Taste of Tech

If you’ve been following along so far, you’re starting to accumulate some useful resources. You have some podcasts that you’re listening to. You’re reading some blogs. Maybe you’ve found a few other useful things along the way. At some point, you’re going to want to go back to these pages.

For the first decade of the web, we used bookmarks. When you’re on a web site, you simply add a bookmark for that site. All of your bookmarked sites show up in a list in your browser, and you can return to them any time. If you’re an Internet Explorer user, bookmarks are called “Favorites.” You can even organize your bookmarks into folders, just like you would with your files. Use different folders for different topics, and you have a nicely organized collection of web sites that you can return to with ease at the click of a mouse.

The problem is this: most teachers I know use multiple computers. At the very least, you probably have one at school and one at home. In many cases, teachers share rooms and end up using several different computers at school throughout the course of the day. But the bookmarks are stored on the computer you were using when you created them. That means you can’t get to bookmarks you created on another computer.

I know. This isn’t technically true. I guess if your school is using roaming profiles, your bookmarks go with you from computer to computer. But they don’t go home with you, and not everyone uses roaming profiles. What we really need is bookmark portability.

Delicious (http://del.icio.us) is one service that helps you manage your bookmarks. Start by signing up for a free account. Then, when you’re surfing the web and encounter a site you want to bookmark, use Delicious instead. You can add notes about the site and choose one or more “tags” for it. Tags are one-word descriptors for categorizing your sites. For example, I use the tag “profdev” for sites related to professional development. I use “2blog” for sites that I want to blog about. You can use any tags you like.

Delicious then allows you to access your links from any computer. Simply log in to your account, and you can manage your links. If you want, you can choose to share your links with others, too. Here are all of the items I’ve tagged with “profdev,” for example. And here are all the links tagged with “profdev” by anyone on Delicious.

You can also search Delicious to see which sites other people have tagged in a certain way. The National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) is this week. A lot of people have bookmarked sites in Delicious and tagged them with NECC. Unfortunately, tags can be inconsistent, because there are some tagged “necc07″ and “necc2007″ too. But by sharing your links, you contribute to the global collection of annotated resources related to whatever topics your tags cover.

Delicious is a really wonderful and useful tool. There’s just one thing that may keep teachers from being able to use it effectively. Sometimes, it’s blocked by Internet filters. In our district, this is the case. So, while you can certainly manage your links in Delicious at home, you won’t be able to access them at school if you work in my district. Since that was the problem we set out to solve, we’re back to square one.

But not really. There’s this program called Scuttle, which does most of the same things Delicious does. The primary difference is that it can be installed on your own server, and you can run your own, internal Delicious. I did that, so teachers (and students) in my district can use our local installation of Scuttle to manage their bookmarks. It’s even tied to our exisiting user accounts, so everyone’s network username and password will work. Because my web server isn’t blocked by the Internet filter, neither is my installation of Scuttle. Alvin actually likes Scuttle better than Delicious, because all of the links are from the same organization, and it’s easier to find what you’re looking for.

Assignment: Either sign up for a Delicious account, or (if you’re a BBH employee) log in to our Scuttle installation. If you’re using Firefox, install the Add-ons (Delicious or Scuttle) that let you easily tag items. If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can use these buttons for Delicious, or add these links to your Links bar for IE. Using one of these tools, tag at least two web sites, so you can retrieve them later.

“Check back frequently for updates,” the web site implores. “I don’t have anything important to say right at the moment. But I’m glad you stopped by, and I expect you to come back again tomorrow just in case I want to tell you something then.”

I never check back for updates.

If a web site isn’t changing, there’s no reason to keep going back to it. But I don’t know if it’s not changing unless I go check. Fortunately, RSS does this for me. I use RSS to go out and check web sites for updates, and let me know what’s new on them. It keeps me from having to constantly go back to those sites when there may or may not be something new.

