Sites that Caught My Eye Today 06/27/2008

• techLEARNING.com | Web 2.0: from Curious to Competent

  New web 2.0 ebook - I haven't read it yet, but would like to see your thoughts on this. Those who read book get 30 days of atomic learning.

  tags: education, web2.0, technology, techintegrator, professionaldevelopment

• The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives | WHDb

  Very nice article sharing about the open source alternatives to proprietary programs.

  tags: education, techintegrator

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Notes from Google Teacher Academy

Note: I took these notes in Google notebook and exported them to Google docs and after they were formatted, I posted to blogger from Google docs.

Google Teacher Academy

Teachers Going to Google :) Home - Teachers Going to Google :)

This is what many of these teachers feel like -- 250 applications for 50 spots here. I wish everyone could come! 5 different countries - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Phillipines, 56 people in the room.

Chris Walsh - Introduction - Google Teacher Academy

Chris Walsh Google for Educators Site - http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html This is about the innovation that Google brings to the table to the classroom. Note from Vicki: I agree with this totally, I use a method in my classroom called 'Google Led Socratic Teaching" Google has created an atmosphere that promotes innovation -- Note: Bicycles are everywhere, most people are casual, microkitchens, decor -- it is a really cool environment. Microkitchens - they are everywhere. Find just about anything you could ever want to eat. They do this on purpose -- feed people well if you want them to work well. ("Partake of the chocolate river" They had more applicants than any other teacher academy every. They have over 200 Google certified teachers around the world.

Mark Wagner - Innovation Connection

Leading the innovation connection. Speed dating for geeky teachers. - 30 minute activity. 2 minutes - to think up an innovation that you've done in education but NO technology. (Gather with teams) - Team names are after 19th century innovators. http://sites.google.com/site/gtaresources Cool ideas:

• Teacher that adopted a stream/ watershed behind the school -- cleaned it up w/ class and the salmon run came back -- used to educate the whole school.
• Stereophone w/ pvc looped sound of reading to the student's ear to help find commas, etc. -each one cost 15 cents apiece.

Cristin Frodella, Program Manager - Google Teacher Academy

Focus on the user and all else will follow -- Part of their culture.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

3. Fast is better than slow.

4. Democracy on the web works.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There's always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit. **I love this -- Jeans, t-shirts, shorts -- very relaxed. (I like that.)

10. Great just isn't good enough. **Very academic place -- get "graded" every single quarter - OKR (Objectives and key results) -- gets graded every quarter. Based upon "grades" for how they get paid. (WOW! I like this.)

. Good advice for students and teachers too. FOCUS ON THE STUDENT AND ALL ELSE WILL FOLLOW. Innnovation is something that works also outside of technology. She actually said that althought they are teaching Google tools, they encourage us to innovate w/ whatever tools do the job. (Wow!) I love the objectives of Google Teacher Academy -- to inspire us to be agents of change but also to give feedback to Google - help us to make a community of excellence. "Creative education leaders who understand their local needs and can spread innovation as a recognized expert." Our responsibilities: I. Professional Development

By February 2009, lead at least 3 professional development activities on ways that innovative tools can be effectively used in the classroom or school.

Examples include:

• Hands-on Workshop
• Peer Coaching Program
• Large Group Presentations
• Online Learning Events & Modules
• Weekly Podcast Program
• Weekly Blog Posts

Complete Action Plan Tracker

• Three Activities You Plan to Lead
• Intended Audience
• Intended Results

• Demonstrates the concept so that other GCTs might implement it
• Utilizes at least one Google tool
• Serves a specific educational purpose
• 30 minutes for "rapid prototyping"
• 30 minutes for sharing

Pair up w/ a peer to work w/ the action plan. Google, Google Teacher Academy

Chris Walsch - Google Search & Personalized Information

90% of peoplethink that Google Search is what it is all about http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/ - Link to every product that Google Has

• Advanced search -- copyrighted authors tend to do pdf's -- so you can go in advanced search and search for pdfs - http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en - We need to teach students to search by file type.
• You can search within a domain - UCLA - education science ucla.edu and search powerpoints from there.
• do an order of operations lesson - type in a long math problem and google will add parentheses in there for you -- can discuss this
• define: and the word -- Note: I use this ALL the time in my "google led" socratic teaching.
• Search bar is no longer a place to find websites -- it finds INFORMATION
• Google 411 - http://www.google.com/goog411/index.html#utm_source=us-et-more&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=GOOG-411 - Call (1-800-466-4411) About GOOG-411 Google's new 411 service is free, fast and easy to use. Give it a try now and see how simple it is to find and connect with local businesses for free. It will answer with a text message.
• Talks and shares iGoogle Note: We teach all of our teachers to use igoogle, it is a great entry level igoogle page. Also if you do hosting w/ Google -- you can create customized igoogle pages for your school.
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Google, Google Teacher Academy, search

Google Maps, Google Earth, Sketchup, and Sky - Jerome Burg

Stimulate ideas http://sites.google.com/site/gctalmanac/ My computer crashed - lost the rest of these notes! ;-)

Mark Wagner - Docs

Like the comment feature in docs - leave feedback but it won't be printed. Each collaborator can get a color Preso - http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=ddnctvgt_170cbskvf68 Doc about Docs

• Google Docs: The Basics
• Google Docs: Tips and Tricks
• Google Docs in Plain English (video)

Can you share a document w/ a mailing list -- YES -- so we could create a listserv for the class -- CHECK - invitations may be used by anyone. So you can invite them. That is a great thing! (Just remember anyone can add themselves who wants to.) I like this. E-mail collaborators - it becomes a list serv itself. (I love this feature - it is a great one.) Can you change ownership of a doc? He says when you go to delete it you can. Can translate your do -- but you can make a public page -- tranlate a webpage - http://translate.google.com

More Google

custom Search Luci - Lets you just search specific sites Custom Calendars Terry - give you access - timebridge -- will work with www.jott.com will also put on the calendar Specialized search Devery - blog search, book search, news scholar, special searches -- multiple ways to search blogs (note: you can also subscribe to these rss feeds) -- see where the books are available (NOTE: some teachers are using this to work w/ their card catalog search) -- search news Picasa - Jim - rss feeds -- put into igoogle -- photo sharing -- pictures on igoogle Can embed to the website. Youtube & video - Nicole - www.getmiro.com - go out and search video tags www.vixy.net - www.zamzar.com -- piclens add in -- wonderful. -- moya software Groups -- threaded discussions - post files -- post hyperlinks -- make pages -- common folder for files Sketchup - 3D artistry program -- pull objects from google earth -- WOW! -- (I want to share this with my students) - compare pyramids to the parthenon -- create models of their room or classroom - label pieces of the item and draw it out. Place back into google earth when done -- put own new pyramid into google earth. California's 4th grade standard - missions - compare and contrast different missions. Gtalk -

