Summer PD for EC3 Teachers

Good morning,

It is hard to believe that the 2011-2012 school year will officially end in just a matter of days! Congratulations on the completion of another fabulous year! No one works more diligently or with more devotion than our East Central teachers!

I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to each and every one of you for your willingness to take part in our EC³ Pilot for school year 2012-2013. As EC³  teachers you will be the standard bearers for mobile learning in the classroom here in ECISD and as such your participation and attendance at meetings and professional development opportunities is vital to the success of the pilot. 

Our four day EC³ Teacher Academy will be held on Thursday and Friday, June 13th and 14th and on Monday and Tuesday, June 18th and 19th. The schedule for all four days will be 8:30 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. You will receive a flyer in the next few days with specifics.

Please contact me as soon as possible if you have a scheduling conflict. These trainings are designed to assist you with the successful implementation and integration of iPads into your curriculum and are crucial for ALL of our EC³ teachers. 

With much thanks,

Mary Ray, M.Ed
District Instructional Technology Specialist
East Central ISD
6634 New Sulphur Springs Road
San Antonio, Texas 78263
(210) 649-2343
(210) 649-1434 fax

Summer 2012 Professional Learning Opportunities

Are you a classroom teacher, district administrator, campus leader and hoping to hone your communication and collaboration skills in a technology-enhanced environment like East Central ISD?

Click image to view full-size

You have the opportunity to attend a variety of face to face workshops, but you can also work on building your own professional learning network (PLN)! And, you may be excited to know that we'll soon be offering webinars that you can attend from anywhere--home, work, that beachfront hotel you are staying at this summer!

Register for Face to Face Workshops via Eduphoria Workshops NOW!

In this blog entry, you'll find 3 sources of professional learning, including the following:

1. Face to Face Workshops in ECISD
2. Building Your PLN
3. Online Conference Archives

#1 - FACE TO FACE WORKSHOPS
Gateway to Engagement: Classroom Websites
You do amazing things in your classroom everyday! In this fun filled workshop participants will learn how to share what they do in their classrooms with the world. You will learn how to add pictures, announcements, calendar events, files, links to websites and blogs that will engage students. See how your site directly connects with the students and parents in your class and how it can improve communication. Classroom websites give teachers the opportunity to make their students into published artists, photographers, writers, and producers with a single click.


Window to Our World: Creating Transparency Through District Websites
Are you wondering how you can get thousands of people to visit your website? Wonder no more! Participants in this workshop will find new ways to attract visitors to their department, community or district webpages. We will start with the basics and move into more advanced tools. Collaborate with other as you learn ways to attract visitors to your site.


A One Stop Shop: Campus Webmasters Ignite
Time, time and more time! Finding time during the school year to learn the basics of maintaining a campus website can be very challenging. Please take this opportunity to come collaborate with other district webmasters, or just sit and learn in a one-to-one environment. Stay for 1 hour or all 3 hours. This is a special time for you to learn how to make your website an information highway.


My Mailbox is Driving me Crazy!
Is your Google mailbox driving you crazy? Are you looking for a better and quicker way to manage your mail? Participants in this hands on workshop will learn how to maximize the features of Google mail to simplify their mailbox. Learn new ways to organize your inbox, personalize your background, enable labs and gadgets, view and download attachments, search for specific emails, and use Google’s chat feature.


Be Your Own Web Designer
Are you looking for a way to share information on the web with students, parents or other staff members.? With Google Sites you can create custom webpages that allow you to embed documents, calendars, videos, pictures, gadgets and more. Participants will have fun designing their own personalized website for classroom, department or district use. You will be amazed at how fun you can have designing webpages.


Classroom Learning Communities Made Easy
Teachers are constantly looking for new ways to connect learning with technology. Join us in exploring how Edmodo can turn your classroom into a learning community both on and off campus. Participants will learn how this secure social environment can give teachers a secure place to post messages, create assignments, have work turned in, post graded assignments, create calendar events, add items in a digital library, create private class groups and connect with parents. Come and experience how Edmodo can change how you communicate with your students and parent in an online environment.

Connect*Communicate*Collaborate*Create
Create a connected workspace with Google Docs! Store your word documents, excel spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, and PDFs  in “the cloud” and access them from any internet-enabled device. Share your documents with others and multiple users can collaborate on the same document, at the same time! Don’t have Microsoft Office? You can CREATE new documents in Google Docs - no software required! Come see what it’s all about!


