#18 Acceptable Use

Today's mission on my TIS journey is to check out our countie's Acceptable Use Policy and blog about it. Here are some links from the county policy manual that discuss technology http://www.edline.net/ExtLink.page http://www.edline.net/ExtLink.page Basically many teachers are not aware of what the policy they sign says. Especially if you are using a school computer, you have very little privacy on the machine. Expect any email you write or things you do can be monitored. We have an Acceptable Use Policy that the students sign every year. We keep a copy at the school level and the original goes to the board office. They say they will keep them from year to year but we always get new ones every year. If someone doesn't have one on file, we keep sending them home until we get a signature. We have called home before too to make sure it gets signed. They don't address web 2.0 very much so I figure there will be more on this in an updated policy. Teachers should read this stuff more closely.

#15 RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication which is a family of web formats to update frequently updated works like blogs.

This year we added the Flipboard app on our Galaxy tab.  I am supposed to add a picture.  But first I must say that I think Flipboard is way cool.  I incorporated my Google Reader, my Google+, my Facebook, my Twitter, and my Linked in.  You can also add Tumblr, Flicker, YouTube and lots of other connections.  It then looks like a newspaper that you can flip the pages.  Touch the articles and you get the full article.  It is a really nice app.  I am adding two pictures.  Front page and Front page of Google Reader.  A big thumbs up to this app.

#12 Find Something New 2.0

The assignment I chose for today on my TIS Journey was to Find Something New 2.0 and share it with my teachers in my school. I followed the link for Goweb2.0 and started browsing. I noticed on the right side were categories. I chose education apps and a new list popped up. From the list I chose Game Classroom. This is the site www.gameclassroom.com They have a newsletter you can subscribe to plus a bunch of high quality educational games. This site was created by professional educators and is designed to go with state standards, so the games are probably better suited for school than say Cartoon Network games which my daughter loves. I plan to put this on my school's portaportal and promote it at our Back to School meeting. I think the teachers will really like it. There are good articles on the site to for teachers or parents.

#14 Become a Reader of Blogs

Number 14 of my 23 Things in my TIS Journey is to become a reader of blogs. I have been reading blogs for awhile. Google+ and Twitter helped introduce me to several good educators who have very insightful and helpful blogs. My very first blog I got into was Richard Byrne's Free Technology For Teachers. This is a treasure trove of information and helpful ideas. I subscribe to his blog by email and reader. It is by far the most helpful blog I have ever found.http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ A newer blog I found just recently on Twitter is The Coolcat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis. She blogs often and has lots of useful stuff. I looked at some of the other blogs on the list. I still like these better. http://www.coolcatteacher.com/ Start following educators and hashtags on Twitter and you will find lots of great blogs!

#19 Skype

I have been a skype user for a few years. I used to use a lot more than I do now because of my iPhone. I use FaceTime more. We had an author in our school and we used Skype with him so he could connect with his wife in Wheeling. She is the illustrator and he would read some of the writings the students had completed and she would illustrate them. We projected this in the library so all the students who had contributed writing could see the interactions and illustrations she was making. Since then, our county has blocked Skype making it much more difficult to use. You must plan way ahead and email the county coordinator to when and for how long you want to Skype and he will unblock it for a small amount of time. I would like to do a project where we connect with another school and talk to them about something we are studying in common. I wanted to have my 4th graders meet up with a 4th grade class from Nebraska or Missouri and play songs together. I have some music teacher friends I met through a listserv that I think would do it. Skype is a great tool to make teaching a lot less isolated. We should reach out and share more.

#21 Attend a Webinar

Today's topic for my TIS Journey is attend a webinar. Yesterday I attended a webinar, well actually 2 webinars. Simple K12 was having a presenter spotlight series from Kim Munoz. You can follow her on Twitter @techmunoz She is an excellent presenter. I have attended several of her live webinars over the past year. Yesterday's topics were Finding and Evaluating Free Web Tools. She showed us how to follow some people on Twitter, some really good blogs including Richard Byrne's Free Tech for Teacher site, Diigo social bookmarking, and finally a new site I had never heard of called EduTecher. This is also available as an app. The person who runs this site gives links to things he thinks are good and then you can check them out and favorite them if you like them. You can share them with others too. It seemed like a great tool so I downloaded the app to try it out. The other thing that Kim Munoz did the webinar was on Prezi. We talked about the educational Prezi as well as regular Prezi. I have tried before to make a Prezi and I have yet to make one I like, but with her tips I may try again. They are engaging and fun to watch. I recommend everyone join Simple K12. Go to www.simplek12.com and sign up for a free account. With the free account you can watch the live webinars free. If you want to see the on demand webinars and get certificates you have to join the paid version. Hold out for the email offers. I finally got mine for $100 a year. It is a great site to be current though. Give it a try.

#10 Figure Something Out on Your Own

QR Codes or Quick Reader Codes are a relatively new piece of technology. I found out about them early last year at a Simple K12 free webinar. I learn a lot from Simple K12 really. The figure out something by yourself is a pretty good idea. You know I have never handed a student a new piece of technology and have them say I can't use it because I haven't has Professional Development on it. Students try to figure things out and are far more intuitive than teachers. I can see lots of great uses for QR codes. I like the ideas of hard linking and remembering, especially with a link to YouTube. I also like the idea of using them on powerpoints to hyperlink to websites. At my daughter's school there was one on a bulletin board and it gave you instructions to get a prize. My day so far is going well. I am pretty happy with this blogging thing. Kind of a creative outlet. This is my QR Code that I made form www.qrstuff.com and it links to YouTub. It is about Digital Citizenship and would be good to use for a class.

#4 Wallwisher

When I went to Wallwisher to sign up, I found that I had already created an account with them in 2010. I believe I had planned to use it with my music class and then got distracted by so many other things that I already do.

I am going to embed both my old and new wallwisher in this blog. I think this is a good tool and I may try it at a faculty meeting this fall. I need to get everyone to start bringing their laptops with them and then it would work better. I guess I could just project it.

My original Wallwisher




My new Wallwisher

#3 Twitter Part 2

The second part of this task involves following a hashtag and then blogging about it. I chose the #WV hashtag and saw some tweets from Senator Rockefeller as well as some from the City of Clarksburg, the Charleston Gazette, Greenbrier Valley, and other WV stuff. This would be a good search when you are studying current events. Some other good educational hashtags to search includ #edchat, #iste, #teachers,and #edtech. Learning to use and follow hashtags makes Twitter so much more useful. Get the app for your mobile device. Also if you like to follow a hashtag without rechecking all the time try Twilert. It will send you an email summary of all the times the hashtag you are following was used that day.

#3 Twitter Part 1

I am already a huge fan of Twitter. After I learned how to follow Hashtags from a Simple K12 webinar given by Steven Anderson, Twitter actually went from being something I thought was dumb to a useful tool for me. I highly recommend you follow him. There are a lot of great educators that are willing to share on Twitter. Some of the better ones include Kyle Pace, Jerry Blumengarten, Kimberly Munoz, Christopher Casal, and Crystal Kirch. The more you follow, the more you can learn.

#5 Wordle

As part of my TIS Journey I had to create a Wordle.  Personally, I like Tagxedo better because you can make your word clouds in different shapes and have more creative control.  Wordle is still a cool site.  Since I have taught music for 23 years and always start the year with Patriotic Songs, I made a Wordle of the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner.

#2 Become a Blogger

Today I started a blog for my TIS Journey.  This is my first blog I have ever written myself.  I thought it would be harder than this.  I think I will use this more often than I thought I would.