5 Free Tools to Stay Organized
Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed and Something Blue?
A quick read and some new tools that we have discussed in class, are used in SUSD, or that could be a nice addition to a PKM. Take a look! I have a new one to to give a try.
Those that have followed my brief journey back into life as a student have heard about my love/hate relationship of APA. As a tech instructor, I totally get the need to cite sources to give credit to the creators of content and to be good role models of digital citizenship, but to what end? Do I need a secondary degree in APA to complete my doctoral work? Is the value of my writing diminished because I dont have two spaces after a period, the URL is underlined and an active link, or that a capital is out of place in my reference section? How do we leverage existing technology and writing styles of the modern day?
Google Docs will cite references in APA format, but does underline the URL of the resource. Is that okay or not? In the classes I teach it is because my focus in content and not formalities or technicalities. I want students to do some real honest reflecting and have time to wrestle with and apply the content that I am teaching. I want them to be tech users, to understand how tech improves their workflows, and helps them work smarter, not harder. If the piece of writing is grammatically, mechanically, structurally correct, should I lower a grade for the underlined URL? In the modern era, characters count.
In Twitter, I only have 140 characters to convey my point. Two spaces after a period and I run out of real estate very quickly. For years, newspapers have stopped using the serial comma, as in red, white and blue, as opposed to red, white, and blue. This step was done to save space and because it was cheaper. Less characters of text, less ink to produce. The world didnt stop and we made adjustments. No one notices anymore and some may be wondering what I am talking about at all.
Technological change brings change to our behaviors and activities as in the instances above. I have intentionally left a couple of errors above that have become part of my daily communication. Did anyone spot them? Anyone want to circle them with a red pen? Did it make anyone cringe? Reveal: The errors are the contractions without the apostrophe. Why do we need them? We all know they are there. It is akin to not writing the coefficient of 1 in front of a variable as in, x versus 1x. We dont write it because it is more efficient and saves time, but we all know it is there. Otherwise, maybe dont teach kids contractions at all. Instead, lets train them to be educational researchers and be consistent with APA formatting which does not use contractions at all.
Dr. Seuss had it right all along as we can see in the except from Green Eggs and Ham. “I do not green eggs and ham. I do not like them Sam, I am. I would not like them in a house. I would not like them with a mouse. I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere!”
Green Eggs and Ham image from http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Kgqd4kiNL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg
Red Pen image from http://rlv.zcache.com.au/red_pen_tshirt-r5b69c12b4fe74e3f8145e6a309aac92c_804gy_324.jpg
Poor Jan Brady was born too early. For those kids of the 70s, like me, that grew up on the Brady Bunch, most will remember the episode where Jan has an imaginary boyfriend named George Glass. Over the weekend, I heard about 2 new websites that assist someone create an imaginary boy or girl friend.
The websites are: https://invisiblegirlfriend.com/ and https://invisibleboyfriend.com/
invisible girlfriend
The taglines read, finally a girlfriend your friends can believe in! Seriously?
Everyone knows that I love technology, but can I say this is just sad? The site will assist you creating/naming the significant other and allow you to create “your story” using a form similar to a mad lib. The site promises “real time” interactive proof. If you text your boyfriend, they will immediately text you back. This is problematic in some many ways.
After some further thought I wonder, how many virtual girlfriends can I have? Can I be a virtual player and the envy of all of my friends? Will GF or BF collecting become valued a symbol of status and rank like friends on Facebook?
People impersonating other people on the internet is so rampant that a new definition of the word “catfish” was added in 2014. For those unfamiliar with the term, “catfish” is a new “technology-related term, refers to a person who sets up a false social networking profile for deceptive purposes.” There was even a movie and is a current MTV show with the same name.
Sometimes we just need to ask, “just because technology will allow us to do it, should we?” Technology adds so much to our lives and allows us to work smarter, faster, and better. I would prefer to meet via Google Hangout than having to drive somewhere to meet F2F. There are over 2500 online dating websites, and according to Online Dating Magazine, another 1000 start every year. Those numbers are staggering. If you are looking for love, the number of places to look has grown exponentially from my dating years. If you arent looking and happy to be single, cellebrate that and be adult enough to let others know. How do I let Eve Plumb know about this great new service?
We all see the newscasts and hear about social media being used to bully and harass kids, publicize fight locations, and share videos of all kinds of inappropriate behavior. Kids arent allowed to make mistakes in real life or IRL so they make them in Cyberspace where the consequences are longer lasting and more serious. Are all forms of social media bad? Are there ways we can leverage the tools in our schools? Edutopia discusses this topic in the article entitled 50+ Tools for Differentiating Instruction through Social Media and provides more tools in the GDoc linked here. Edutopia recommends having clear learning outcomes, assessing students’ prior knowledge, and that using social media can support struggling students and provide opportunities to challenge more advanced students.