Google in High School Journalism

Esther Wojcicki - Just joined the board of Creative Commons - created 5 media programs in grades 10-12 -- completely self supporting - kids go out and get ads. (real journnalism) 4 programs recognized for excellence. 4 classes that use docs for their journalism -- more than 400 students that take journalism at Palo Alto high school. 4-6 editors in chief - section editors, page editors, everyone is a reporter, business staff, advertising staff (create ads) 2005 winner of two webby awards -- http://voice.paly.net -- 30 kids that work on that website. They also have a newspaper -- The Campanile -- Columbia Corwn winner and National Scholastic Press Hall of Fame - Top 1% of the countryfor many years. -- National Scholastic Press Paecmaker - Verde Magazine -- Viking Sports Magainze - June 2008 They use docs to create all of these things. Advantage of Docs -- easy to use and collaborate w/ other students - revision easy to locate, easy to organize documents, easy to find a document, saves automatically -- great for teaching journalism. -- Cool Prior to using docs they were in constant crisis w/ disks and problems. I left it at Dad's house and this weekend I was at Mom's house - tough. Great b/c you can comment on the article right away. Submit online and in hard copy as well but they do lose it in hardcopy -- easier to read in hard copy -- so they print it out when it is time to get it together. The other advantage of docs - online peer editing. They work on it at all times of the day -- can see when they were online working on this - she's seeing work and editing at all times of the night and day. How do you get such high quality writing? She says b/c it is easy to access and they can work when they are comfortable. Can download and save it as a word file later on -- Adobe InDesign requires to save it as a word file. However, within the next 6 months - in design will allow the files to come straight from Google Docs. So, all students have an online portfolio - just type name into search bar -- they have Google sites -- she can see what every student has done for the entire year. -- In the docs account.-- if you want credit, you have to share it with her -- the teacher. They have an online porftolio -- revisions history -- and how many revisions they have made -- showing a doc that has 173 people looking at- advantage of publication is this quality (see the foxfire information -- similar format.) Note to self: What about a magazine or website covering technology w/ my students -- write in google docs, share and cover technology. Hmmmm. Sample assignments for beginning journalism -- cool information. How do you label all these documents so you don't go crazy? Students name documents by their class period, first name and last name. 2Brown, Catherine: Pizza REview -- then you can alphabetize by class name -- (I WANT TO DO THIS) -- again -- standardizing tags -- I am starting to do this, it is such an important practice. ***Standard tags for assignments, etc. are very important -- having some naming standards -- she has hundreds of students and it is a necessity -- I agree totally!!!! They can click on contacts and share -- I think they are in google sites which makes it easier to do things. (Note to self: I am putting on my list to give each student an email this year from grades 6-12 -- that will be so helpful.) They critique each others work -- you can see if they do == the comments don't print. It really makes a difference. It helps students do really great work, that is why she likes docs. Mag comes out 12 x per year -- website is updated every day. 2 sections to the paper. Have a professional printer -- send it and ftp it to the printer -- fricky parts press in union city journalism, googledocs, Google Teacher Academy

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38 Birthday presents from CoolCatTeacher to you!

Happy Birthday to Me! Wow! Your twitters, skypes, little e-mail notes and more have really made today special. In addition, my family was wonderful and my amazing husband sent me flowers. Although I still have a stack of grading from here to Qatar - I had a good day.

So, I thought that today, I'd give 38 presents to you for you to open and enjoy. One for each year of this amazing blessed life the good Lord has seen fit to give me.

All of these are free and so so cool! I challenge you to pick a present today, open it in my honor, and let me know what you think!

1. Songbird - This is THE cool opensource alternative to iTunes and it is connected with Skreemr, the music search engine.
   
   
2. Timebridge - This scheduling system plugs into google calendar or outlook and lets you invite people to a meeting, select four time alternatives, and then it books the meeting time that everyone can attend and puts it on your calendar. It reminds them and it rocks!!
   
   
3. Get Atomic Learning Free for 3 months -- I'm copresenting in a webinar with Atomic Learning and Technology & Learning on Monday. If you register AND attend at 4 pm EDT, you will get 3 months FREE from Atomic. This will give you not only the seminar I did for them on Web 2.0 but also, the one that is coming out soon about how to flatten your classroom.
   
   
4. Diigo - This cool tool has transformed my bookmarking, blogging, sharing, and twittering. Install it, set it up to send to your delicious account. Join the educators group (getting close to 400 members) and ad4dcss groups -- when you send things to the group, make sure you select at least one of the tags that "pops up" (these are from our tag dictionary.) Also, go to tools and set up a nice little daily autoblog based upon a tag you specify. (Some just put the tag "blog" for everything they want to go to their blog that day!)
   
   To get the most out of it, you definitely should use firefox and install the cute little bookmarklets. This is a definite tool for those writing papers!
   
   
5. Zoho Notebook -- This notebooking service completely and utterly rocks! Zohonotebook gives you the ability to EMBED video and web pages as well as snag notes from many places. It is an amazing tool! (Check out some of the pages I demoed in a workshop a while back.)
   
   
6. Google Forms - Google spreadsheets has a cute little tool hidden in the Share tab, the ability to create a form. We're using this for the Horizon Project managers to submit their weekly reports. It is so fast and easy and a great way to pull information into a spreadsheet. I even have my national honor society students entering their service time for me into the spreadsheet.
   
   
7. Firefox - If you're still stuck in Internet Explorer, you simply must try firefox. Give yourself a present! The plug ins are incredible. My favorites are: the diigo plug in, technorati tag plug in,
   
   
8. If you're in Princeton come to a free Conference next Friday, May 2nd - Can you tell, I love free? I like to do work with people who provide their services to the general public and openly share information. This conference on Friday is chock full of amazing speakers and I'm going to enjoy being on a panel with some of them to talk about Flat Classroom.
   
