edWeb.net

http://www.edweb.net/

Year started: Beta in 2007, official launch in Jan 2009

Audience(s): All professionals involved in education - at any level - teachers, librarians, administrators, faculty, educational associations, education companies, government and community leaders.

Who Started It: Lisa Schmucki is founder and CEO

# Members: 50,000+ as of March 2013

edWeb.net is a professional social network for the education community that makes it easy to connect with peers, share information and best practices, spread innovative ideas, and create professional learning communities. The user-friendly interface includes a wide range of Web 2.0 tools that support online collaboration and professional development. edWeb members are developing new models and best practices for integrating social networking into education. edWeb.net is free for all individuals and educational institutions. Sponsorship opportunities are available for other organizations involved in education. edWeb.net was founded in 2008 by Lisa Schmucki, CEO, and is located in Princeton, NJ.

• edWeb.net is a professional social and learning network with more than 50,000 members who are exceptional educators, decision-makers and influencers, committed to professional development, and interested in technology.
• edWeb hosts professional learning communities that are new models for free and open PD for educators.  Our featured communities offer free webinars, online chats and discussions, archived resources, and CE certificates.  We hear constantly from our members about how much they love edWeb, we just won the 2012 Edublog Award for Best Free and Open Professional Development for Educators, and are finalists for a CoDIE Award for Best Professional Learning Solution for Education.
• We have a partnership with MCH Strategic Data, the owner of a national K-12 educator database, that extends our reach to more than 3.5 million educators.  Most edWeb members have joined as a result of an invitation to this pre-qualified educator database, making edWeb a community of highly motivated professionals who are committed to improving their practice.
• edWeb is for educators at any level and encourages the participation of public, private, and non-profit organizations to provide the information and support that educators need to improve teaching and learning. We provide personal support to all of our edWeb members to help them learn how to create and foster active online communities to help move forward faster with any initiative.

"...A key decision was to encourage any professional in education – educators, associations, “vendors” – to all participate together as colleagues...many sites discouraged “vendors” but we want the participation of those who create the products and services that are used in learning to make real change..."