Where is your RSS? (Leadership Day 2009)

School administrators, in order to be leaders in technology, most definitely need to be up to date in the latest technologies and their application for the classroom. Scott McLeod, on his blog Dangerously Irrelevent posts an interesting question for Leadership Day 2009: What is a technology tool that would be extremely useful for a busy administrator (i.e., one he or she probably isn’t using now)?


My first thought: The RSS Feed.

No- it isn't new, but I'm always amazed how at how many people have never heard of an RSS feed, let alone know how to use one. Many administrators don't have time. Well- they might not have time to search for valuable information, but they could probably find time to read it if someone provided it for them. So let's help them out! We "techies" already know the great blogs and tweets out there to subscribe to- lets put all the feeds together into a simple RSS, go to Mr. Principal's computer, set up Google Reader on their system and plug in the feed.

I suggest using some of the RSS tools, like FeedMingle, or YahooPipes to condense the feeds into one. Edu-techies can create a "District 15 Administrator's Feed" whereby all principals/admins would only need to subscribe to the one feed (and it can easily be edited by the creator). No time to read on a computer? You could use an RSS to PDF program like FiveFilters to print out an "Admin Newsletter" of the most relevent blog feeds available.

Perhaps if we can first get administrators reading about great technology, we can then inspire them to try it and encourage application uses in the classroom. So read on- leaders! Read-on!

Posted via email from Teacher Tracks

Online Personality Cleanup: Goodbye MySpace.

Contrary to what most people think, summer can be the busiest time for teachers. Aside from taking care of all the personal tasks we neglect during the school year, it’s often a time for reorganizing, cleaning, prepping and planning for the school year. I’m taking a few moments this month to clean up my online personality; to organize all the virtual clutter in my life. First item thrown off my boxcar- MySpace.

I’ve had my MySpace account for about 3 years. I hoped on board the idea of social networking as a way of easily communicating with people I couldn’t very well hang out with when I lived away from home. As more of my friends and family members set up their pages it did become more exciting, but then Facebook came on the scene. When all my MySpace contacts were on Facebook, plus some, it became evident it was no longer necessary to keep two social sites; I opted for the more popular (and much more user-friendly) one. Goodbye MySpace, off the train you go.

I’m glad I had one though; any teacher who wants to have a thorough understanding of social networking needs to really dive in and explore it for himself. I remember the awe and sudden respect my middle school students gave me when they found out I had a MySpace account. (Of course this was always followed with the inevitable question, “Will you be my friend?”….but that’s for another post…) Readers if you have not yet created a MySpace account I encourage you too…but then chuck it and go to Facebook.

My Online Personality: Admittance is the first step....

If you only have an engine with no cars you’re likely to go so fast you might miss something- something important, humorous, or inspiring. But too many cars on your train will slow you down, and then you’re left wanting, never able to completely catch up.

I MySpace, I Facebook, I Twitter under two names, I blog, I Ning, I have over 300 messages from 30 various feeds on my Google reader a day….and I still feel like I’m not keeping up. I know to keep up with the world you have to keep up with technology. To keep your job, to even get a job these days one has to understand the innovation of what’s on the web and how to manipulate it for your own personal or corporate gain.

But I’ve come to believe that I have too many cars on my virtual train. I’m feeling overwhelmed. I realize it isn’t healthy for my family to have me glued to the computer all the time, but I feel guilty not keeping up with all my rss feeds, I feel like if I don’t check my email several times an hour, or read every critically perceptive tweet, I might miss something crucial to my existence….or at least crucial to my next day.

I have 82 friends on my Facebook. Eighty-two. I’m not sure there are 82 people who care about me enough to want to know what I’m doing everyday; and I certainly know that I don’t care what 82 people are doing on a daily basis. Why do I have it? It is because of the convenience of an online address book? Or is it because it’s a sure fire way of getting a hold of someone and keeping in touch without having to put forth any effort of a real relationship.

When does too much online personality begin to overshadow your real self, the authentic you; the one who closely guards (or used to) her privacy with discretion? Has our society embraced this social media circus because we genuinely care about others?

Or is to further our own ego with, “Here look at this! Look what I have, look what I did!”

Haley from high school- I didn’t like you back then, you never paid attention to me and I don’t care how talented your children are now, what you ate for dinner, or when you started your last menstrual cycle.

