Curating Content

I do a whole lot of research. Whether I am preparing a workshop or writing a keynote I am constantly looking up information and trying to figure out the best ways to organize it all so I can not only recall what I am saving but to make sure I have it, no matter where I am working. 

I have three, go-to apps and programs I use on a daily basis for just that: 

Evernote-Hands down, my favorite app for organizing. Not only do I have it installed on every computer I have but on my mobile devices as well. With it I can organize everything I am doing into notebooks and notes. On the web I have the Clipper installed so I can snip quotes, references or parts of blog posts that I want to come back to. Best part? All the annotations come with it so it makes the citation later much easier. From my phone I can add to or edit my notes, insert photos or audio. No matter where I am or what I come across I can add it to my notes and notebooks in Evernote. (I wrote some posts recently about how I am using and ways others are using it as well. You can see them here and here. 

ReadItLater-This is another app/program that I have everywhere. Believe it or not I do a lot of my researching on Twitter. Either following a hashtag or asking people to send me stuff. Often times I don't have time to look at everything as it is coming in so that is when I can ReadItLater. With this browser extension I can, with the click of a button mark the site as something to read later. I can search by tag or key word and since I have it installed on my mobile devices I can read my saves when I have a moment or save something to my list when I am out and about. 

Diigo-This is another place I save web resources. Again with a browser extension I can take the items I am ready to permanently save and add them to my Diigo list. Oh and I can use the various tools there to annotate and mark up the pages and add any notes. I add tags to organize them and I can share all my saves with a link or two. If you are an educator you get even more perks like the ability to create accounts for your students, sharing lists of sites easily and creating groups so students can share resources. 

Of course there are lots of other ways to curate content. Even using something simple like a Google Form or Doc could work. I believe the thing to consider when curating content is how are you going to have access to it. I like to be able to access my content anywhere and from any type of device, easily. Thats why Evernote, ReadItLater and Diigo are my go-to apps and programs for curating digital content. 

Cross Posted Over At Easybib

Free Teaching Resources From Microsoft Education

Back in 2010 I wrote a post highlighting some of the great (and free) resources from Microsoft Education. Well I am back to update that information because they have added some more handy guides for the classroom.


For me, one of the more handy guides was the Digital Storytelling guide. Hopefully we know that when we give students the opportunity to create something related to what they are learning they are more likely to remember what they have learned and be able to apply it in the future. In this guide there are tons of examples of how projected-based learning helps improve student achievement and how digital storytelling is one, easy way to introduce project learning to your students. There are also lots of handy tips on taking pictures, recording audio and ideas for lessons. On the digital story telling site there are video examples and templates you can download right into Photostory for easy use.







Another great guide is the Developing Critical Thinking Through Web Research Skills. In it you will find lessons, strategies and ideas to help you and your students develop good search habits and better understand where their information comes from.


There are a bunch of others as well:

• Movie Maker
• Microsoft Office
• Using OneNote
• Windows 7 In The Classsroom
• Microsoft And The Math Classroom
• Accessibility

The TeachTech Twitter feed is another place to pick up some good ideas and content as well.


So head over to Microsoft in Education site and check out the guides and the other content they have to offer as well.

#ASCD12-A Presentation On Creating Social Media Policies For Schools And Districts

Earlier today I had the honor and pleasure of presenting at the Annual Conference for ASCD. It felt like more of a homecoming as the conference this year was in Philadelphia, a city I have been to several times over the past 2 years for conferences and meetings. The presentation was the featured morning session and livestreamed.

I presented with Sam Walker, an Instructional Technologist at Kimmel Farm Elementary School in my district. Our topic was creating and crafting social media policies for schools and districts. 

Here is our presentation:

And here is our resource document:

And the video we created to help educators understand the importance of the use of Social Media in Education:

The message here is a simple one. Most, if not all school districts, have standards of professional practice. Why continue to put in place restrictive policies that handcuff the ability of educators to do their jobs? As you can see, our social media policy is not a policy at all, but it is a set of guidelines that anyone in the education community (students, teachers, administrators, parents, etc) can follow. We need less rules, and more opportunities for creation, collaboration and sharing.

New Posted Resources 03/20/2012

• Googlios

  tags: google ePortfolio googleapps favorite

• What can Twitter do for your school?

  tags: Twitter favorite

• Vimeo Music Store - Find Free Music for Your Videos

  tags: CreativeCommon creative_commons creativecommons favorite

• The Teacher’s Guide To Using YouTube In The Classroom | Edudemic

  tags: youtube favorite

• Edmodo: A guide to everything

  tags: edmodo favorite

• Blogging Guidelines : ISB Student Blogs

  tags: blogging blog favorite

• Find your school’s voice on Facebook

  tags: facebook favorite

• ASCD Express 6.25 - Problem-Based Learning for the 21st Century Classroom

  tags: PBL favorite

• Copyright Alliance Education Foundation

  tags: copyright favorite

• 39 Sites For Using iPads in the Classroom

  tags: ipads favorite

• Digital Citizenship: Resource Roundup | Edutopia

  tags: digital citizenship cyberbullying online safety favorite

• The Social Media Deluge

  tags: social media favorite

• Top 10+ TED Videos On Education & Learning

  tags: TED favorite

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Product Review-Easi-Speak Pro

Back when I was in the classroom, I went to great lengths to try and capture audio. Whether it was just my lessons so I could post them online or to record audio for student portfolios and feedback I never really found a good way to do it. It always felt combersome. I had to have my laptop and an microphone and then I had to worry about power and storage space. I never really got a good set up that worked well.

So when the folks over at Learning Resources sent over an Easi-Speak Pro for me to try out I got excited because there has to be teachers out there just like me in similar situations. Basically its a wireless microphone that records and stores up-to 4 hours of audio. For me, the best part, no batteries. It is completely rechargeable.