I’ve discussed RSS before, and the people at Common Craft do a reasonably good job of explaining it. Basically, you subscribe to an RSS feed for a site. When that site is updated, the updates show up in the feed. So you can quickly see when new content is posted.

To use RSS, you need a feed reader. Protopage can be used as one. It’s a great choice because you can set up a portal with links to frequently used sites, to-do lists, calendars and other widgets, and sticky notes. The RSS feeds become one component of your own personalized portal.

Personally, I’ve been using Thunderbird for my RSS feeds. I use Thunderbird for email, and have it configured for multiple email accounts. My RSS feeds just show up like one of these accounts. Each site to which I subscribe looks like an email folder, and each newly posted item looks like an email message. It’s really not email, but it looks like it, and this solution works well for me.

Some people also use the free Bloglines or Google Reader services. These work well, but they’re not really my thing. You can do neat stuff like share the things you like with others, and manage your feeds through a cool web interface. A lot of people really like these tools. They’re just not for me.

To subscribe to a feed, you must first find one. Most of the time, RSS feeds use the little “RSS” or “XML” icons. The web is slowly standardizing on this one. It was created by Mozilla for Firefox, bust Microsoft adopted it and it is becoming more popular. To use the feed, right-click on the feed icon and select “Copy Shortcut” or “Copy Link Location”. Then, paste the feed into your feed reader. When new content is added to the site, it’ll show up in your feed reader.

Note that there aren’t RSS feeds for all web sites. The software running the site has to support it, and it has to be configured at the server to work properly. For web sites that do use it, though, it can be a real time-saver.

Assignment: Find a feed reader that works for you. If you use Thunderbird. try adding news feeds to it. If you don’t, check out Bloglines, Google Reader, or Protopage to manage your feeds. Find and subscribe to at least two feeds, and wait for the content to come to you.

The development of the read/write web has made it much easier for people to post content online. We’ve moved away from a few people posting relatively static “reference” materials online to a LOT of people expressing opinions, reflecting on experiences, and holding conversations.

Because of The Long Tail, some of these people are a lot like you. Maybe you’re the only music teacher in your elementary school. Or maybe you’re the only media specialist in your school district. You might be the only second grade teacher that you know with any interest in online learning. But that doesn’t mean you’re alone anymore. There are others like you out there who are just as disconnected, and you can talk to them.

Blogging is easy. But before you start your own blog (which we’ll talk about later this summer), take a look at what others are doing. Read what they’re saying. Post comments. Engage in the conversation.

How do you find blogs? The easy answer is to use Technorati. That’s the Google for blogs. They specialize in blog indexing and searching, and have over 75 million blogs in their database. If you’re specifically looking for education blogs, you can look at the list in the Answers.com Teacher Toolkit, or this list from the Online Education Database. In reality, though, I find blogs in two ways: either I Google a topic and look at blogs in the search results, or I follow links from other blogs.

They’re all connected, see. I read Alvin’s blog pretty regularly. On a recent post, John Rappold made a comment. John has his own educational technology blog which is well worth reading. John has a link to John Rundag’s blog, which is also pretty good. And so the chain continues. I wouldn’t have known about these guys if I hadn’t read Alvin’s blog. The really flattering thing is that they all link to mine, too.

My point is that you just need a place to start. Find one really good blog related to something you’re interested in. Then, just start following the links to other blogs. If you’re looking for educational technology related blogs, here are just a few great places to start:

• Designed to Inspire, by Jennifer Maddrell
• Dave’s Educational Blog, by Dave Cormier
• Joyce Valenza’s NeverEndingSearch Blog
• Thoughts from a Technospud, by Jennifer Wagner

There are two keys to tapping in to the community. The first is to follow the links on the blogs. If you like what Jen has to say, take a look at the other blogs she’s linking to. Follow the chain. You’ll soon see that there are a few people that a lot of others link to. Those are the really great blogs. The four blogs above are all written by people I know but haven’t met. They’ll set you on the right path.

You can probably see what’s coming next. But hold your horses. It’s a long summer.