Surveys Made Easy (and did I mention FREE?)
Take surveys to the next level with Google Forms! Learn how to create surveys, questionnaires, and even assessment tools that will allow you to collect data for almost anything. Surveys can be shared via URL, emailed, or even embedded on your website. You’ll also learn how to use the web-based tool Flubaroo to create self-grading assessments in a single step! Harness the power of Google Forms!


Videos - Images - Lesson plans - Oh my!
“There’s no place like … Discovery Education!” Explore the many resources available with your Discovery Education account - movies, images, sound clips, documents, presentations, even lesson plans. Put a new “twist” on learning and create your own virtual classroom utilizing Discovery Education tools - complete with assignments, quizzes, and more!


I’ve Got an iPad/iPod … Now What Do I Do? (Grades K-5)
Whether you’ve got one iPad or several iPods in your classroom, come discover engaging ways to integrate these devices into your curriculum. You’ll get ideas for using iDevices as center activities, as assessment tools, for remediation activities, and for the creation of projects. We’ll conclude with an ‘Appy Hour session during which we will spotlight some of our favorite apps!

Operation Engagement! (Grades K-5)
Come learn how to transform your lessons into extraordinary learning opportunities! You’ll discover ways to infuse your lessons with web-based resources and tools that are sure to enhance your instruction and increase student engagement! Participants will walk away with ideas for classroom projects, collaborative group work, skill reinforcement, and much more!


Operation Engagement! (Grades 6-12)
Come learn how to transform your lessons into extraordinary learning opportunities! You’ll discover ways to infuse your lessons with web-based resources and tools that are sure to your instruction and increase student engagement! Participants will walk away with ideas for classroom projects, collaborative group work, skill reinforcement, and much more!

#2 - STEPS TO BUILDING YOUR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING NETWORK (PLN)

1. Read the "Build your PLN" article
2. Create accounts in Evernote.com and Twitter.com

#3 - OTHER SOURCES OF ONLINE PROFESSIONAL LEARNING

• K12OnlineConference.org - Find online workshops from 2009 through 2011 available to you at no cost from the global community of educators! If you'd like to earn CPE hours--one hour Max for each session--for sessions you participate in, check the Summer 2012 Professional Learning Wiki! (available online 6/1/2012)
• 2011 Global Education Conference - View the 2011 Global Education Conference archive, which features recordings and conference materials. If you'd like to earn CPE hours--one hour Max for each session--for sessions you participate in, check the Summer 2012 Professional Learning Wiki! (available online 6/1/2012)

Building Your PLN

Build Your Professional Learning Network (PLN):
Expand Your BRAIN

This group of educators I engage with every day are a living, organic, knowledge base. They are real people with real experiences, and a wealth of knowledge. When I reference my network of educators I call them my "brain trust."

BRAIN = Brilliant Resources At Instant Notice
Source: Dan Rezac, Adventures in EdTech

by Miguel Guhlin (Find me on Plurk/Twitter at "mguhlin")

As a educator, probably one of the tougher challenges you face isn’t just keeping up with the technology, but rather understanding how to leverage it in your teaching and learning situation. While in the past, we were limited by the occasions that served as “learning experiences,” in the 21st century, learning isn’t restricted to a special event bound by time and place. We don’t learn just when sitting in a meeting, or at a conference or from 8:00 to 3:30 PM when school is in session. Today, we have the potential to tap into a flow of conversation, a web-based learning ecology, that we can learn from 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While some call this a Professional/Personal Learning Network, a Professional Learning Community, Dan Rezac (quoted above) calls it a BRAIN.

Whatever you call it, you have instant access to a community of educators dying to share fantastic ways to help you transform teaching, learning and leading. All you have to ask yourself is, am I willing?

As someone who awoke to that fact just a few years ago, I am continually astonished at the rapidity of change. In fact, I had my first — and so far, only — panic attack in July 2005, when driving down the highway to work, I realized that the world is changing faster than I can keep up. The only way for me to respond to that panic attack was to seize control, to realize that I do have some measure of control over how I react to rapid, tectonic paradigm-shifts that inflict terror because they transform the world around me. Not feeling it, huh? Well, that means you haven’t looked over the edge and seen it looking back at you. The only way for all of us to deal with the current challenge to our particular approach to learning — aside from ignoring it completely, which is about as effective as ignoring an oncoming truck — is to seize the wheel and create our own learning network. As technology directors, people look to us to model learning new technologies. Are you taking advantage of all the resources you can to streamline the often messy learning process?

