upcoming webcasts or live feeds from education conferences). Although we will occasionally pass on a message (pre-screened for relevance to our members) from one of our sponsors (who are always listed on our public web site), we will never share our e-mail list, or the ability to 'spam' our list to anyone.

Okay, I Give Up: Why the Squirrel?

The squirrel is the official LearningTimes mascot.

During a webcast several years ago, a group of college professors were asked to identify a great "learning moment" that they had experienced in their lifetime that had a great impact upon them. One professor offered: "As a college student, chasing squirrels with one of my professors". The notion that some of the best learning moments happen in quite informal or unexpected ways, often when interacting with other people -- not just with hyperlinks or web pages -- is a very important LearningTimes ideal. How do we bring the extraordinary value that comes with "chasing squirrels with a college professor" to the online realm, where so much learning is based today? The "squirrel story" seemed to encapsulate the LearningTimes goals well enough to deserve the mascot status. And no, the squirrel does not have a name (yet).

As if that weren't enough, squirrels are active, fun and social animals (when they are out and about, chasing each other at least), and they are very good at planning for the future. LearningTimes stands by these values, even if they are taught by a strangely cute animal. (More on the squirrel in the contributions area, once you sign-up and login.)

LearningTimes Apparel

Due to popular demand, we now offer a variety of LearningTimes apparel, such as hats, t-shirts and coasters. Proceeds from the sale of these items help support LearningTimes.org and ensure that it remains free to our members. Feel free to visit the shop today!