Tech Tip Tuesday

Pinterest is a great resource for creating your Personal Learning Network (PLN).  Pinterest is a social media site that allows users to create and share virtual bulletin boards, or pinboards. This is a great way for teachers to virtually organize their files. You can use Pinterest to bookmark blogs or other sites that inspire your lessons, you can collect lesson and activity ideas without cluttering up your teacher desk or adding a file cabinet to your already overcrowded classroom.

Setting up a Pinterest account is easy:

Go to www.pinterest.com and follow the prompts to create an account. You can even login or create a Pinterest account using your FaceBook account. Need more information? Click here to see what it’s all about. Need even more information? Click here to learn the basics.

What should you pin? Anything you want!! (Or anything that is allowed in the terms and conditions.) Create boards for Professional Books. How many times have you attended a workshop and someone mentions a book that you must read? Pinterest is a great way to keep those organized and since there is a Pinterest app for your phone you will always have your reading list at your fingertips. You don’t have to do all the work yourself. You can follow other people and see what they are pinning. That is the beauty of social media and PLNs. You can look around outside of your school building for inspiration and teaching tips.

Other boards you might think about creating:

Grade level boards

Content boards

Math strategies

Reading strategies

Literacy ideas

Classroom management and organization

Freebies

Social Studies

Read alouds

Your boards are only limited by your imagination. J Happy pinning.

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!! Yes, I know that greeting is a few weeks late but technically aren’t you supposed to say that the first time you see someone you haven’t seen since the previous year? Isn’t that a required regulation mandated by the federal government for the entire month of January? By the time February rolls around the year is a month old and the countdown to summer vacation has started. So, since it is still January and I haven’t “seen” you since last year – Happy New Year!!!!!

Let’s talk about Social Media. Social Media isn’t just about keeping up with friends and family or stalking ex-high school sweethearts. Social Media is great for Professional Development and Life Long Learning. The three main Social Media platforms we will focus on in this series of installments are: Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.

Last night was the Grammy’s and my Twitter Feed was well, all a-twitter with live Grammy updates and quite frankly it was more interesting than the Grammy’s themselves. Twitter does provide for quick access to all things trivial, entertaining and viral; however, it can be a great source of useful professional information, as well. First, let’s look at the anatomy of a Tweet. Click here.

Tomorrow we will talk about Twitter Feeds you should follow in the name of Professional Development.

Shift 3 aka Hashtags

I watched Olympus Has Fallen this weekend. I know what you are thinking…who has time to watch an entire movie? However the movie actually led to this installment of PLNs. During the movie Gerard Butler’s character had to enter a code into a security computer. (I don’t want to give the movie away so I am trying to be as vague as possible.) Here is how the conversation went:

Ray Monroe: Hashtag.
Mike Banning: What?
Ray Monroe: Hashtag.
Lynn Jacobs: Shift 3!

How interesting. Mike Banning, of the President’s Secret Service Detail, did not know what a hashtag was. What’s more interesting is that Ray Monroe is of a generation that called a hashtag (#) the pound symbol. Hmmmm…………………..oh well, let’s not dwell on the fact that that could be an entire post all its own.

While knowing what a hashtag is was important to national security in this movie (which is well worth your time on a Saturday evening), it is also important when navigating Twitter. A hash tag is a way for people to search for tweets (posts) that have a common topic or to begin/join a conversation. For example, if you search  #LOST (or #Lost or #lost, because it's not case-sensitive), you'll get a list of tweets related to the TV show. What you won't get are tweets that say "I lost my debit card yesterday" because "lost" isn't preceded by the hash tag.

You can find people to follow by searching for conversations by hashtags and then clicking on their name.  Or you can view the graphic below.

This picture is taken from the Twitter help link. Since they are the experts, I thought I would let them explain it.

To actually follow someone, click on the follow button. It really is that simple.

Some Feeds that I follow are:

21stCenturyTch

TeachThought

LeadAndLearn

robertmarzano

Learningfy

Scholastic

teainfo

feedtheteacher

brainpop

TxPrincipalOrg

I feel like I am leaving you hanging…….tomorrow starts 31 Days of Google. We will come back to Twitter. There is SO much more I have to share with you. But, this Blog Challenge is important too. Take a Twitter Tour over the next 31 days while I dive into Google. Then in November we will come back to PLNs and Twitter. I hope that is ok with all of you. See you tomorrow with a Google Load of information.

--- IT Girl

Subscribing 101

When we last left off we were discussing the vast amount of information that is available online anytime of the day or night. Let’s, for the sake of your time and the nerves of my editor, focus on only Professional Development information. Deal?

Let’s also start with some presuppositions:

1.       You are already interested in Professional Development, I mean why else would you be reading this particular blog.

2.       You already know how to evaluate information because you probably already spend a great deal of your “free” time looking for information to make you a better teacher or administrator.

3.       You probably already have a mailbox full of Professional Journals that you hope to get time to read because you genuinely want to learn all you can about new trends, techniques and legislation.

Sure, you spend time reading the occasional random blog because you came across it quite by accident or maybe you found it during a pinning frenzy on Pinterest and you like what you’ve read. In fact the next morning you are telling your grade level or department team what you read with great enthusiasm. They hang on your every word and ask with pen in hand what the name of the blog is because they must see what other treasures they can find. And then it hits you. You have no idea the name of the blog and you realize you will never find it again. EVER!!

Well, never fear there is a solution. Most blogs now provide a subscribe feature. Enter your email, select subscribe, confirm your email address and boom, new blog postings show up right in your email. You can either read the contents as you would any message or click on the link and read it online with all of the internet mystique and bells and whistles. (CAUTION: make sure you read several posts before you commit to a subscription. And yes, you can unsubscribe at any time.)

I just added a subscription option to my blog. (That’s right no more waiting on pins and needles and constant checking to see if I have posted.) When you subscribe you get new content in your email. No new content…no email.

 Simply enter your email address and click submit.

You will receive an email to confirm your subscription. Click on the link provided in the email.

Congratulations you have successfully subscribed to your first blog!!! (Unless you’re already a pro, then congratulations to me – I have a subscriber.)

 

---------  IT Girl