Where Learning Conversations Take Place Classroom 2.0: A place for members of www.Classroom20.com to share links, Classroom 2.0 is a social networking site devoted to those interested in the practical application of computer technology (especially Web 2.0) in the classroom and in their own professional development. *Educators: This is a group for educators to use to share bookmarks. It is completely open and anyone can join. It will have a set of standard tags to help us share things that you might use in addition to your tags. *EDuStreams: Easily track education-related uStream.tv broadcasts (EDuStreams). Find out more about those via the Education World Broadcast Learning article.

WHY JUMP IN?

Christopher Parsons shares that we need to do four things with the overwhelming amount of unorganized content — information, ideas, tips and how-to’s, and personal information — we receive; the kind of content that might be useful in the future but today might be thrown away or filed away in a way — paper notes, e-mail, bookmarks — that would not be useful and would probably be forgotten. Those four things are:

• Read: Read/watch/listen to the entirety of the content that you are presented with.
• Evaluate: Consider what the content means to you, and whether or not it is a source of information that intuitively seems appropriate/acceptable for a task at hand.
• Critique: Moving beyond evaluate, seriously reflect on the material and then form your own opinion of it.
• Write Share your critique with others, so they can engage with you and the original content to develop a cohesive knowledge-product.

In the past, reading, evaluating, and critiquing were done to different degrees by each of us individually. It was rare that any of us actually published our critiques for others to read. Now, it is possible for me to share how what I read, evaluate, and critique connects with my own personal learning and schema. That’s powerful, because individuals like you and me now have the power to publish at will to an audience of millions. The key thing to remember is that as we externalize our thinking, it becomes less of “I am an expert expounding on what I know” and more of “I am a learner, just like you, sharing what I’m learning so that we can learn together through our common errors and maximize our breakthroughs.” Consider that our understanding of learning is changing. We need to think of learning as an experience that happens when we connect with others.

If you fail to connect to the network of learners, you miss out on a global conversation about what you are passionate about. And missing out is a darn shame because it can save you time, energy, and increase your reach, no matter how brilliant (or not) you are. That’s a powerful idea. Smart people get smarter because they have access to the network of learners. People who are just starting out are able to learn as fast as they can to accomplish what they need to do.

When I meet folks who are just becoming aware of the global conversation — usually because I push them over the edge in a workshop — I like to share several tools with them. They are essential learning tools that every 21st century learner should have. Using them involves action, but it is the acts of use that cast out our fear of change. The act of building your own personal learning network (PLN) is your fundamental act of freedom. Start now.

THE TOOLS YOU NEED

Although hundreds of tools are available, you only need a few to get started. Please be aware that the purpose of these suggested tools is to externalize the knowledge-building you do every day. It is also to take advantage of the potential power of networked learning. Thousands of educators are online, and you can tap into their collective knowledge to ask questions and have conversations about what you need to learn. The only expectation is that you share with them what you know. Each no-cost tool listed below does it in a slightly different, but complementary, way.

Here are some to get started:

1. Social Bookmarking - Evernote.com - Use the no-cost Evernote.com to quickly take notes and copy-n-paste highlighted content from the web site.
2. Build a PLN - Twitter.com for information stream.
3. Get a Blog - Blogger.com - You can get an ECISD Class blog to share ideas in a timely manner!

Let's take a more in-depth look at each of these! Please feel free to skip around.

1) Social Bookmarking - Get an Evernote.com account.
Example: Below, you can find examples of "clipped" infographics. With Evernote, you actually make a copy of the content so that even if the original web site disappears, you still have a copy to access!

Ever wish you could access your list of links from any computer, easily share them with others, and publish them to a variety of web sites (e.g. blogs, wikis, Moodle)? If so, then social bookmarking tools make those tasks easy!

