Practice the fine art of tech-fu

I took a break from blogging this summer to work on my house, concentrate on my class website, wikispace and classroom blog. The first day of school is right around the corner and I must admit I am excited. Our family has one more trip to the beach planned and then we will all be heading off to school. This year my class has a brand new website and a totally new wikispace that should really work well. All my quizzes this year will be done through google docs as well as all of my spreadsheets. Lots of new stuff and I am sure challenges.

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With all this information available to us it is very easy to get overwhelmed. One of the most significant things you can do to combat overload is to use a rss service like google reader and make it your home page. Now I know there are lots of other options for your homepage, but for me I like google reader because it forces me to keep up on my reading. Sure I miss having some of the features of something like igoogle but in the war against overload I need to make some sacrifices. I have experimented with just about every kind of reader and I always return to google reader because of its no nonsense interface and its spot on performance. Try making your reader your homepage and get into the habit of filtering your rss subscriptions, out with the old and in with new. If you are not using a reader as your home page what are you using and why? Please leave your comments and let me know

The google apps are an awesome set of tools for collaboration. I use all of them and love how they all work together. We use google docs to take notes on meetings. The ability to have more than one person take notes and see their edits in real time is a real
 plus. We can then share the notes from the meeting with the rest of the faculty with a couple of clicks. This document is now “live” meaning if we make changes the same URL will get teachers to updated meeting notes.
   
    Google calendars are especially useful because you can embed them into wikis and your teacher website. This allows you to make changes in your calendar and have them automatically updated on your website or wiki. You can also attach documents to calendar events so you could use google calendar as a syllabus. I have used tons of other calendar programs but the ability to embed the calendar and the “quick add feature” has sold me on google calendar.

    I also really like google presentations because they allow you to make your website or wiki more dynamic. A page does not have to be static. If you embed a presentation in your website the student can go through it at their own pace. Recently, I taught a workshop and I used several google presentations to show a step-by-step process. The great thing was I didn’t have to do any of the work! An Internet friend of mine had already done the how to presentations, I just copied the embed code into my website (with her permission). Imagine if all teachers did this, we could save ourselves a lot of work.

    Finally, I just wanted to let everyone know that there is also a super google spreadsheet app. What I really like about the spreadsheet is the “forms”. Forms allow you to send forms out to anyone with an email address. So you can send students, parents, and faculty questionaires and get all the results in a spreadsheet. You can also embed the form into your website or wiki, pretty cool.

Please check this video out, it may change everthing.

Recently, during a short flight I had the opportunity to watch a lecture by Thomas Friedman, author of the “The World is Flat”. Mr Friedman’s lecture, which can be viewed via itunes U, was insightful and thought provoking. I highly suggest that anyone who is involved with educating students watch his lecture and read his book. Friedman explains that much like a computer, people must update their personal operating system to keep themselves relevant and working efficiently. Unfortunately, updating your personal operating system is not as simple as clicking a button. Updating your personal operating system requires you to recognize and implement technology that fundamentally changes the way people create, communicate and share ideas and information. This is no easy task but fortunately many small updates build on one another and make subsequent updates much easier with less downtime. So how does all this relate to teachers? Well many of us need a big update, or maybe a whole new operating system, a fundamental shift in the way we keep up on what’s going on in the world. We can’t sit back and skip these updates, ignoring the constant reminders that there is something new to learn or incorporate into our personal operating systems. We need to check for updates everyday and realize that technology is changing the way things are done in this world. Whether we like it or not, keeping our operating systems up to date is a necessity if we are to prepare our students for the world they will compete in. The job is never done, the next update is just around the corner. Stay tuned and hang on it is a wonderful ride.