   
9. Twitter - Again, try this one. Some say they don't "have time for twitter" or don't "get it." Just sign up, add me as a friend, and then go in and see whose talking to me, add some who sound interesting and then reply to their messages by saying @theirID -- so to reply to me, you'd say @coolcatteacher -- You may just find yourself conversing daily with some of your heroes.
   
   
10. Hulu.com - I've been beta testing this beauty which lets you watch all kinds of TV shows. Now, you can watch too!
    
    
11. Mogulus - Do you want your own 24/7 TV station? You can do it here. Schedule things to play. Merge videos from other places on the Net. Very cool.
    
    
12. AFI Screen Nation - The Amazing American Film Institute has a new site where your students may upload video and be evaluated by REAL producers, actors, and directors in Hollywood. Their curriculum is totally amazing and I use the videos that come with my united streaming account to teach digital film & movie making. I love the AFI digital storytelling curriculum and highly recommend it.
    
    
13. Toondoo - Make cartoons. This continues to be one of my perennial favorites for cartoons.
    
    
14. Ning (for VIDEO sharing) - I LOVE Ning in the classroom and just found a super cool new feature. If you upload video to ning, it automatically converts it to the most compressed, appropriate version for the web. You may then embed the video anywhere else. This is solving a lot of our access problems for the horizon project b/c schools just unblock the Ning and have access to all of the movies!
    
    
15. Intel Mashmaker - This lets you mash together all different types of websites and I am enjoying working with it. There will be some things I share soon. This is supposed to be a lot like Microsoft PopFly, which I've not tested yet.
    
    
16. Skype - This is another MUST have APP. If you haven't tried it yet, get over there and take a look.
    
    
17. Classtools.net - Embeddable graphic organizers of every kind for your wiki or blog. I Adore this site and use it all the time in my classroom.
    
    
18. Wikispaces -- This is my stable, well supported, wiki darling. One look at the horizon project wiki will tell you why.
    
    
19. Gmail - With the most robust spam filter anywhere, the ability to filter like a fiend, make folders, and import all accounts into one place, this account is a dream come true. Even if you use another service, you can enable pop on that account, set up a gmail and pull all of your accounts into one. And if you use firefox, they have a better gmail firefox extension from lifehacker that is a must install!.
    
    
20. Gcast - I'm really enjoying podcasting from my cell phone -- just a lot of fun!
    
    
21. FriendFeed - A cool little service that I'm really beginning to enjoy to help me follow just a few people.
    
    
22. Technorati Watchlist - A must use for bloggers watching those responding to their work and just to follow the things you want to know more about. The RSS from the search for your blog belongs in your RSS reader.
    
    
23. PhotoBucket - THE place I put my private photos. I like Flickr, but somtimes I just want to make a really cool flash page for my website or do something neat with photos, and photobucket has more robust tools for my photos than I've found other places.
    
    
24. Big Huge Labs for Flickr -- This has some amazingly hilarious Motivational Poster makers and just about everything you can imagine for your photos. Make monster posters, make labels, make anything. If you have photos, this is THE place to PLAY!
    
    
25. Feedburner is a must use for any serious blogger or school Webmaster. You can burn the feed to feedburner, which will let you move your feed from place to place without losing readers! You may also use Feedblitz to e-mail your blog posts to anyone who is "afraid" of RSS. Feedburner has so many other features that serious bloggers will appreciate.
    
    
26. Statcounter - This is my favorite place to track links, traffic, and more. Just a very reliable, accurate site.
    
    
27. Google Reader -- My RSS reader of choice for linear, sequential RSS reading (down the page aggregation), Google Reader now lets you download google Gears and read your RSS offline!!!!
    
    
28. Netvibes - For single page aggregation, I use netvibes as my RSS reader although my home page starts up with iGoogle, I go to netvibes. Their new Ginger version allows you to publish your pages and share with others. I teach my students this handy RSS reader for their Personal Learning Networks.
    
    
29. EdTechTalk - Although I co-host a show here, I always get pumped when I listen to these shows. Do yourself a favor and take a listen.
    
    
30. Creative Commons Searching - This is THE place to look for images, graphics, and audio. It is a must use for students!
    
    
31. 4Info.net - I get the weather texted to my phone each morning. Every time a Georgia Tech football or basketball game ends, I'm texted the score. You can have stock tickers, rss reminders and more texted to your phone. It is amazingly cool.
    
    When I shared this in Maine, one guy jumped up and yelled, "I LOVE YOU!!!" It is that useful!
    
    
32. Newsmap - When I want to take time to read the news, this is what I use. I adore NewsMap. I teach my students to use it to get abreast of what is happening in the world. If you have 1 minute to read the news, go here.
    
    
33. Classroom 2.0 Live Conversations - Steve Hargadon is hosting these amazing sessions. Simply excellent. Another place to "get pumped" and have some great ideas.
    
    
34. My year long PD IS the K12 online conference -- Go back and watch some videos (I love Silvia Tolisano's presentation). I believe that you should consider requiring teachers to view at least one of these presentations and "report back" to the group.
    
    
35. Cool Cat Teacher Wiki - All my presentations, handouts, archives, and STUFF are there. I love to get out sometimes and when I do, I want to capture it.
    
    
36. Slideshare - I LOVE this slidesharing site. It is very useful.
    
    
37. VoiceThread - If I could pick ONE tool for elementary ed, this is it, hands down.
    
    
38. My blog - OK, I know this is ME and you're already here. However, really, I don't know which is more the gift, your gifts to me in the form of comments, links, twitters, and e-mails or my being able to share with you what I'm doing. If you're able to live life a little better, make it through when you're at your wits end, and learn something that improves your life, then I've done something.
    
    

And although this post took me three days to write, I'm still leaving the date for this past Friday.

And for those of you who've sent me e-mails. I will get caught up, I promise. Something has happened because I had my e-mail down to zero a week and a half a go and now have over 600 emails! I'm trying not to drown!

Thank you all for the kind tweets and messages and I hope you enjoy these presents!

tag: Songbird, itunes, Skreemr, Timebridge, Google Calendar, Atomic Learning, Technology and Learning, education, free, Diigo, ad4dcss, firefox, add ons, zoho notebook, Google spreadsheets, Google docs, hz08, Princeton, twitter, hulu, mogulus, afi screen nation, american film institute, toondoo, ning, intel mashmaker, skype, classtools.net, wikispaces, gmail, gcast, lifehacker, friendfeed, technorati, photobucket, flickr, big huge labs, feedburner, rss, statcounter, google reader, netvibes, edtechtalk, creative commons, 4info.net, newsmap, classroom 2.0, steve hargadon, k12 online, silvia tolisano, Coolcatteacher, slideshare, voicethread,

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From the mouth of students: They discuss

Following are some comments from students on the Horizon Project

They are making great points. Again, when we involve students in discussions, we get some fascinating answers and points. (They sound a little bit like us!"