As wonderful as many social bookmarking sites are--several now feature highlighting, annotation, note-taking--they present problems due to cost. One free service that remains is Evernote.com, a social bookmarking service, that allows you to bookmark and organize web sites and content in notebooks, as well as "tag" them. You can share the link to your notebook with others, including students.

For example, you can find a notebook of classroom applications of Evernote online.

2) Use Twitter.com to build a professional learning network.

"I have learned more about what people are discovering from Tweets," shares Porter Palmer, an educator in a university Master's course, "than any single blog could bring me. I especially like it when my edublogger friends’ Tweets begin with, 'just blogged this…' I don’t have to guess when they might have updated. I can just click over and read their blog!" Twitter is a powerful Web 2.0 tool to facilitate communication and collaboration--globally. It enables us to get in contact with educators from around the world. Many 21st century teachers are out there. Find them and create a Twitter network that can be a support group, provide inspiring projects, and keep you in touch with like-minded people. All of you participating in a workshop, for example, can be a group.

• Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service, that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

• Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

You can use Twitter specific tools to connect with others. One of my favorites is the Twitter search tool, accessible at http://search.twitter.com. It allows you to search the many “tweets” that occur each day (view a search on Education) and subscribe to the results via RSS. (See the “Google Reader” section of this article for more on RSS). That way, real-time comments about what is critical to your work come to you. Whenever there is contact with other educators, I find my enthusiasm and energy for education renewed. That’s the power of communications. You select whose tweets you will receive so you can build your own professional learning network.

Many 21st century teachers are out there. Find them and create a Twitter network that can be a support group, provide inspiring projects, and keep you in touch with like-minded people. All of you participating in a workshop, for example, can be a group. Locate one another in Twitter.com and become a network.

You can use Twitter specific tools to connect with others. One of my favorites is TweetScan.com. It allows you to search the many “tweets” that occur each day (view a searchon Education) and subscribe to the results via RSS. (See the “Google Reader” section of this article for more on RSS). That way, real-time comments about what is critical to your work come to you.

Some Twitter specific tools:

1. TweepML - Use this service to easily share groups of Twitterers with each other. Imagine that your entire organization's staff signed up for Twitter. Instead of each person going through the laborious process of becoming a follower, you could do it in one click with TweepML. Special thanks to Cory Plough and others for sharing this tool with me. Find out more online at http://bit.ly/c3CucL
2. Just Tweet It - This fun tool enables people using Twitter to find others with similar interests. I can imagine sharing this with educators who are just starting out who need help finding other edubloggers.
   Visit Online at http://justtweetit.com/
3. Hashtag - This enables you to track a specific event--such as a conference like TCEA2009--using the Twitter network. You can encourage people attending a conference or learning event to share what they're learning about and then track them all using hashtags.
   Visit Online at http://hashtags.org
4. TwitterMail - You can send updates to Twitter via email. When you sign up for TwitterMail, you are provided a TwitterMail email address. Send an email to that provided address and it is posted to twitter. This might be great for educators who live behind the "Berlin Wall;" you know, access is blocked by content filters in an effort to "protect" anyone from using the web inappropriately but with the more disastrous effect of preventing anyone from using it all. You can email your twitter updates out and receive them.
   Visit Online at http://twittermail.com
5. StrawPoll - Ever wish you could use your Twitter account to conduct a quick poll, maybe, how many of you think Texas funds the state technology allotment at a sufficient level? Well, you can use StrawPoll to accomplish this using Twitter. Do your own surveys using Twitter...what a powerful way to get answers from your network of co-learners.
   Visit Online at http://strawpollnow.com
6. TweetBeep - You can get email results of searches when people tweet a particular keyword (like a tag). What a great way to tap into the conversation about education and reform without actually having to sit there and watch it happen as it happens.
   Visit Online at http://tweetbeep.com

Whenever there is contact with other educators, there is hope. That’s the power of communications. I can’t begin to share the excitement I felt on September 19, 2000, while participating in a TeachMeet 7 taking place in Scotland. How did I find out about it? Obviously, I was not in Scotland. I was sitting at my desk working on work projects, when a “tweet” came in from Paul Harrington, an educator in Wales. As a result of his sharing via twitter, I was able to participate in the conference via my web browser and listen to speakers like Ewan McIntosh and others share what they are doing in schools in Scotland. Do you think that might have impacted my perspective about the power of global learning opportunities? How might participating in a dialogue with educators from around the world have impacted your perspective?

