As a classroom teacher, I often encountered a seemingly simple task that was deceptively challenging, namely, sharing a collection of web pages with students.  In most cases, writing a URL on the board or a handout is completely ineffective, resulting in a good deal of lost instructional time while the teacher helps students fix typos and correct other issues.  URL shortening services, like bit.ly and TinyURL can help, but can also lead to problems of their own.  The solution I usually adopted was to post the links to any web pages I wanted students to use in class on the course web page.Because this was a site that students were familiar with, it was easy enough to ask students to use it as a sort of portal to pages I wanted them to look at in class.

What if, however, you want to present students with a list of web pages you want them to visit in a particular order?  Again, you create such a list on a course web page, but you won’t be certain that students visit the indicated pages in the specified order.  That’s where the tool reviewed in (more…)

Last week I conducted my first 3 Faculty Meetings. (more…)

I’d like to take this opportunity to pray that God will bless all of you who are beginning a new school year.  The beginning days of a school year are a crazy, exciting, scary, busy time for educators and there are always many, many tasks to keep track of.  This week’s Web 2.0 Weekly app might be just the thing you need to help you stay on top of all that.

Remember The Milk (RTM) is a simple tool that allows you to enter tasks and reminders quickly and easily.  Tasks can be added to customized lists, then assigned due dates, tagged, associated with specific locations, link to URLs, assign priorities, and even share with others.  RTM can be configured to send you reminders via SMS, instant message (using almost any service you can think of), and email.  If that was all that RTM did, it would be a great tool.  However, RTM does even more.

Remember The Milk reminders can be set via a special email address that is given to each user.  The service is also iCalendar-compliant, so you can easily import your data into your Google Calendar or Apple’s iCal.  And if that wasn’t enough, RTM also creates Atom and RSS feeds that you can subscribe to in your RSS reader!

All of those features are part of Remember The Milk’s free service.  The new, $25/year Pro service adds mobile apps for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile devices.  There are also numerous third-party apps/services and a few other official ones.

Remember the Milk’s standard service is free to use (and there don’t even appear to be any ads).  RTM supports all major, modern web browsers on Mac, Windows, and Linux and has been online since 2004.  With the numerous, powerful features, and its easy-to-use interface, RTM should be in every teacher’s Web 2.0 toolbox.

This week’s Web 2.0 Weekly reviews a curriculum resource for teachers at all levels of education:  Curriki.  Curriki is a wiki-based project with a mission to “provide free, high-quality curricula and education resources to teachers, students and parents around the world.”  This is an exciting service because it gives educators a place to share their curricula with others and to work collaboratively to refine it.

Participating in the Curriki community is easy, as video tutorials are provided for every major feature, including registering a new user account.  Anyone, including non-members, can access the site and search the shared resources.  Members can participate by uploading content, commenting, revising shared curricula, and making collections of their favorite site resources.  Community contributed content is rated and reviewed by master educators and Curriki (more…)

For this week’s Web 2.0 Weekly, we’ll be taking a look at a great resource of critical thinking exercises that may not even be on the radar of most educators.  If any of you are frequent NPR listeners, you’ve probably at least heard of the Car Talk program.  Car Talk has been on the air weekly since 1977.  Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the two hosts of the program, are MIT graduates who opened their own auto repair shop.  The show itself is both humorous and highly informative as Ray and Tom seek to answer callers’ automotive-related questions.

By this point, you might be wondering just what this has to do with 21st century education.  As we all know, (more…)

I got back today from my first Principal Conference, and my first thought was did my principals have that much fun when I was a student? (more…)

I am continually amazed at how lax some individuals and organizations are when it comes to securing their computers and networks.  Here are some helpful hints to securing your technology infrastructure.

First, regularly change all passwords, especially ones with administrative access to systems.  Additionally, when you add new networking hardware, change the password from the default value.

Second, write down all important passwords and keep them in a secure location, like the school’s safe or a locked file cabinet.  I know that most of you have probably heard that you should never keep a written list of passwords, but it’s preferable to being in a situation where no one knows what those passwords are.  Case in point, I know of a several situations where an organization contracted out some computer work (server, etc.) without obtaining passwords from the people doing the work.  Later on, those same individuals refused to hand over the passwords.  Further, the individuals in question had remote access to the servers, so the organizations were forced to pay someone else to redo all of the work that had been done.  Always, always, always, get your passwords from outside contractors, and change them once the work is complete.

Third, make it clear to all employees that they should never give any password to anyone.  The only possible exception to this may be to give a password to an internal tech support staff member (but never a student worker) in the event of a user-specific problem.  And if you do give out your password under these circumstances, change it immediately afterward.  Also, stress that users should log out or lock their computers if they are leaving the room.

Finally, create a list providing staff with some ideas for creating difficult to guess, but easy to remember passwords.  Emphasis that passwords should never be names of family or pets, birthdays, or anything else easily guessed by someone with a bit of information about someone.

It is time to promote a pure rap artist.  I will actually be featuring a few Christian Rap Artists, but Manafest is my favorite.  Plus he is Canadian. (more…)

Our Web 2.0 Weekly feature is going on summer break.  It will return in two weeks with new Web 2.0 resource reviews.

Most, if not all, teachers have extensive collections of books in their classrooms, oftentimes for student use.  Knowing precisely what books are in your collection and who they may have been lent out to.  LibraryThing provides an online way to accomplish that.

LibraryThing is a very powerful tool for managing and sharing your collection of books.  Adding a book to your LibraryThing collection can be done in one of two ways.  The first is as simple as entering the title of your book.  LibraryThing searches the extensive Amazon.com database (or any of almost 700 other databases) for a match and displays the results.  You then add your book by clicking on the image of its cover.  LibraryThing lets you add detailed information to each book including tags, comments, summaries, ratings, acquisition dates, reading dates, and more.

The second method for adding a book is even easier, but requires a CueCat (make sure to get a USB one) or other barcode scanner.  The scanner is used to read the books’ ISBN barcodes which are then compared against the above-mentioned databases.  You can also use a scanner to create a text file containing many ISBN numbers to add several books at once.

Strengths

• Extensive databases contain information about most books  you may have (books not found in a database can be manually added)
• Support for ISBN numbers and scanners can ease the process of creating your collection
• Extensive features for sharing, rating, and receiving recommendations can greatly increase the usefulness of your collection

Weaknesses

• Free accounts are limited to 200 books
• No built-in method for handling circulation needs (many users use tags or comments for this purpose)
• LibraryThing uses ISBN-13 and ISBN-13+5.  Many older books may have ISBN-10.
• Lack of separate user and administrator accounts

LibraryThing offers several levels of service.  The free service allows you access to all features with a limit of 200 books.  You can upgrade to a paid account which removes that limit for $10/year or $25 for a lifetime membership.  You will need to create an account to use LibraryThing, but you are only required to provide them with an email address if you want the ability to retrieve lost usernames and passwords.

To use LibraryThing requires a computer with Internet access (dialup will work for this) and a modern web browser.  If you want to scan your books’ ISBN numbers, you will need a compatible barcode reader.