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  Unprecedented Force for Change"-Dan Tapscott's Keynote - Horizon Project 2008 - Annotated

  
  


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  Student #1 wrote on her blog

  
  
  
  
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    Dan Tapscott, Horizon Project 2008’s keynote speaker, gave me insight and inspiration for the project. His knowledgeable comments on the baby boom generation were incredible and it amazed me that he decided to make his entire living on the study of the digital generation, the generation that I am a part of.
    
    
  
  
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    I am a part of the generation that is an “unprecedented force for change,” and we are actively inducing and creating change that will be beneficial and relevant to the world today and tomorrow.
    
    
  
  
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    I agree that technology must be at the center of this change in order for it to be effective.
    
    
  
  
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    Enter technology; students can learn from each other by collaboration through technological advances such as wikis, blogs, You Tube, Facebook, and projects such as Flat Classroom and Horizon.
    
    
  
  
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    Teachers are no longer “transmitters of data,” but active participants in the student’s learning process.
    
    
  
  
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    with our advanced, technological world, we must not only acknowledge the new technologies emerging but we must gain knowledge on how to use them.
    
    
    
    Student #2
    
    
  
  
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    If school became an interactive place where both students and teachers put their two cents in: teachers teaching students, students teaching students, teachers sharing ideas and students executing these ideas-school would be great. If we all focus on change and ways to make interactive learning better we could reach so many people! Not only can we interact with each other but we can raise awareness and pose solutions on the many issues regarding education.
    
    
    
    Student #3
    
    
  
  
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    I really agree with both of what you two are saying, but my question remains, (in an attempt not to sound too cynical): how is this going to happen? I know that Dan Tapscott seeks to view change in the education system, but my question is, how is this going to happen?
    
    
  
  
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    but the real issue is, in so many places education is rigid and all about regurgitation of information. How do we look past that? Is it a mindset that we need to learn how to transgress, or is it a gradually changing aspect?
    
    

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Student insight from Horizon & another video you've got to see!

A student and I were having just this conversation on Friday. In this student's evaluation of Don Tapscott's keynote for horizon, Sarah H in her blog post "Modern Revolution" says:

"we control our screen instead of watching it as our parents did. Kids around the world use their voices through YouTube, blogs, and wikis. We work together to showcase our opinions on what is happening to the world.

Collaboration is not just a word in the dictionary that we have to recite to a chalkboard. It’s something that we have become accustomed to; it is as natural to us as breathing.

We collaborate daily with our peers, classmates, and sometimes even our teachers. Instead of looking at a list of instructions in a book, we figure things out by learning together.

In the digital age, we do not have to strike in front of the White House. We effect change by telling the world the truth from the comfort of our own homes using the Internet with facebook, myspace, blogger, and so much more."

Sarah's prophetic and insightful words (she's in 10th grade!) really resonate with me as I see one of the latest movies making the rounds. (hat tip Scott McLeod).



And as I reflect on this, I think of Kate Olson's comments on "the cocktail party theory" -- Kate says:

"Now, what inspired me to write this post was first noticing that everyone who wrote ABOUT Jon got more comments than he did, as well as his next post “The conversation is getting away from me…..” (more reflections)

I’m going to do the classy thing and close comments here - go show Jon some blogger love and tell HIM how you feel - he’s the one who started all of this………."

I think that again, Jon is going through the typical feeling of all of this. For example, Flat Classroom project has generated a lot of conversation. I do not control it, I do not try to track it all. I cannot!

The whole mentality of how this thing works is not the idea of someone bringing their favorite toy to school and then hording it in the corner during playtime saying, "Mine Mine!" These conversations are not owned by anyone.

Although O'Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 and Bernie Dodge (did you know he has a blog?) created Webquests -- they'll tell you that their own terms are often misused.

I think that books such as Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything have helped me truly understand the societal dynamics of all of these things.

I don't like the idea of ever closing a conversation on a blog post -- I still get comments on very old posts and it also makes me realize that sometimes I need to revisit a topic.

This is about a new place for conversation and we cannot be everywhere at once! It is about sharing conversation and ideas and if any of us don't like the idea that our things might be remixed or talked about somewhere else, then we need to rethink participation in the blogosphere, that is the way the whole thing works!

I'm planning to rewrite 10 habits of bloggers that win to help newcoming bloggers understand how to track these conversations (using backlinks), and how to know that they shouldn't move their blog and how authorities work, etc.

tag: edublogosphere, Kate Olson, Scott McLeod, Horizon project, Wikinomics, Don Tapscott

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Cool Cat Teacher's Cool Sites of the Day! 04/12/2008

• The comment that became a post | Do U C What I C - Annotated

  Another reflection from a blogger -- I love this quote, "It's lonely outside the box!" It has been very insightful to share information on how people of all types feel about the edublogosphere.

  tags: education, edublog

• Modern Day Revolution - Horizon Project 2008 - Annotated

  I'm reading some great posts from students about the keynote. This one in particular was very captivating.
  
  In the digital age, we do not have to strike in front of the White House. We effect change by telling the world the truth from the comfort of our own homes using the Internet with facebook, myspace, blogger, and so much more."

  tags: hz08_keynote, education, brightideas, hz08, usercontent, hzmeta

• BeTwittered : 32Hours

  Be twittered has a gadget AND a moble gadget for twitter -- I'd love to hear how you like it. This means you may add a gadget to your homepage of igoogle to keep up w/ twitter on your start page. The mobile gadget allows you to put the app on your cell phone to track twitter. This is from 32 hours.

  tags: twitter, edu_newapp, brightideas, education

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Remembering who I am

Remembering who I am

I am not an avatar nor am I an id
I am not my twitter nor my SL identity
I am not my diigo and wikis aren't me
I'm a mom and a teacher in all simplicity.

Tis easy to get caught up in "being something" more
when what I am to be is often the two feet on my floor.
No one else can hug my kids nor wipe a wet tear
love the unlovely or calm the raw fear.

The pressure from "somewhere" to be some kind of star
is deceiving and distracting from helping us be who we are.
Balance, perspective, focus, and time offline
will become successful habits of the overachieving mind.

