Clean Up Your Space!!

We are in a time that most of the "brand new" teachers have a social site somewhere and probably login every day. More and more, though, we hear of teachers being reprimanded for their antics on their social networking sites. This article from the Washington Post sums it up quite nicely. Is this a problem that should be addressed? I am very aware that some counties draw a line that no teacher can have a social networking site where other counties don't have any policy. So where do we draw the line, or do we need to draw any at all?

This research article on student and faculty relations in facebook found that there were no positive or negative effects on how students viewed the professor after finding he/she was on a social networking site. But, I found it interesting that students had mixed reactions about faculty being on the site. I found similar feedback on this in the article "Is My Space Your Space As Well" by Andy Carvin. Students didn't really like the fact that teachers might be viewing their profiles. One student even comments that people have things on their myspace page that they don't want other people to see such as those with alcohol and smoking. (A whole different blog post on that comment later!). That student, however, does go on to say that having a teacher as their "friend" could be nice when she had questions about homework.

We know that social networking can be a great way to communicate with students. Why not tap into what they already know and use it for meaningful education? New facebook applications are coming available every day including many geared directly toward education. You can do anything from create a wiki within your page to linking your students together to have a group discussion.

I went searching for some school districts that have rules for social networking accounts posted online. I found a list from the Jefferson County Board of Education that deals mostly with blogs, but social networking would fall under many of the same guidelines. You may notice that many of their guidelines include "informing" people of what they are doing and how they are doing it. Education is key. If everyone understands what is going on, they will be more receptive to the new technology. This is true for anything-not just blogs and social networking. I can imagine the difference in reactions if a teacher informs the parents that she has a facebook page set up for her class rather than Johnny coming home and telling mom that Mrs. Smith is on facebook!

I truly believe that training is important with this sensitive issue. Teachers need to be informed of how social networking can negatively effect them and how they can prevent that from happening. Most all of the situations that cause a reprimand of a teacher involve inappropriate material on their site which could easily be avoided. New teachers are in a generation of folks that aren't making the connection of internet and real world. All too often I hear of young kids commenting that "oh, that's just on myspace, everyone knows that doesn't matter". Teachers need to be well informed that "oh, yes it does matter". In my opinion, this training needs to be extensive for first year teachers to your district and then a refresher every year after. So much changes with technology and the internet from year to year, everyone needs to be reminded of the importance of not only internet safety but protecting ourselves as teachers.

All this in mind, there are social networking sites available specifically for educational purposes. One, Elgg, is highlighted in this article, titled Don't Tell Your Parents: Schools Embrace Myspace. Another, that is growing quite rapidly, is Ning, which is also a great resource for teachers including many specialized groups for sharing ideas in education.

Mixbook makes an A+

I discovered mixbook.com, an online book creation tool, few months ago. I was instantly hooked, but wanted to see what the teachers thought. I pulled in a select few teachers that I knew were interested in technology as this would be the first introduction of a web 2.0 resource. Not only were they hooked, but they made plans to use it in their classes and produced some interesting projects.

Mixbook is very easy to use and the best thing about it is all the different layouts it includes. Teachers tend to like those colorful additions and Mixbook has a ton of them.

If you are just getting started, you can search the listing of books that are already published and use them as a tool to get started. One that I often use to get teachers excited is one on World War I created by a high school class. This is just one example of how a class could use mixbook to cover a topic. If you look at the book, you'll notice that each student was assigned a page to do on their own.

One of our students created a piece on "All Quiet on the Western Front" as part of a project in her English class. This one has already received good feedback from other mixbook users! This brings me to the next great feature of Mixbook. I had this book printed for use in my training sessions. You can print your finished copy for as little as 12.99. That's a pretty good deal and the quality is great.

Are you hungry for Timetoast?

As my husband is a social studies teacher, I tend to pay close attention to new sites that cater to some of the things he does in class. One thing he always mentions is that kids really don't like to do timelines. I recall not enjoying them in school either-not to mention then are a huge waste of paper when done the old fashioned way (which is how most teachers do them).