One of the most valuable resources I have is my Personal Learning Network or PLN which consists of my colleagues, friends and like minded ed tech peeps that create, curate, and share resources via blogs, websites, Youtube and social media platforms like Twitter and Google +. In our Tech Systems Approach to Leadership course, we were introduced to the idea of a PKM or Personal Knowledge Management system. There is definitely overlap between the 2 networks in their function and tools that are used. Howard Jarche (pronounced Jar key) defines a PKM as “a set of processes, individually constructed, to help us make sense of our world and work more efficiently.” See more here. In short, a PKM is a plan to help find resources, organize them for easy retrieval, and sharing them across a variety of medium to spread the content and materials. 
The Seek or gathering of information phase involves accumulating resources and gold nuggets during your internet mining. The improved work flow is accomplished, not by a Google search, but by leveraging technology tools to have content flow to you. In the diagram, you can see common tools like iTunes and iTunes U for podcasts like Ted Talks or Small Schools, Big Tech, and courses offered by K-12 districts and universities, common social media like Twitter and Facebook, and RSS feeds using Feedly.
The Sense or curation phase utilizes one of my fav web tools in Diigo and some new ones that I am experimenting with called Zotero and Pocket. Pocket is similar to Evernote and I am not sure how it fits into the picture just yet, but Zotero is pretty sweet! Anyone working on any academic research needs to look at this tool for organizing and annotating references for the very easy creation of a bibliography in APA v6 format. APA has been killing me! Many have seen on my posts and tweets on that topic during this program. I am hoping this is the lifesaver for which I have been searching.
Finally, the Sharing or dissemination of content is completed at this stage and again uses many common social media tools. This new blog is a part of my sharing and participating in the ed tech and tech integration discussion. I also use a really cool tool called IFTTT or If This Than That with recipes for over 160 web based tools to streamline your workflow. One of the ways that I use IFTTT is a recipe that searches my Diigo library for new entries and then posts the resources to Facebook, Twitter and some ed tech pages. Others like sending me an alert about rain for tomorrow so I can plan an appropriate outfit or to turn on my Christmas lights once the sun goes down. Check it out! Efficient and Fun!
How do you learn about new tools and tech? Do you have a PLN or PKM? Do you tweet?
I shared this recently with my cohort, but it is worth repeating. Twitter is more than fights between Real Housewives, pictures of dinner, athletes talking smack at halftime and other banal jibber jabber. I am not saying that it isnt out there. It is. But not on my twitter feed. Education is the single largest sector of tweets on Twitter. Of the half billion tweets each day, 4.5 million are about education and related topics like #edtech #commoncore #grade6math. Educators that are not on Twitter are not part of the modern dialogue about education. Check out hashtags for educators!
Ed reform and technology integration are topics I post about frequently. The idea of genius hours combines both of those passions. Genius hour evolved from the 20% time that Google employees had to work on independent projects to find solutions to bugs, issues or processes in their products. 20% time birthed many Google products over the years like Gmail, Ad Sense, Google talk and many others. Educators have adopted the 20% time philosophy into their classrooms in the form of genius hours where students are able to work on independent projects that interest them. This article on the Teach Thought is part 2 of the series (part 1 here ) discussing the design and planning of genius hour projects and what the authors call passion based learning.
Whenever I consider a new project, activity, or ed reform, I always ponder, “would I want this for my daughter and her school?”. Genius hours allow kids to work on a topic of interest in an engaging activity like blogging, making movies or PSAs, animated cartoons, etc. An opportunity for kids to get away from the “sit and get” while pursuing their passions in application based activities is the one of the goals of the Common Core standards. Genius Hour activities can easily leverage the tech tools of the day, including Google Apps and many other free web based resources. We have just run through our first round of some genius hours at some of our sites led by one of our awesome site coaches, Irene Valdez. Students at Spanos, Skills, and Henry schools, investigated personally selected questions of study about forests and ecosystems which tied into field trips the classes would take later this year. The students investigated their questions and areas of interest and then presented their findings to their class. This open ended activity is very different than what our students have been experiencing in class during the years of NCLB and some structure was needed to help scaffold and guide the students, much like what Google has recently instituted with the 20% time for their employees. Would I want my daughter to have the ability to participate in genius hour? Yes! I cant wait to see what round 2 produces at our schools.
This blog will be a place for reflecting on the topics (My Thoughtful Spot in Pooh’s Corner) that interest me and a place to journal my progress through my doctoral program. If you are looking here, you most likely participate with me on one or more social mediums and know that ed reform and tech integration are topics about which I am very passionate.