Reject the invisible hand that pushes you to stress
think what you want and how time should be spent best.
Choose your life's course, don't just flow with the stream,
you can be more...but it should fit with your dream.

Words from my heart
I love my true friends through the Internet. The amazing teachers and "real people" out there who are just the "salt of the earth" as we say in the south.

So many amazing people who are just wonderful and thrill me with their presence. I enjoyed unplugging last week during spring break so very much. I was literally offline and disconnected for 6 days! I really was able to spend time with my family and think.

When I returned and looked at my inbox, I saw it through a fresh lens. I am 37 years old and at this stage in my life, I already gave up one career to be a stay at home mom. My focus has to stay my family or I'll give everything up again!

This is what I saw:

• A ton of Diigo invites and friends -- not a lot of "stuff" and pretty easy to handle, but still it was there.
  
  The effort of setting up a "new" network. Someone needs to handle this friend thing or there is going to be an inherent obstacle in starting something new. Now, I weigh heavily my decision to join anything. A lot of us do. This just reinforces that and although I believe Diigo is definitely a place to join, I will continue to think twice about where I join and what I recommend that others join as well!
  
  
• About 10 emails from people I've never met, that have never commented on my blog and as far as I know don't participate in our educational communities ASKING to be a guest blogger on my blog.
  
  At this point, I have had one guest blogger. I share everywhere and I'm glad Louise made such an amazing post, however, I really feel like the one place online that is truly ME is this blog. This is me and who I am as best as I will share publicly, I guess.
  
  Having a blog that is gaining readership is exciting, but I still think that 1 comment is probably worth more to me than a lot of readers that might just have added me to their RSS in some workshop but never take a glance.
  
  I'm inspired by Dale Carnegie and remember sitting in my bathtub as a 6th grader reading his book How to Win friends and Influence People and not being able to put it down. Across the years he spoke to me and helped me.
  
  If I cannot help people, I don't want to blog. And when I hear from readers... the real people it means something. If I hear from people who are genuinely interested in education and me as a person, that is great too. If they want to tell their story, I love that.
  
  However, if I'm just someone that they want to use to accomplish their own thing and don't care a rip about me or my readers... just our pocketbooks... get lost.
  
  It is about authenticity and caring about real people.
  

• Some comment spam - I had a few people who had good comments and several who just commented and had a link to their own work. The comments were like "nice blog, see what I'm doing here." Again, poor netiquette and comment spam.
  
  I can tell everyone from personal experience that this blog has been built upon my own commenting in other places and not just stingy posting here. Haven't had time to comment or read much lately, but I'll be doing that again soon!
  
  
• Some cool messages and stories. I love those. I'll never forget the message someone e-mailed me from a coffee shop in Virginia about how a post had gotten to her at just the right time. She was discouraged and the post had her crying in her coffee with joy. Wow! To be a part of something like that means a lot to me. Those stories keep me blogging when I get discouraged.
  
  
• Requests for appearances, workshops, etc. This is where I feel somewhat of a double edged sword. I'm booked through December of this year and that is fine with me. I'm very excited about the fact that Julie and I are working out the final details to offer a TWO DAY intensive Flat Classroom Workshop in July in St. Louis. We'll share more later.
  
  I want to help people and do things and meet people, but I'm only going to take three appearances a semester. I just have to do that. I want to be here for my family and my students and have done the travel thing. I don't want to go on the "rubber chicken eater" circuit (as Doug Johnson calls it.) I want to stay home with my children and run around on the farm. So, although many ask me when am I going to quit teaching... I can tell you... it ISN'T happening any time soon.
  
  I am contemplating the types of work that I will do when I do something... when I get out, I personally want it to be with the people who have the vision to do something with what I'm sharing. I think that more teachers are going to have such opportunities and it is important to be choosy or else you will just feel very, very burnt out.
  
  
• A few freelance articles -- This is what I love to do... write! Writing, web appearances and a few in person things... that is fine with me. I dream of having my book on the rack in my books a million and on having an article that helps people understand technology in Woman's Day. Silly dreams, but it could happen.
  

So, you ask, why do you even share this stuff?

Well, I share it because there are some other teachers out there who may be struggling with being "sucked into the vortex." This vortex of educational change is like a wild stallion... you can jump on his back, but if you're not careful, he'll control your destiny and you'll not master your own.

There has got to be some common sense with all of this. (and lots of prayer) Everyone having instant access to everyone else is sometimes NOT a good thing, particularly when some of the people want to use you.

If you are just starting or really becoming "known" in educational circles, I just want to encourage you to learn from what I'm experiencing:

1. Know your friends. They are often the people who talked to you and others when you were "nobody" and just starting out. Do they talk to beginners?... if not, watch out.
   
   If you're starting out, see how the "established" people treat you. If they treat you with respect, they're worth following.
   
   
2. Filter Spam ruthlessly - Spam might be e-mails. It might be people who IM you constantly. It might be wasteful twitter accounts.
   
   If it is email and you use folders, filter that person or account if you really have to read it to one place so that you will not be distracted. If it is facebook or some other place, replace the e-mail with RSS. Take time to look at every e-mail and apply filtration rules. Can the spam and take back your life.
   
   
3. Filter focus ruthlessly. I follow the time honored strategy of having a top 10 - to do list daily. I have a master list with the rest of the items, but this gives me focus. And yes, blogging was on my list today!
   
   I find that I have to take a hard look at the places that "suck me in" and won't let me go. And, when I go there (like twitter), I use a handy timer widget on my desktop that I downloaded from Google Desktop.
   
   I also made a folder in Google Reader called @HOTLIST (the @ puts the folder at the top of the list -- some people just name this Aardvark but that is a little silly.) This includes my 10 must reads of the day. This too is a secret, but I'll tell you that I often focus on those people who I know and work with pretty frequently as well as a few other sources who are dissenting or different viewpoints.
   
   
4. Invest your time in things that save you time. I've been having a little trouble with airset, so I set it to synch to Outlook. I set outlook to synch with Google Cal and then started using an amazing site called Time Bridge to schedule my appointments. It lets me invite people to a meeting and give 5 times that work. People RSVP and it sets the appointment AND puts it on my calendar for the best time. Then, it reminds everyone automatically. Isn't that amazing?
   