The other really important thing is to comment on the blogs you’re reading. Chip in with your two cents. React. Debate. Keep them honest. Extend the discussion. That’s what blogs are for. Get used to providing your perspective.

Assignment: Visit at least two blogs that you haven’t seen before, either using the ones above or others that you find by searching. Then, visit at least one additional blog by following a link from another blog. Finally, post at least one comment on a blog post, contributing to the conversation.

In the last two years, there have been two technologies that have had a transformational effect on my personal professional development. The first of these was podcasting.

A podcast is a digital media file that is distributed through an RSS feed. I know, that’s a complicated, technical definition. Let me try again. A podcast is a an audio program that you can subscribe to. When new episodes are released, they are automatically downloaded to your computer. You use special software, called a podcast receiver, to manage these subscriptions. Personally, I use Juice because I have an aversion to most things Apple. You could just as easily (or even more easily) use iTunes. Once the shows are downloaded, you can listen to them right on your computer, transfer them to a CD for listening on a CD player, or sync them onto your MP3 player for ultimate portability. While they work pretty well with iPods, the digital media players are not really required.

Once you have installed a podcast receiver, you need to subscribe (for free) to some programs. You do this by adding feeds. Here are two podcasts about education and technology to get you started:

• Seedlings at Bit by Bit: This is a show by three teachers in Maine. They meet twice each month to discuss current topics in educational technology, and frequently have ideas, insights, and resources you can put to use right away. Here’s the feed.
• Connect Learning, with David Warlick: David is a well-respected speaker who travels around the country delivering lectures and keynote addresses on new media in education. He frequently records presentations and conversations with teachers from all over the country, and posts them as podcasts. Here’s the feed.

If you would prefer to find your own podcasts, here are some directories to get you started:

• Podcast Alley Education
• Curriculum Online Podcast Directory
• The Education Podcast Directory

Assignment: Download a podcast receiver, subscribe to at least one podcast, and listen to at least one episode.

Summer’s here! I don’t know anyone working in education as a teacher or a student who isn’t excited about the end of the school year. The countdown started weeks ago (months ago, in some cases). There’s something about that sense of completion that is so attractive. The job is done. Now, we can take some time off, relax, and recharge the batteries. It’s nice to be out of school.

At some point over the summer, there’s a transition from being happy that the school year is over to anxiously anticipating its return. It takes a while sometimes, but most of the really good teachers and nearly all of the students I know (even if they won’t admit it) get excited about school starting in August. It’s a new year. It’s a fresh start. We’re going to try new things. We’re getting back into a routine. It’s time to get back to work.

Somehow, the summer has that magic renewing effect. We have the opportunity to stop the day-to-day frenzy, catch our collective breath, and reflect (if only a little) on the bigger picture. We spend our days differently. We worry about different things. It’s the bridge of the song, or the side-dish in the meal. Do something different. Then, come back for more.

There are some teachers who don’t look forward to starting a new year. Next year is going to be the same as this year. It’s just the same old thing over and over again. These are the same teachers whose lesson plans for the last week of November say “No School — Kennedy funeral”. Maybe they’re like the old laptop battery that won’t hold a charge anymore. I’m not worried about them. They don’t read my blog.

Over the course of the school year, I hear a lot of comments from teachers about learning new technologies. “I’m so far behind when it comes to technology.” “I just don’t have time for that right now.” “I need to spend more time with this technology over the summer.” Summer comes. They can’t wait to get out of school. After some rest, the vacations start, and summer activities, and before you know it, school is starting again. It’s not a bad thing, but many times the best laid schemes o’ professional development gang aft agley.

This summer, I’m proposing that we all spend at least a little bit of time learning about some new things. I’m going to post 12 opportunities this summer on various professional development topics for teachers. Whenever you hit that magic point between “can’t wait for school to end” and “can’t wait for school to start,” take a look at them.

I’m thinking I have a couple days before I need to come up with the first one