By combining the power of Delicious.com and Twitter/Plurk, I am able to track more easily ad-hoc professional learning opportunities as they occur, as well as have conversations about them before and after they occur. That kind of just-in-time learning, as it happens, can be very powerful for educators. I invited other educators to join and now we have a collaboratively updated list of EDuStreams —educational professional learning happening online via uStream, Elluminate, Wimba.com sessions that are appearing online. EDuStreams are actually video/audio presentations and conversations done by educators about topics they are interested in. Twitter/Plurk allow us to share those at will, while Delicious.com allows us to keep track of those opportunities and share them with others, even if they are not on Twitter.

You can also use a third-party service known as Packrati (http://packrati.us/) to save your tweets to Delicious.com bookmarks. As they describe it, "We follow your twitter feed, and whenever a status you tweet or re-tweet contains URLs, we add them to your delicious.com bookmarks. Optionally, bookmark URLs in @replies to you, and in tweets you mark as Favorites."

Example: Norms for Online Behavior
Find it here: http://twitter.com with a list of educators to follow at http://twitter.com/mguhlin.

3) Start blogging with your students.
Blogging is a process of reflecting on what you learn every day. How can anyone spend time blogging on top of what they do all day? The fact is that some of my best blogging research — when I decide on Future Blog Posts — occurs while I’m looking for something else. In fact, my focus during the day is learning something, either for work or to satisfy my own curiosity (which begins with a question or a wondering).

At the end of the day, early evening in fact, I quickly look back at what I tagged for a Future Blog Post, which is actually a “tag” I keep in Delicious. I might bookmark many items, but I only blog about those that are immediately relevant or connected.

In the past, I would copy-n-paste the link or the relevant quote or point that triggered my thinking into my blog program (e.g. Blogger) but now I just use the SHARE button on my GoogleToolbar. In that way, blogging for me isn’t a “special” activity, but part of everything I do. When I’m asked about what I know about a particular topic relevant to my work as a technology director, I am able to check my bookmarks. If I have spent time reflecting on the implementation of a technolgy-related project in my blog, I usually bookmark that as well and quickly can pull up the needed information. That work prepares me in advance for questions my job naturally throws at me.

So here I am again, coaching, and asking my students to trust that they will need what I’m requiring them to do: blogging, wiki-ing, social bookmarking, digital story creating, and online discussion. If they can get through my class, they will be able to apply those new skills to their teaching — and their students will benefit.

Source: Cycling through EdTech

In a real way, this is a much different way of behaving and acting. Modeling it for our students is critical, as Cheri points out above, but understanding it ourselves is just as important. Before blogs (BB), I never would have done that (tag ideas, blog about my response/reflection, wikify my resources for others, podcast valuable conversations with other people for later listening). In fact, keeping a journal was a joke for me, even though I knew that every “good” writer kept one. It wasn’t until I started blogging — with a real audience reading it — that I understood the power of blogging everything.

Amy Gehran at Contentious Blog articulates this really well when she writes the following (via Teach-n-Babble):

A blog post is not (or at least, it shouldn’t be) a writing assignment you must prep for and deliver as a finished package…Blog your initial brainstorming…Blog your research and discovery…Blog your interactions. Did you just have an interesting conversation relevant to a topic you’ve been blogging? Ask the person with whom you conversed if you can blog the relevant portion, and whether you can identify them…The clincher to all this is to use your blog as your “backup brain” or at least as a public notebook. Why not get more mileage out of work you would have done anyway by changing your habits toward managing information and communicating publicly? Instead of keeping your thoughts, notes, and conversations to yourself, post them.

In my recent Blog Your World! workshop at the PBS/KLRN ICTT 2007 Conference, I shared it in this way, as perceived by one of the newbie bloggers, Juliet Ray at Deep Thoughts (drop by and give her a comment):

What an exciting day today is! I have created my first blog. Hello digital world, here I am! I look forward to using this site as a way of not only communicating with others, but to “externalize (Miguel’s new big word/concept I learned today) my knowledge.” Additionally, it will serve as a personal journal to assist in reflection on my journey through life.