   I also love using the diigo auto blog posting feature and replaced the delicious posting with this one which allows me more characters and thoughts for each bookmark as well as tagging and annotation. I'm not sure what I think about it yet and may set it to not post daily. Still thinking on this one. I don't know if I like the autoposting of the links. Before, I just spliced delicious into my feed only, and now my blog looks a little "linky" -- I wish I could customize the blog post from diigo a little more.
   
   I also love that I can twitter and access the standard tags for the Horizon projects from within diigo. All of these things make it a HUGE time saver for me.
   
   
5. I have also used twitterfeed to post the things I KNOW I will post anyway. It just saves me time. This includes, the Wow2 show, Wow2 links and my blog posts. That is it. I've seen some use it to excess which means I unfollow their twitter in a heartbeat!
   
   
6. A good old dose of common sense - When I feel like all of this "stuff" is stressing me out, I listen to myself. That is when I send myself offline. My mile wide rebellious streak kicks in and I take an little vacation from it all. This is why I refuse to get a blackberry. Online is PART of my life it is not my ENTIRE life! It will have its place and its limit or it will be gone. Period.
   

In this period of overchoice, we must learn how to make choices that make our lives better and help us further our dreams and mission in life.

It is OK to disconnect. It is important to remember that popularity comes and goes and not to get hung up on it. Be who you ARE not who you THINK people want you to be.

I guess it always bothers me when I see someone twitter

"I'm reconnecting with my long lost cousin"

or

"I'm seeing my grandad for the first time in a month."

It niggles at my mind that perhaps their fingers should be off the cell phone and their eyes and hearts should be connecting with those they love.

Like the mother I saw a couple of weeks trying to fly a kite when her son while talking on a cell phone... we still need the humans in our lives. We need to do a better job of focusing on the things in front of our noses.

If us tech-heads cannot achieve balance, people won't want what we have.

Master time lest it master you.

tag: teaching, education, inspiration, Timebridge, airset, Google, Google calendar, twitter, wow2 show, twitterfeed, hz08,

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Annotated Links 03/30/2008

ABC News: Could MySpace Be Your Kid's Social Key? Annotated

tags: coolcatteacher, digitalcitizenship, edu_trends, education

This is an interesting article that presents some interesting commentary on students today. It is very brief but makes some excellent points.

Quotes from the Article:

Larry Rosen, professor of psychology at California State University-Dominguez Hills, has long studied "the Net generation," the first to have grown up with the Internet, not to mention cellphones. In Me, MySpace and I: Parenting the Net Generation (Palgrave Macmillan), he helps parents understand social networks. His advice: Talk to your kids, learn the technology and don't panic. USA TODAY's Janet Kornblum spoke with the author.

They're very self-motivated.

This world encourages us to multitask. I think it encourages kids to be much less patient. More terse.

This generation spends time at home — connected. Kids have to be social. It's all part of the preteen and teen years and young adult years

Because they have a combination of people they know face-to-face in the real world and people they don't, (those of the Net generation) get a lot of chances to bounce ideas and to test out things on a social network that they probably wouldn't do face-to-face.

Site Community for coolcatteacher.blogspot.com,Cool Cat Teacher Blog

tags: coolcatteacher, edu_newapp, edu_news, edublogger, education

This is the "site community" for my blog -- I'm learning a lot about what people have marked and the annotations feature is really cool. If you blog or have a website, you should look at the automatically created site community -- also check it out for those sites you really enjoy reading -- you may turn up some of their great old posts that you've not read!

This morning I came here before I went to twitter. This seems to be the place to be right now. Sti | Diigo Message System Annotated

tags: @education_trends, collectiveintelligence, collectiveknowledge, connectingpeople, coolcatteacher, diigo, education, hz08, hzmeta, twitter, virtualcollab

This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence. These are extracted comments and my thoughts on what was said from the annotation feature in Diigo.

Following are some "high points" from a variety of educators.

Lisa Parisi

This morning I came here before I went to twitter. This seems to be the place to be right now. Still not sure of all the groupings, taggings, etc. Reading what everyone writes and hoping to get it soon

Will play on Sunday with Karen McMillan and Alice Barr. Anyone else want to join? Anyone want to teach?

Ryan Bretag

I'll join in the fun if you'll have me. Let me know time when you know.

I was going to present 20 minutes on Del.icio.us, but I may show Diigo instead - or both - or 20 minutes is not enough....

This new version "appears" to have fixed that issue, plus I've been impressed with the new features.

Caroline Obannon

I'm second guessing teaching only del.icio.us myself, too.

Liz Davis

I'm wondering if Diigo is too much for the newbie. Delicious is so simple and obviously useful. I'm afraid Diigo would scare some people away. I'm still inclined to start with delicious and save Diigo for my more advanced users (of which I have very few).

"Maybe overwhelming would describe my feelings.

However, I can defely think of quite a few people who would balk at it, too and favor the simplicity of Del.icio.us.

but most likely wouldn't participate in the social/sharing aspects they offer.

The nice thing about the Diigo toolbar is that you can select which buttons to see, so for those who might find the extra choices of tools overwhelming, it can at least be customized.

I'm feeling a Diigo obsession building. As soon as Explorer comes up I check to see if there are any messages in Diigo. How nice of them to put that number right on my toolbar!

I created my very first List last night,

Kristin Hokanson

Liz I think it may be too much ially for the newbie and I will continue to send to delicious.

There is one feature that I REALLY like and that is that you can EMAIL something you are tagging so for folks who LIKE to get those sites emailed, you can still meet their needs without an extra step yourself

I second that. I like Diigo, but del.icio.us simplicity is so inviting.

The value of Diigo is that it brings a number of tools together allowing for multiple entry points. The old training model is show them a tool from start to finish that goes over every single detail. With Diigo, why show everything to those new to all this? It is rather easy to click into your bookmarks. From there, teachers have a space they can grow. It also provides a wonderful opportunity to differentiate with your teachers -- the whole multiple points of entry.

still I will have fun, exploring it and making effective use of it.

it is the ease of integration with blogging and twitter -- I annotated a page yesterday and pulled it directly into my blog. I can twitter bookmark that is important quickly -- AND I can use the tagging standards for the horizon project without having to remember the darn tags -- tag dictionaries are the most useful things to have been invented in a LONG time -- we need to set them up within one of our educational groups!

I don' t think I would not teach delicious. But perhaps starting with delicious and saving Diigo for later is a good idea.

