Schoology for Learning Management & More

Schoology, a CODiE Award winner, helps teachers and administrators put easy-to-use tools to work to develop their own educational communities. The system encourages collaboration and integrates nicely with other platforms like Google Apps, Moodle, Blackboard, Turnitin, etc. It allows schools to put all content in one easily accessible place. edshelf reviews call it “Facebook-like in appearance and navigation” and an “unbelievable classroom tool”.  Schoology includes different levels of pricing and is free for basic management and administrative features. A limited admin plan is free for schools and includes privacy controls, word filters, and data import and export. Schools and districts interested in advanced management and administrative features should contact Schoology for pricing.  This program is getting a host of great reviews by teachers who use it.

Cell Phones, Browsing the Web, & eMail: Distractions for Teachers?

It’s difficult to fight the urge to check email, text messages, social networks, and/or app info on our cell phones, computers, and other digital devices. Although, schools often have rules against teachers making and answering personal calls while they are teaching, we all know it happens. Browsing the Web and checking personal or school email and messages are distractions we need to avoid while teaching. Some of us are so obsessed with checking our email and smart phones that this “need” interrupts lessons and takes time away from working with students. Administrators who suffer from these digital obsessions are often distracted from the running of their schools.

Peter DeWitt in his Education Week article, “Do You Check Your School E-Mail Too Much”, reminds us that if we read and respond to parent email when we receive it at home, on vacation, late at night or early in the morning, parents “will get the idea” that we are available all the time, “any day... any night”. Of course, sometimes it’s necessary to look and respond, but most of the time it’s better to resist.

 

Monster.com lists making too many personal calls and excessive Web browsing as two of the top ten ways to get fired from a teaching job.

Time Tech’s 50 Best Sites & Services of 2013

TIME magazine gives an annual salute to “sites and services that keep you entertained and informed, save you time and money—and maybe even change your life.” Some of the recommended sites that may be of interest to educators are:  the TWiT (This Week in Tech) network, which keeps you up-to-date with what’s happening in technology; Feedly, an RSS reader for sharing what you read/and or saving it to read at another time; MyPermissions that helps you discover what permissions you’ve allowed and lets you revoke them if you want; Office Web Apps, which may be “all the Office you need”; Pixlr, a photo editor that works with your browser; Forvo, like Wikipedia for pronunciations; Super Simple Learning with its focus on math and phonics through video and song; and Distance to Mars, which lets you and your students travel through the universe to Mars—428,000 pixels away.

Teacher Favorite: Publishing on the Web

Tech 335 Publishing on the Web is a 30-hour PBS TeacherLine course. It targets the way the iGeneration learns. Teachers taking the course find that publishing through Web sites, blogs, learning portals, wikis, and social media is not as difficult as they expected. TeacherLine notes online educational publishing helps “both students and teachers develop a positive online presence . . .” Although the course is professional development for teachers, the content helps teachers lead students to do their best in publishing online as they learn to organize, present, connect, and learn.  See the course syllabus for additional information. This could be useful in using the new iTunes initiative which allows teachers to put their course work online.

Serif—WebPlus Website of 2012

Serif invites you to its new blog, which is filled with helpful guides, great articles, and competitions in Web design and photography. This is a software company that provides easy ways for you and your students to create using Windows computers. On the site, you’ll learn how to develop your own Web site, cut out pictures for your designs, make your own business cards, restore photos, put together panoramas, get busy with scrapbooking, and much more. Link to the blog from the site, or for more information,  take advantage of the free downloads of software and resources so that you can test the products.

EASE! - Educational Searching

Look for Easy Access and Search for Education (EASE) when the school year begins this fall. A project of the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI), EASE is a national program to help teachers find the best online resources and spread the word about them. According to a survey conducted by LRMI, nine out of ten teachers surveyed suggested that their search for educational resources for their lessons would be much easier if the result could be filtered. The goal of EASE is to do just that. Resources are currently being tagged so that teachers will be able to search by: content/subject area, grade level, standards alignment, etc. The program will “encourage educators to speak up about and speak out about their current search experiences and their support of better online search options for educational resources.”

The Nerdy Teacher Wants You to Reflect

Nick Provenzano, the Nerdy Teacher, offers his Year-End Tech Reflections in Edutopia. He suggests that those of us in education should take time to think about the tech tools and lessons we used with our students this year in order to determine how to make our use of technologies even better next year.  As summer vacation approaches and with our school-year memories fresh in mind, we should ask ourselves questions such as:

What tools did I use and how did I use them?

What tools helped me accomplish what I wanted with my students?

What wouldn’t I use in the coming school year?

What are my goals for my students and for me for the future?

Google Education on Air

Educator on Air is a free online edtech conference hosted by Google. Scheduled for May 2, 2012, it will include 46 “Hangouts” featuring professional development. The conference begins at 9:00 a.m. PT, 11 a.m. CT, and noon ET.  Sessions will be streamed live on Google+, which you download free. You can go to the website, decide what you want to learn, and sign up for your sessions. Find out, for example, about Chromebooks for Education, Harnessing the Web, Communicating, Connecting, Sharing, Google Apps, Instructional and Assessment Tools, and Hot Topics in Education.

Serif’s Inexpensive, But Highly Effective Software

Serif’s software works well and gets excellent reviews. Besides that, it’s quite inexpensive and all the products, whether for desktop publishing; video, panorama, or art creation; photo editing, Web design, or craft projects, work with the same interface. If you use Windows, Serif products are well worth looking into. The programs do not work with Mac OS. The latest versions of the software products sell for $99, but there are often specials offering them for lower prices. If you don’t need the latest versions, you can get Serif’s desktop publisher, for example, anywhere from about $20-$45 on Amazon.

Policies Educators Don’t Like

eSchool News conducted a poll asking educators what education policies they thought should be eliminated. See if you agree with the top ten that were recommended.

Number 10 - “Creating a single, statewide student information system”

Number 9 - “Teacher licensing requirements”

Number 8 - “Not requiring technology application classes”

Number 7 - “Prohibiting the use of personal technologies or web pages”

Number 6 - “Grade levels based on age”

Number 5 - “Seat-time requirements”

Number 4 - “Rules for auctioning off old equipment

Number 3 - “Unfunded mandates”

Number 2 - “Teacher seniority preferences”

Number 1 - “No Child Left Behind”.

You can go to eSchool News and make your own suggestions about what policies you think schools would be better without.