a whole new dianne

This week I will be offering workshops after school for the employees of my district to revisit some of the basics of the Mac OS and to review some tips and tricks.  In preparing for the presentation I thought about the members of the staff who cannot be there and, upon the suggestion of my friend Debbie, a technology assistant, I have put together an eToolBox page to highlight the Macs, give some tutorials and help to those coming from a PC environment and to provide a place where employees of my district can access tip sheets and directions on various things dealing with their Macs.

In addition to these lists of resources there are also 2 presentations in Smart Notebook form for the “Meet your Mac” and “Meet your Mac.. Again!” sessions. 

http://etoolbox.wikispaces.com/mac

At DEN preconference at PETE & C.

Although I am thoroughly disappointed in Google’s decision to discontinue development of Google Notebook, I know that life must go on, without one of the tools I used frequently and taught extensively.  After a few weeks of exploring all the other alternatives, I finally settled on Evernote for my web clipping/note taking needs.

I have been using Evernote for a few months personally but never really explored all of its options until forced to find a replacement for Google Notebook.  After spending several hours with it today and installing the Firefox add-on as well as the Bookmarklet tool, I now feel confident in my choice.  Although it doesn’t do EVERYTHING Google Notebook does (can’t re-order notes within a notebook at will, published notebook doesn’t look as nice as Google Notebook), I still feel that it is an awesome tool.  Just the fact that it is available in 3 places – my computer, the web, and my iPhone – speaks volumes for its capabilities.

Want to know more?  As I always try to use the tool to teach the tool, check out my Evernote Notebook about Evernote.  Click the link or explore the embedded widget below to learn about Evernote and how to get started.

http://www.internet4classrooms.com

WOW! It is an understatement to say that this site is JAM PACKED with many many resources and tools for teachers in every grade level and discipline. There is so much here it could seem overwhelming to the newcomer. Here’s what you can find on this site, in a nutshell:

• Links for K-12 Teachers – categorized by subject, grade level, instruction, and overall resources.
• Grade Level Help for K-8 – skill builder sets to help students practice specific concept areas. An unbelievable amount of resources!
• Assessment Assistance – resources for help for students on standardized and general subject area assessments.
• On-line Practice Modules – self-paced learning tutorials on many subjects including Power Point, Macintosh, Inspiration, Word, Excel and more.
• Daily Dose of the Web – start your visit here daily with updates on question of the day, subject areas, quotations, brain teachers, and interesting trivia.
• Searching – use one of the many search engines listed. Some are very kid-friendly and return visual results instead of text.

I challenge anyone to not find at least FIVE resources they can use! Go ahead – I dare you!!

(cross-posted to WSD Professional Learning Network Ning)

WSD’s eToolBox Wiki has been nominated for the Best Educational Wiki in the 2008 Edublog Awards, aka “The Eddies”.

To brag or not to brag, that is the question.  It took me a few days to decide to post this shameless self-promotion, but you know what, why not?  I’m proud of the nomination and I work hard on the eToolBox.  I deserve it!

Please click the image to vote for the eToolBox.

My district is running 3 training workshops this week for the teachers who have eClassrooms – Smartboard, Macbook, speakers, cameras, wireless internet. Yesterday we trained the teachers who are just getting their boards this year. Today we are training the teachers who got them last year (with the newbies invited too), and tomorrow we are hosting a “potpourri” of multimedia tools for their eClassrooms.

I am not the main trainer for yesterday and today’s sessions, but I was there to introduce the session, our new Professional Learning Network, and to be around in case of emergency (Smartboards are finicky with Macs sometimes ) Anyways, yesterday went great and I was all geared up to go in today and have a fantastic day.

Then the puking began. Not mine, my 5 year old son’s. At 10:30 pm, fever of 103.5 (yikes!) and ruined bed. Needless to say, I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to work today. Which really bothered me because I was always one of those teachers who felt that they couldn’t NOT be in school because I had to teach my students and I was doing them a disservice to leave them busy work with a sub. I feel even more strongly now that I’m teaching adults. They are giving their time to be there voluntarily, I should be there to teach them.

So, today, I made my first Ustream recording to do the Ning network introduction. It’s not great because I recorded it at 7 am or so, and the quality is really bad when you blow it up. My intention was for the trainers to show the video on the Smartboard, but I also advised them to have the participants watch it on their macbooks.

So here it is, my very first Ustream recorded show and an introduction to our Professional Learning Network!

Live video chat by Ustream

My newest creation for my co-teaching lesson tomorrow: Getting Started with Edublogs. This time I exported from Keynote as a flash file instead of going the Power Point/ Slideshare route. All the hyper-links work correctly and you just click to advance to the next slide. NICE! Click the image below to view the flash presentation.

Check out this presentation to learn how to embed presentations into Wikispaces by using Slideshare.net.

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