This kind of externalization is useful to others. For example, back in 2005 I wrote a how-to for doing something in GNU/Linux operating system that used KDE as the GUI (as opposed to Gnome or the others out there). In September 20, 2007, someone found it and blogged about it…if I hadn’t externalized my knowledge, made a “backup brain,” then the information would not have been here for Jim Plumb to discover:

If you want to change the default view in the Linux file manager konqueror check out this article:http://www.edsupport.cc/mguhlin/archives/2005/04/entry_174.htm. I wanted to have the view in tree mode rather than the default icon view.

Another neat result of Jim’s discovery is that I rediscover my own blog entry when Jim writes about it or interacts with it. It makes me want to re-read the entry. In reviewing my social bookmarking network, I noticed Mark Ahlness had picked up on one of my favorite blog entries, The List Article. I hadn’t seen that blog entry in ages, even though every article I write is based on the structure outlined in it.

Blog what you learn, what you do. Soon, you’ll realize you know — and as importantly, discover more — about what is in your head than you think.
Example: LeaderTalk Blog for school district administrators at http://leadertalk.org.

Get started at Google's Blogger.com with an education-related blog about what you are learning and how it is relevant to your work. Ask yourself a few questions to get started, such as What are you most passionate about in your work? andWhat is the hardest thing you do in your work, and why is it challenging? Finally, share your successes — and failures – by answering such questions as What obstacle or problem have you encountered and how did you overcome it?
Some common questions technology directors might want answered include:

• What backup software do you use in your district?
• Have you considered switching from MS Exchange to Google Apps? How did you make the transition?
• What special-education tracking software or web-based service are you using at the District level?
• What kinds of audio/visual solutions are you using to broadcast school board meetings?

And many more. Responding to those types of questions in your blog and sharing resources with other educators via Delicious will enable you instantly to share ideas about important matters relevant to your work.

Use Google Reader to Manage RSS Subscriptions:
Most new web pages now have what is known as an RSS feed button. A web site with an RSS (real simple syndication) feed enables you to read the content without visiting the site beyond the first time. You can subscribe to a site’s content — and subscription is free — and any updates/changes to the site will be delivered directly to you. (Watch this Video.) The benefit of that method is that creating a personal learning network will not result in more email, but less. Instead of receiving email notifications, you go to Google Reader to review the latest updates and changes, and participate when you have a need.

My Example: Miguel’s Shared Items in Google Reader
Get Started at http://reader.google.com

REFLECTING ON THE TOOLS

The tools discussed here can save a lot of time and energy as you try to join the flow of conversation. One of my favorite quotes — which came to me via Mark Wagner — is, “He who learns from one who is learning, drinks from a flowing river.”
I hope you’ll continue to learn every moment and share that learning with others. The rewards are infinite.

eClass: Note-taking in the Now with EverNote

Image Source: http://evernote.com/media/img/products/hero_evernote.png

Schools are increasingly relying on laptops, tablets, smartphones, and other devices to help educate students for the 21st century. Evernote can serve as a solution to help students and teachers collaborate on assignments and projects and access research notes and shared documents from any device.


Introduction
Note-taking in an increasingly online and mobile world can be tough. Not only do you have to keep track of traditional paper documents, but you also need to manage a million different web sites, content on those sites, including images and video.

For example, you might be surfing at home and find something relevant to work. You can highlight that content and then save it somewhere for easy retrieval. Do that a few more times and you end up with either a mass of links and content or an organized set of resources you can share with others or keep for yourself.

If you'd prefer to have an organized set of resources, then this webinar is for you! You'll learn how to use EverNote as a free, easy to use tool to organize the online content that you encounter every day. EverNote works on your computer, as well as your smartphone (e.g. iPhone, Android) so you have access to it anywhere you are connected.

The following is another webinar about EverNote:
Evernote for education webinar from Ronald Toledo on Vimeo.