It works like other digital recorders. Press the record button and that's it. When done, you stop. Every recording is timestamped so when you head over to your computer to grab the audio you can identify each one easily.

No computer? No problem. You can play back the recordings through the built in speakers or hook up some headphones and listen. So you could use the device as a listening station or to model good speaking or reading skills.

I had no trouble out of the box to get going. I did some sample recording of my 2 year old practicing some reading and the pick up was great. When we played back the files there they were crisp and clear and editing was a breeze.

I wish I had an Easi-Speak Pro in my classroom to capture all those moments that, trying to get with a laptop just won't do. Head over to Learning Resources to learn more about how you can pick up one of your own.

Checking Out Class Connect

I am always interested in easy ways to share content and collaborate on projects with others in quick and easy ways. So when I heard about Class Connect and it's ability to do just that, my interest was piqued.

First some back ground. When the founder, Eric, was in high school, bored, a teacher asked him what would make him interested in the class. He wanted to work with the other kids in the class and use technology at the same time. Since the school didn't have the software in place to do what Eric wanted, he built it. He spent the next several years designing, testing and refining, getting teacher input along the way and really turned the site into something pretty useful. (You can read more about Eric's story here.)

So what is Class Connect?

Think of it like Dropbox but with a few more features. When you sign up for an account (which is free by the way) you get 1 gig of space to store files in. And you can upload pretty much any file there.

So for demoing I uploaded some PDFs into a folder I created there.

But you will also see a few additional things. One is a video. You have the option to add video embeds from around the web. So if you wanted to include a Youtube (or TeacherTube, SchoolTube, Vimeo, etc) video in your files you could do that here. You also have the option to add other embeds there through the use of HTML coding.

You will also see you can add Google Docs here. The docs have to be shared as Public first but then you can make them accessible here as well.

Each file, when you click on it has a place to add a description and a place to share comments. So I could see this as a sudo-forum where you could post a discussion document and get feedback right there with the file.

So you have lots of options to store all sorts of materials. Great for projects for the classroom. But it gets a little better. You can then invite colleagues or students to individual files or whole folders or all the files. The choice is yours. Each file has a share button.

You have three options:

• Courses-You can create courses/classes and then, through the use of an enrollment key give access to students (or colleagues) access to the materials stored there. 
• Colleagues-Similar to sharing in Google Docs you can invite others to view and edit or just view what you have shared, via their email. 
• Public-This makes the content view-only by anyone who visits your profile. (You can claim a custom url to make it easy if you want. Mine is http://classconnect.com/web20classroom) The upside here is anything you share publicly doesn't count against your storage total. 

Class Connect is a promising site and can definitely prove useful for sharing files, videos and docs with a class. And I like the idea of promoting sharing your files and work publicly. After all that's how we get smarter! Do your self a favor. Head over to Class Connect, sign up for an account and try it out!

A Brief History Of #Edchat

As one of the founders of #edchat I get a lot of questions about the what, where, when and why. So here is everything you need to know (or wanted to know) about #edchat.

The History

#edchat started out of a series of conversations between myself, Tom Whtiby and Shelly Terrell. Tom is a bit of an instigator and likes to push people's thinking about various topics in education. One day he was asking several of these though-provoking questions and he was getting comments from all angles. He turned to Shelly and I for help. Afterwards, he suggested we needed a hashtag to make sure we didn't miss anything. Shelly suggested a weekly format where anyone could participate and I suggested we have the community vote on what we would talk about. And thus, #edchat was born. We had our first real chat in July 2009. And we have had one every week (except for a break at Christmas) ever since. 

The Basics

To participate users need only add #edchat to their tweets. We have organized chats every Tuesday. The main chat is at 7pm EDT and lasts an hour. Another chat for our friends in Europe and beyond is held on Tuesdays at Noon EDT. Polls are posted by me (@web20classroom) on Sunday afternoons and voting ends Tuesday mornings. The highest vote getter is discussed at 7pm EDT and the second place is discussed at Noon EDT. Participants are welcome to suggest topics for discussion by filling out this form. 

Following Along

You will need a way to follow the conversations. Many folks use a third-party Twitter client like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite and have a column set up to search for #edchat so they see all the tweets during the conversation. Others use  services like Tweetchat or Tweetgrid to follow the chats. These work every well and will auto include the hashtag when tweeting, which can be handy. 

Afterwards

The archive is usually posted by the next day and it includes all the tweets during the hour time span. Archives of all chats are up at http://edchat.pbworks.com and are viewable any time. (To be honest, I usually have to go back to the archive to read up on everything that happened.)

Advice

You can't follow every conversation during #edchat. We average about 200-300 active participants a week and over 1500 tweets for the hour. (Most of the time those numbers are much, much higher.) So following everything is nearly an impossibility. We recommend tossing out an idea or two and see who latches on. Or just engage with someone(s). Everyone, for the most part, who comes to #edchat is open minded and wants to discuss what the topic is and offer up their thoughts on it. So push someone's thinking or better yet, have yours pushed back. 

#edchat is just a small part of a greater education community that regularly engages in conversations to make learning better for kids. We are big believers in action after the chat and encourage our participants to go out and do something as a result of the chat and blog/tweet about it and share it with the world. The chat is our opportunity to engage and think and share but it means nothing if we don't do. So thats why you regularly see people use the #edchat hashtag during other parts of the week to share what they are doing or thinking or saying. 

I am proud of #edchat and the direction it has gone and continues to go. Each week I get to talk to new folks and hear of amazing things that are going on in schools and districts around the world and engage in meaningful conversations about a wide range of educational topics. 

I hope you'll join us!