Enter Timetoast. Your online timeline creation tool. www.timetoast.com

I ran across this neat little tool by accident, but it is proving to be a great addition to my collection of web 2.0 resources. Not only would it be a great tool to use for individual or groups of students in a classroom, but also an awesome tool for your interactive whiteboard. Find a great example here of a timeline for NASA:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/86

In 10 minutes time, I signed up and created my first short timeline (5 entries). It was quite easy to get one started and even easier to add entries. I was pleased that the popup box with the entry information was short. All you need is the title, date, description and an optional picture for each entry. This is great for students and teachers that want to do a quick timeline and don't need a lot of fancy options. You can also write a long description because it is hidden until you click on the entry in the timeline.

Another great thing timetoast does is organizes all of your timelines on one page-with pictures (that you add of course). So, from semester to semester or year to year, they are organized on your main timeline page in an easy-to-find format.

Technology Camp-No Bug Spray Needed!

As a technology facilitator in Cabarrus county, I am faced with the task of presenting several sessions at our first ever technology camp. We are now past 600 participants (no, we weren't expecting even half that many) so we know that this is our shot to really make an impact on the teachers and administrators in our county. I have volunteered to do 4 sessions.

One session, luckily, I get to do with another person. We will be doing something with Mixbook and Toondoo. We have a lot of great mixbook examples because once I found it and showed it to a few tech facilitators, it was being used like crazy! ToonDoo didn't take off quite as well, but I still think it's a great program and now I know how to promote it a bit more. The people coming to these sessions will most likely never have heard of these tools, so we're basically going to do a quick demo of each and give some educational examples of how they're used.

The second session I'm doing is for administrators (yikes-not sure how I got myself into this one). I'm a little excited and a little nervous all in one. It's a little scary doing a presentation for administrators only. It's titled "Let's Get Organized - Digitally". I created a neat little thing on the SMARTBoard that allows principals to do the schools master schedule using smartnotebook software. Before, they had these crazy magnet boards with magnets that I found out cost 1400.00!!! That's insane and I told them so-and then created the notebook. Well, it's a hit in two schools now and I'm hoping with this presentation, it will be a hit in the other schools as well. In this session, we'll also go over the wonderful world of google and I'll show them igoogle and google calendar specifically. I'm going to focus on the sharing part and help them realize it could be an awesome tool for working together.

The third session I'm doing is on Google Apps. This one is for teachers and we'll just go over igoogle and all the neat things that integrate with it like reader, calendar, bookmarks, etc.

My fourth session I adopted after someone wasn't able to do it, but the more I think about it, the more excited I am to do this one. It's called "Using the SMARTBoard in High School". I'm thinking that I'll show several different lessons that I've collected, some lessons from the SMART website and give them a few interesting uses of some of the things in the gallery.

I'm going to be quite busy, but I think it will be a great thing in the end. I'm also thinking that once I have all of these set, I have something to present at several conferences this year! Looking forward to that! NCETC, NCAECT and FETC-here I come!!! Oh wait! Can I fit NECC in there too?

www2.0 (wonderful world of Web 2.0)

While perusing the wonderful world of web 2.0 this evening, I found a couple fantastic sites that I thought were worth sharing. I really tend to get into the nitty gritty of websites and I throw out probably 95% or more that I look at -specifically if I can't figure them out within a minute. So these are simple, time saving sites that I found very helpful.
1. http://whenisgood.net/ We've all had the problem. You exchange emails, comments, posts, phone calls, calendars, etc. looking for a good date for a meeting or even. This site eliminates all the craziness. You simply fill in the dates that are good for you, it creates a link that you send to your colleagues/friends and they fill in the dates that are good for them. Eventually it gets narrowed down to some workable dates and voila, you have a date picked without frustration! I love it!
2. http://www.groupcard.com/ This one is awesome and I can't believe everyone in the world isn't using it. This site allows you to send a group card to someone. Yes, you pick the style, pick where you want to sign, sign it and even add a picture if you want. Then, you simply pass it on for the next person to sign! I sent a few of these within minutes of finding the site and they were a huge hit! Oh, and a nice little bonus is that you can even get your card printed. Someone can actually sponsor the printing so the recipient doesn't have to pay themselves. It really is a great concept and very easy to use.