10 TIPS FOR TEACHERS USING EVERNOTE

Evernote is a great application for educators. It’s usefulness can range from planning a course to delivering a lesson plan to capturing feedback after class. I experimented with using Evernote while I was teaching courses at San Jose State University. It proved to be an excellent classroom companion. Here are some ways to use Evernote to achieve your teaching goals.
As a teacher, my Evernote use falls into three categories:

• Prior to class
• During class
• After class

Prior to class

• Plan and organize your classes with tags: Using tags is a great way to organize your classes on a week-to-week basis or on a class-by-class basis. For example, if you know that there is certain content that has to be taught during the second week of the school year, then for all related content you can use the tag “week 2″. Once you’ve created this system you can keep adding additional items throughout the year.
• Standards database: Compile standards of achievements for your particular grade or subject. You can even share them with teachers, parents, administrators and students using Evernote’s sharing features.
• Professional development: If you use the summer break or vacations to improve your skills or continue your education, keep all your notes, resources, lessons and new ideas learned in Evernote. This also works well for teacher in-services, conferences, workshops and seminars that you attend.
• Classroom templates: Templates are a great way to save time when grading and assessing your students. If you use templates such as grade sheets or student assessment forms, keep them in Evernote so you have them at your fingertips throughout the year.
• Prepare for your absence: Use Evernote’s shared notebooks as a way to keep your class up and running even if you aren’t there. Evernote makes it easy to share a notebook with the substitute teacher. Consider sharing lesson plans, worksheets, answer keys and examples of completed work. This can ensure your class keeps moving even if you aren’t there.

During Class

• Share a notebook with your class: After you create a public notebook,  share the URL with your class. This way anything you add can be viewed by your students (or their parents). Here’s an example of a public notebook that I created for an entrepreneurship class.
• Whiteboard photos: Taking snapshots of the whiteboard is a favorite use of mine. Take photographs of the whiteboard before the start of the class, and again at the end. This gives you an accurate time stamped snapshot of what you were working on, on any given date. You can title or tag each photo based on the lecture number to make searching for specific photos easier. Also, you can share the photos with students that miss a class, so that they have the day’s notes.
• Keep handouts handy: Keep all of the handouts, worksheets, templates, study guides and assignments that you frequently use in Evernote, where they are easily searchable and accessible.

After Class

• Simplify grading: Scan graded tests, including scantrons and add them to Evernote. You can then enter them into your preferred grade-book or spreadsheet when you have time. This is also great if you have a teacher’s assistant. You can share the notebook with them and have them help with the grading process.
• Keep your extracurriculars in order: If you participate in any committees or coach a team, you can use Evernote to keep track of all the different research, notes and information associated with it. Again, shared notebooks are a great way to keep your committee on the same page and makes for an easy way to share collective knowledge about a project.

Evernote Education Resources

Teachers

• How To's and Tips
• Videos
• Case Studies
• Sponsored Accounts
• Complimentary Products

Other Resources

• User Forum
• Contact Support

Evernote allows users to easily capture information in any environment, using the computers and phones they find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere. Evernote is a great tool for teachers and students alike to keep a lifetime of learning at their fingertips. It is available to download for free on Windows, Mac, Web, iPhone, iPad, Android, and other devices.
Feel free to explore the resources we have available for teachers and students. We think Evernote makes a great tool for any classroom, see how.

Education Spotlight

• Evernote for Schools: Join our discussion forum dedicated to Evernote for Schools. Share your experiences, best practices and tips and learn from fellow educators.
• Evernote for education webinar: Learn all about the ways that Evernote is being put to use in the classroom, including a Q&A session.
• Evernote Peek: the first Smart Cover learning app. Now with audio clues and linked notebooks

Evernote guides and resources

via John Larkin

• Evernote workshop guide
• Evernote
• Evernote tips
• Explaining Evernote
• Beginners Guide To Use Evernote
• Evernote Tips Tricks and Resources
• Evernote How To Guides
• 31 Ninja Tricks for Making Evernote More Awesome

And, for bloggers using Wordpress:

• 3 Ways to Integrate Evernote With WordPress
• Everpress ~ Wordpress plugin

Source: http://murcha.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/a-community-helps-lunch-with-an-author-project/

How a community helps “Lunch with an author” project

Posted on October 28, 2011 by murcha | 2 Comments

Few people realize the rurality of the school I teach in nor how culturally and geographically isolated we are. So, it is with some amazement that students are able to spend a weekly lunchtime with an author from New York. Next problem is how to make this work effectively when we live in different days of the week, different time zones etc?
To ensure that students can collaborate and interact at any stage , Christopher sought help from other New York authors and writers who suggested using evernote.
Immediately, Christopher set up an evernote account for us to share. In there he has placed three folders for students to add notes to:-

1. A characters folder for students to add their character
2. A folder for questions to Christopher
3. A folder with advice and instructions from Christopher

This worked well today, when students came in during lunchtime. A number of students logged into the evernote simultaneously, added notes at the same time  without any problems.