Katie from work- we had so much fun last year, I call you and you never answer, we never meet for coffee anymore, but you update your status three times a day. What gives?

I have a huge online personality, and all these nifty tools meant to enhance my life and make things easier are in fact slowing my train down.

.....I need a makeover.

Derailment

The caption on my blog states, “Follow one teacher as she rides the rails of education in America's public schools.”

My train has derailed. Maybe I drove it too fast; maybe the rails became slippery with the icy attitudes of colleagues. Maybe the ballast needed refreshing, or maybe I derailed because they didn’t want to fund my train. Either way, in spring I fell victim to RIF.

Many teachers have received their pink slip due to “Reduction In Force.” For you fellow teachers out there I know you empathize and feel the same pain I do. Regardless of why your district riffed (and we all have our speculations- from legitimate to sabotage, and I won’t get into my thoughts on that here), there is little anyone can do, short of giving you a job, to make you feel better about it.

To be honest I complained about teaching. I was furious with a society that doesn’t adequately fund schools, prepare students for the real world, teach parents how to be better parents-- but that continues to pay stuffy ol’ teachers who have well worn out their enthusiasm for learning, let alone teaching. Complain I did, but I loved teaching.

I loved staying up late to color posters, write meaningful assessments, and test out the latest technology. A long day of playing games, singing songs, writing notes home, and filing endless paper work was somehow enjoyable. Stress could be melted with the teacher’s drug of choice- walking into the local office supply store. I liked the challenge of pinpointing the exact learning disability of a student, or trying the zillionth disciplinary intervention. And yes, even those moments of playing “what’s that smell” and “how did THAT happen?!” have fond memories for me.

I was not lucky enough to get hired back. I did everything, went on interviews, created multi-media portfolios, stayed in regular contact with the district office- for whatever reason my train stayed off the track, and wouldn’t budge. Eventually as the new school year started and I still hadn’t heard anything, feelings of great sadness, depression, and bitterness took over my once happy and creative self. For me, I wasn’t just loosing my job (though not knowing how you are going to pay your mortgage produces all of these feelings too!); no, I was loosing my identity. “Teach” isn’t something I did, it’s something I was.

Despite any residual feelings of bitterness and sadness, I owe it to myself, and my readers (whether 2 or 200), to continue to tell my story this year and share my experiences in education. After all, my experience is a HUGE part of education in America’s public schools, this is happening everywhere! Many districts are cutting some of the best teachers our country has to offer.

Our trains have to take alternative routes in life. It’s what makes life exciting, and if we didn’t have feelings of anger and hurt, then we would never know feelings of happiness and joy.

For now my train is on a detour; I found a position with a great education company here in my town, which is allowing me to stay connected to education while at the same time allowing me to have a very stress-free pregnancy!

Will my train return to its original route? I hope so, but in the meantime I’ll keep chugging along.

Using Del.icio.us Link Rolls

Del.icio.us was first introduced to me by a friend months ago, and I have found it to be an incredible time saver ever since. Did you know you can easily put your del.icio.us links on your googlepages website? (Or your frontpage OR Moodle site?) Here's how:

• Log into you del.icio.us account.
• Click on the "help" button in the upper right-hand corner.
• Under the title "sharing" click: "a guide to sharing bookmarks"
• Click on the button that says "link rolls"

Now you are ready to decide what kind of links you want shared. For example, let's say that you tag several websites "poetry" and you want all of your poetry links to appear on your website automatically as you tag them.

• Under "Display Options" select how many links you want to show (I usually want all of them- so I put in 100).
• Next- give it a title...maybe "My Poetry Links"
• Notice the right hand side of the screen will show you a preview of what it will look like.
• Click on the additional options you would like (bullet point, icons, etc.)
• Click the button that says "Only these tags" and type in the tag you want to share (so in this example I would type: poetry
• **I recommend you click off the boxes that are marked "show your del.icio.us name" and "add me to your network" buttons, unless you are okay with your students having access to see all of your links.

Once you have made all of your changes, and the preview portion of the screen is too your liking, scroll back to the top of the screen where you will see a box with some code. That is the code you will want to cut and paste into your googlepages html box (or any website/blog you are using with html capabilities).

By doing this you have just saved yourself hours of plugging in each link into your web page. When you stubble upon a great website you want to share with your students all you have to do is tag it in your del.icio.us and it will automatically show up as a link on your class website!