#4 BONUS! Set up a Collaborative Calendar

I have set up 3 different collaborative calendars for my school to control resources- laptop cart, graphic design lab and PC lab. These are set up as resources on our Google calendar. Essentially one just adds an event, invites the "resource" to it and if the room or resource is available, it turns up in the guest list and is not available for others at that time.

I also use google spreadsheets to set up parent teacher conference signups for our school. This entails making a spreadsheet for each teacher with blocks of time to choose from, sharing these and putting the links on a blog for access. The only drawback with this is an occasional mistake when a parent overwrites another.

I also have schedule once set up for our google apps domain, but it is rarely used. I set up appointment slots on Google Calendar and shared this with all faculty for summer PD and 1:1 help. This was easy and it worked. Although appointment slots are being dropped, edu accounts will still have them.

I'm looking forward to learning more about timebridge and beginning to use this resource.

Challenge #3: Connect and Reflect

One of the names in the connection chapter jumped out at me- Foxfire. Back in the early 70s, as an English major interested in folklore, the Foxfire books formed a staple for conversation in several of my classes. This sort of living history was new for me. I attempted to do my own collecting and very quickly found that it was a lot harder than it looked. Some of the collection and sharing of material is serendipitous I imagine, but the sort of mindset and planning that had to go into this sort of collection was more than a not yet 20 yr old could manage. However, when I see the sort of work that was done by students in the Hudson Falls living history project, I know that it can be done and is being done by students all over the globe and if anything today's technologies make that even easier.

Cross generational connections are a favorite project of mine. We celebrate grandparents day at my school every fall. For the last several years I have had students interview their grandparents, make glogs about them and post them online. I have to say that for the most part, the grandparents ( or special friends, dependent upon the family) are appreciative, and are the most fascinating people I have ever met. Several of my students have interviewed their own parents about their grandparents who are deceased. Looking at the faces of my students' parents recalling special times with their own parents is amazing.

So, reading about Foxfire again, really got me thinking.

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RSS Redux

I first set up an RSS reader about 5 or 6 years ago.  I tend to be very conscientious about checking it in the short term, but then end up marking thousands of posts unread. This simply does not work well for me. I will occasionally check my Flipboard app on my iPad, but it is not something that I use on a regular basis.

What works for me... feeds via email. I actually read these and have a folder system set up on my gmail to tag them and put them into folders as they arrive. Curation has changed and RSS is not always the best resource for me.

Currently I tend to collect feeds that help me solve problems. I am looking at chromebooks as a solution to replace a cart of netbooks, so have subscribed to a free from chromebooksedu on google+.  I am also interested in ipads in schools, so I subscribe to several scoopits on this topic as well as a scoopit on digital citizenship  I use hashtags on twitter and subscribe to a couple of twitter searches to stay current on those.

So, setting up the RSS again.. I found myself wandering about, reading various posts and responding to several: I have not gotten any responses yet.  Will I keep up the RSS? My history says no, that I have other means that work better for me- but I'll give it a shot for the next several months and see if the newer tools or different blogs will make me want to check in. Ya nevah know!

http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=3967

http://whatedsaid.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/work-or-learning/

http://edtechpower.blogspot.com/