Other community involvement

• Christophers’ New York publicist is working on New York  press releases and media outlets to promote this pioneering project. This meant permission forms and special notes have gone out to parents so that they are fully aware of the project and approve  any media publicity.
• Our librarian, remembering that Christopher told  students that “a writer always has a pen with them”,  has purchased  a spiral bound writing book for each student, so they can keep their notes, idea jottings and clippings etc. That was given out at lunch today. 
• Our literacy coach spent lunchtime with us today, helping those students who were having difficulty with their character creation.

A blog has been set up (and is work in progress!) at globalwriters. This will be used to add podcasts, images, other resources, reflections, comments from students etc and perhaps to showcase some of their work.

What would tools would you  suggest we use?

Share Evernote Notebooks via RSS

Ultimately, no man or woman is happy unless they have found a way to contribute beyond themselves. ~Tony Robbins

Playing around with Evernote--which I'm coming to fall in love with, albeit a bit late in the game--it occurred to me that sharing Notebooks of content with the world one at a time was cumbersome. Since dlvr.it was fresh on my mind, it occurred to me to try copying-n-pasting the Evernote shared notebook url--such as the one below--into dlvr-it and see what happened.

https://www.evernote.com/pub/mguhlin/books2read

Not surprisingly, it worked, making it incredibly easy for me to share my reading interests on a variety of topics via Twitter and Facebook as I read them (within 15 minutes). This is awesome because there are many times when I don't blog about what I'm reading, but still think it's worth keeping.

Here's the process:

1) Share Notebooks - This link is available in the top right corner:

2) Review your list of shared/unshared notebooks in Evernote, then click the button to START SHARING:

3) Generate the URL (Web Address) you want for a shared item:

Click START SHARING WITH THE WORLD and you'll see:

4) Copy-n-paste the public URL (right-click on it) then drop it into ifttt.com or dlvr.it. Since I prefer dlvr.it, this is what it looks like for me:

That's all there is to it! You can watch the items show up in your Twitter feed (note I'm using IceRocket Search Engine for Twitter below):

 

Classroom 2.0 LIVE - EverNote in the Classroom

Recording (full): https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/jwsdetect/playback.jnlp?psid=2012-02-04.0758.M.ACE02B5F35AA7E7975F015AAC6F794.vcr&sid=2008350

Tiny Url for Recording: http://hnyctt.me/cr20live-Evernote-BillStites

Recording Chat: http://wiki.classroom20.com/FEB42012

Audio Recording: 

---

Topic: Using Evernote

Special Guest: Bill Stites

Follow-up Reading/Viewing Suggestions: (links shared by participants during the session will be added at the end of the list and also on the Livebinder)
LiveBinder Link: http://www.livebinders.com/edit?id=288123

Want to earn CPE hours (1.5) for this webinar? 

Take these steps:

1. Review any ONE of these (you can review all, too!) - 
• Text: 10 Tips for Teachers Using Evernote
• Text: How My Students Started Using EverNote
• Video: Evernote as a Student
• Video: Student Perspective on EverNote
2. Share your reflections (text, audio, video) about this webinar and the article in the comments section. Be sure to include your name, campus and email.

Checking Out Technology Equipment for the Summer

Note: Cathy Zotz was kind enough to prepare the following tutorial on how to check out equipment.

 
Some of you have had questions about how to create or submit the forms in Formspace for summer jobs to occur or equipment checkout.  

Here are some screenshots that I hope will help you.

1) Login into Eduphoria.  
2) Choose Formspace.  

3) At the bottom left corner choose,   "Submit New Form"

4) Select Technology as your category



5) Click on the title of the form you wish to submit and a new blank form will open. Once you have filled out the form, choose  the Submit Form button found in the menu bar across the top of your form.

 

After a form is submitted you can follow the path it takes after submission (the path will vary depending on the type of form).

Notice the Magnifying glass or pages  button on the top right corner below the "Log Off" Button.

This is toggle switch between Pages/WorkFlow

 

This view shows each stop in the  workflow of the of   the  form.                              
                                               

 

This view shows the pages of your form.