I do find this site to be much more powerful and useful than delicious. I never really used delicious to its full potential. The fact that I am here just chatting with folks makes me want to stay and contribute to the collective knowledge.

We are conversing about the usefulness of diigo and I thought you might like to be included.

Maggie Tsai has invited Wade Ren to this conversation

Are you guys planning a Sunday get-together? If so, please advise the time - I'd love to join you and help answering any question.

Howdy! Wow, what can I say? Diigo is a lot more than delicious. If CoolCat Vicki hadn't written about Diigo again, I probably would have stuck with Delicious...and,if I hadn't been using Twitter, blogs, played around with Facebook, the social networking side of Diigo would have been just so much MORE to learn.

my concern would be to NOT limit learners in workshop sessions to the path I followed in learning these tools. Simply, folks, here is a tool that will grow as you grow and learn more about living and contributing in an interconnected world. The ability to have conversations like this, to annotate web pages, to share relevant quotes and tweet as needed...makes me wonder at the need for blogs at all.

A few folks are considering exploring Diigo on Sunday morning and having a conversation about it now...join in and learn with us!"

tag: Diigo, social networking, educational networking, social bookmarking, education

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Links for the Day 03/29/2008

I'm testing the feature that lets me post annotations and links from diigo to here. I know that many of you are getting sick of hearing of this little tool and if you're a beginner, perhaps you should wait, however, for me, I'm finding it useful.

Forgive me as I learn to work through the kinks here. It may be bumpy at first, but this gives me a more robust way to share links -- many of you have e-mailed me that you like my link goodness best! This way it can become part of my blog... I'm still not sure I want it here, and yet there are STILL people who go to the site directly and don't understand RSS.

FeedFlare™ Catalog

tags: blogging, twitter

These are the cool feedflares that you can add in addition to those already used in Feedflare -- for bloggers using Feedburner to RSS things. There is a new one called twit this.

Streamline It Part I: Diigo or Bust : Metanoia

tags: diigo, edu_newapp, techintegrator

Ryan Bretag says, "Okay, here it is. I’m dumping Zotero, Delicious, and Google Notebook for Diigo. Blasphemy to some, I know, but I can basically get all I need in one: "

This chart by Ryan Bretag summarizes what the sites can do. He left off a few but this is great.

A Collection on "Internet Safety Information" (cyberbullying,cybersafety,internetsafety) | Diigo

tags: administrator, all_teachers, cyberbullying, digital_citizenship, digitalcitizenship, internetsafety, techintegrator

A great list that I came across from the educators group on Diigo-- this is a collection of internet safety information -- great resources. This is an excellent tool.

Top News - Analysis: How multimedia can improve learning

tags: all_teachers, bestpractices, curriculum

An analysis of existing research supports a notion that already has begun to transform instruction in schools from coast to coast: that multimodal learning--using many modes and strategies that cater to individual learners' needs and capacities--is more effective than traditional, unimodal learning, which uses a single mode or strategy.

My Membership - Group Widget | Diigo Groups

tags: diigo, edu_newapp

Group widget for the Educators Diigo Group

Group Tag Dictionary

tags: all_teachers, diigo, edu_newapp

This is the current tag dictionary -- we really only get 17 that show up and I had to truncate the names -- but if you join the group and send pages to the group when you bookmark these tags will come up.

educators | Diigo Group

tags: all_teachers

This will be my first "official" bookmark to the educators group on diigo. I'm sending it to the group to make use of the standard tagging dictionary I've set up to use with this group -- this will help us share at a further level.

Keeping students cybersafe! « On an e-journey with generation Y

tags: connectingpeople, digital_citizenship, education, hz08, hzmeta, internetsafety

Some good best practices from a teacher on keeping students cybersafe. I like this practical list and think it should be shared. It is important that we teach students about how to be safe online and good digital citizens.

**TIP: Click the annotated link below**

This morning I came here before I went to twitter. This seems to be the place to be right now. Sti | Diigo Message System Annotated

tags: @education_trends, collectiveintelligence, collectiveknowledge, connectingpeople, coolcatteacher, diigo, education, hz08, hzmeta, twitter, virtualcollab

This is a very honest, open discussion between educators about why diigo or delicious -- I think the fact we can have this conversation within diigo at all says a lot for the usefulness of the tool. Diigo is an emerging tool for social bookmarking and collective intelligence.

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: The Five Phases of Flattening a Classroom

tags: collectiveknowledge, connectingpeople, education, flatclassroom, hz08, hzmeta, virtualcollab

I wrote this post to outline the progression I take my classes through to get them to the state where they may collaborate directly with students in another country. I put a lot of time and thought into the progression of collaborative skills.

Wikinomics » Blog Archive » Wiki collaboration leads to happiness

tags: collectiveintelligence, collectiveknowledge, connectingpeople, govt_business, hz08, hzmeta, usercontent, virtualcollab, wiki, wikinomics

This incredible chart says it all about the importance of wiki collaboration. This should also be a message to bloated bureaucracies looking to squeeze that last bit of efficiency out of already overworked staff. This is an important chart for horizon project students to include, I believe.

Blackboard claims initially denied

tags: education

U.S. Patent & Trademark Office issued its Non-Final Action on the re-examination of the Blackboard Patent. We are studying the document, found here, but in short, the PTO has rejected all 44 of Blackboard's claims.

The Map Is Not The Territory: the changing face of the edublogosphere at dougbelshaw.com

tags: blogging, edublogger, education, researcher_thoughtleader

Doug Belshaw's ruminations on the edublogosphere and how it is changing. I'm going to be thinking on this one.

tag: education

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Black Monday: Bloggers on Trial

I cannot have a funday Monday today because my heart is heavy.

• Al Upton's project with 8 and 9 year olds has been ordered to close by the Department of Education and Children Services in Southern Australia.
• Intrepid Teacher, Jabiz Raisdana has resigned because of parental complaints about some copies of Flickr artwork that was created by him.

While these are two totally different issues, my heart is still heavy. I would like to address my thoughts on both of them.

A) Al Upton
Al has distinguished himself as a safe, effective teacher who models best practices with 8 and 9 year olds.

I can see parent concerns as well with this age and it is a balance. As Al says, parental concerns and SAFETY must be handled first!!! We cannot ever put children at risk and sometimes to parents PERCEIVED risk is far greater than the actual risk.

We have to always err on the side of caution as Al did with taking the site down.

WE also have to remember that parents have a general distrust of the Internet. Most of them just do.

What I do:
This is what I do with my publicly blogging 9th graders (15 year olds):

1. I sent home a permission form for EXPLICIT permission to blog publicly. Those students whose parents wouldn't consent to a public blog were given a semi private alternative on youthvoices.net.
2. The students who blog publicly use pseudonyms.

This is what I do with the horizon and flat classroom projects (16 year olds):

1. We use permission forms. (http://horizonproject2008.wikispaces.com/Getting+Started+Checklist)
2. Students can only use first name and last initial.
3. The spaces we use ARE public.

For my 8th grader and younger we use private spaces on either Ning or classblogmeister. That is the age my school has set and 10th grade is when we allow the projects to go completely public. The wiki is public for 9th and 10th graders.

What we should do:
We should clearly state to parents our policies on public and private spaces and inform them about those spaces by age. They also need to understand that if it is private... that means the teacher and students ONLY (and administrator should they choose to be a part.)

We should monitor public spaces closely via RSS.

My hope for Al:
My hope for Al is that they will allow him to have a private space for his 8 and 9 year olds (at a minimum) -- if he is able to restore the mentors project, then we could do background checks or something...

OPEN EDUCATOR ID PROGRAM
I believe that we're going to need some sort of "open ID" or "universal check" for educators. This would allow us to facilitate educators who can move around to various projects who meet a certain standard level or background check.

How could we do this? What can we do?

I don't know... but it sounds like a great thing for ISTE or another organization to establish... a criteria for approving an educator and their practices and they understand and have completed a level of training for interacting on global projects.

This would ensure safety and ubiquity, but also that we can collaborate and work together at all grade levels. This is something we need to discuss and do.

Let's talk about an Open Educator ID system. It just makes sense.

Intrepid Teacher's issue
This one is a bit more troubling. I'll let Jabiz speak for himself:

Let me clarify that Intrepid Teacher is Jabiz' personal blog. These were links from the personal blog NOT from the classroom blog:

"A member of the parent community at my school followed the link I had supplied here at Intrepid Teacher and found some material on my blog that they considered objectionable and took the issue to the school board. I was immediately asked to resign. The administration felt that I had given students direct access to material, which they felt was inappropriate. This material was a series of works of art I had done as part of an independent online art group last year. In order to avoid further trouble, I have since removed the prints in question.

The dilemma my director faced was not whether the material was inappropriate, but the fact that I had consciously made a link, which in their eyes encouraged students to view the prints.
I have to reiterate that I never made a direct link from my student site or invited or encouraged them to view my personal or professional sites at any time. I think this fact warrants repeating, because this perceived link was the main issue for which I was asked to resign. As a matter of fact the image itself was not even on my personal blog, but on a Flickr page."

The bottom line is that unfortunately Jabiz does not have freedom of speech and we are seeing this in many places... not just the Middle East.

We and our students must understand that we cannot post ANYTHING unless we are content that ANYONE can view it.

However, I will say that it bothers me to think of a parent ferreting something out on his personal blog and calling him into question. The truth be known that every single one of us writing could have something found about us that someone doesn't like and we could be called into question for.

What I do:
My blog is rated "G." G for the comments, G for the content. My opinions are that of my own, however, I NEVER blog about individuals here at the school and remain a professional about it.

I'm careful about my flickr photos -- but really I just have them for the school only.

I will not add my students to my facebook page... I connect with other educators there.

I won't add my own children to my facebook page... it could lead people to them... I have a private account with another e-mail address for linking with family (particularly my own children.)

I understand that if someone really doesn't like me that they will find something here that they don't like. They will. I don't know what Intrepid Teacher could have done to change things. I really don't.

What we should do:
Make sure that we are careful about telling students about our online "identities" and personal blogging spaces UNLESS we are completely OK with them viewing everything we write to or link to on that page.

My hope for Jabiz
A school who will understand his talent and desire to be more and will respect freedom of speech.

Separate Accounts / Separate Identities
I think that this is leading to totally separate accounts for school work and private social-time work. We're going to have to have "split personalities," I'm afraid and have two identities... one for all school accounts and one for all personal accounts.

So, I'm going to need two blogger accounts (what a mess that would be), I guess. And Ning ID's for school and personal.

A blur
And yet, the lines blur. I'm a part of Classroom 2.0 and apply that in my classroom, however, I participate there in my personal time. I twitter on my own time and yet pull things from there into my classroom.

I truly feel that the lines between school and work are blurring incredibly and the idea of a "split" personality is one that I cannot really comprehend.

However, if You are a teacher and you want to have anything "PG" rated on any of your "personal" work... you should definitely get another ID for those activities and consider using a pseudonym.

Transparency or keeping your job?
I know we all like transparency, however, the truth is that freedom of speech seems to becoming more of an illusion... especially for teachers.

And with our kids documenting everything they are doing... here in the US ... we're going to have a hard time finding anyone who could run for president in 30 years... with all of the "dirt" on youtube.

We have a lot of issues to think through and discuss.

My applause!
This is why I applaud Al and Jabiz.

They are up front and open and willing to allow themselves to be scrutinized, knowing that many will throw stones and many will offer support.

What we need here is to learn from their openness so that their pain and heartache is not wasted.

We need to determine:

• What are the practices we need to put into place to facilitate the movement of teachers as mentors and advisors on global projects at all grade levels? What organizations can help us? (That is what we have them for, after all!)
• What practices can we put in place to have personal lives and be able to "live" on the Internet as human beings while again knowing that as teachers, our students look up to us and our parents often look at us with a harsh eye?

So, I hope we will discuss and add our thoughts to this. We must get past the fact that we like them and would trust them with our own children to see the issues at hand!

And remember this... it is not about "blogging." The safety of our children COMES FIRST! Doing the right thing by them COMES FIRST! We as teachers have administrators to report to and we must be under their authority (or we are fired or quit and find a place where we fit better and that happens too!)

However... we must understand that we MUST create safe, effective spaces to effectively EDUCATE our students for their FUTURE and for their CURRENT SAFETY.

It is not an option to just cordon ourselves off from one another and pretend that we are not interconnected. For, many of these students by age 10-12 are online together in a melting pot of cultures and societies with no guidance at all in a place called myspace and to leave schools out of the picture in the educational process is IRRESPONSIBLE.

What do you think? What are your ideas?

tag: Al Upton, Jabiz Raisdana, blogging, education, teaching, learning, safety, cyber safety, digital citizenship, online safety

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