With that in mind, for those of you having trouble accessing this great resource, here are the steps:

1. Go to http://tech.hylton.groupfusion.net and log in.
2. Under Links, click Discovery Education/United Streaming. If this is your first time using Discovery Education Streaming, be sure to write down the access code located just below the link.
3. To sign up, use the access code and complete the registration form. If you already have a username and password for Discovery Education, log in.
4. Once you are logged in, click “Streaming” in the upper left corner and have fun searching!

I wrote about Twitter.com last year. This is a GREAT place to start. I know some folks will say, “What? Why on earth would I want to know what other people are doing during all hours of the day, every day of the week, and in 140 characters or less?!?!” Well, the key is in WHO those other people are. In Twitter you “follow” people with similar interests and backgrounds. They, in turn, “follow” you. It may sound like one big stalkfest (I know stalkfest isn’t a real word. But this is a blog and not even remotely close to anything resembling literature), but Twitter has proven to be the most valuable online tool I have used during the past year. After logging in to Twitter, within minutes tips, tricks, and resources come flying in.

If the key is in who to follow, how do you find the people? Twitter4teachers provides lists of educators on Twitter by subject area. Once you find folks that post information that you find useful, check out who they are following and follow them, too. If you know of others in your field, you can search for them on Twitter. It’s amazing how many people are tweeting–authors, professors, politicians (and, yes, Ashton Kutcher is tweeting, too, if you are into that sort of thing). Or, you could check out who your friendly-ITRT is following and start there. You will find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tekkieteacher.

Once you have started setting up your online PLC, the next step is to actually post something. For those of you who are a bit shy, try “re-tweeting”, or just re-posting someone else’s post that you found useful. Be sure to include the “RT” indicator and attribute the post to the original person with the “@” symbol like the example below:

When working within an online PLC, you will get more out of it if you are a contributor to the conversation rather than just a bystander. Before you know it, people will start following you, too! I recommend always screening your followers and blocking anyone that you aren’t sure about. However, I have to admit that it was also very cool once some of the big names in the the Ed Tech world who I was following started following me, too!

Our PLCs are about helping and learning from each other to improve ourselves and the instructional process. There are 195 people in my Ed Tech PLC and I am much better at what I do because of them. Come join me!

 For those of you who are interested in one of the 10 SMART Boards we are purchasing, here is a great site with resources for SMART educators. This might be a nice place to start for your lesson ideas!

Smart Educator Resources

To see everything that is on the Faculty Calendar, login to SchoolFusion and click My Calendar on the left. You can search for specific group events by checking/unchecking the boxes below the calendar.

If there is anything missing from the calendar that you believe should be included, again, please contact your friendly ITRT.

To get started, I recommend copying/pasting your favorite poem or a couple of paragraphs from your favorite book to see what kind of Wordle is created!

For the past year, the Tech Team and I have maintained Hylton’s webportal at http://guest.portaportal.com/pwcs. However, I recently moved all of our links (and added lots of new ones!) to http://delicious.com/hyltonhs. Both PortaPortal and Delicious are online bookmarking tools. However, Delicious has proven to be much more user-friendly. It is easier to create bookmarks, and it is also easier to search your bookmarks. Once you have over 100 bookmarked sites (we currently have 297!), the search capabilities become very important!

Hylton’s Delicious site hosts a collection of bookmarked sites for teachers, students, and parents. Just go to http://delicious.com/hyltonhs, and use the tags listed along the right side to find tons of links to online tools for virtually every subject. We will continue to add bookmarks, so check back often to find out what’s new! And, if you know of a site that you would like included, forward it along to your friendly ITRT.

Hylton’s PortaPortal site will remain “live”, but no new bookmarks will be added. Instead, everything new will be posted at http://delicious.com/hyltonhs.

As you arrive back in your classrooms, one of the first things most of you want to do is boot up your classroom computers. However, the computers, which have been sitting idle for eight weeks, may not be overly cooperative. If you have trouble, please be sure to create a Help Request asking for assistance. Of course, you will have to find a working computer to log the Help Request. The computers in the IT Lab are up and running for just that purpose! Our amazing TSSPEC, Teresa H., will be running around all week fixing things up, but it’s important to document the problem(s) so they are fixed as quickly as possible.

When you fill in a Help Request, be sure to include the following information:

• Detailed description of the problem
• County inventory tag # (it’s on the yellow sticker)
• Serial # (if you can find it)
• Your name
• Classroom number

Welcome back!

Adobe Curriculum and NETS
-targets enabling instructors to be successful in the classroom

IC3 – Certiport Products
-Internet and Computing Core Certification
-Global standard for measuring digital and computer literacy

eMINTS National Center – about NETST
-new approach to teaching and learning
-from Missouri, originally
-professional development to help teachers with technology

School of Education from Johns Hopkins – Online Graduate certificate Program in School Administration and Supervision
-If you go through the entire program, you will have fully met the NETSA standards
-prepare school administrators to be technology leaders
-One year program – 18 credits
-focus on team-based learning community approach to distance education

EZTech from Learning.com (http://www.learning.com/easytech/)
-Ann McMullan – Director of Tech from Texas Klein school division
-how to integrate technology into core curriculum
-Continually adding new content (k-8)

PBS TeacherLine (http://www.pbs.org/teacherline/)
-Capstone Certificate Program
-30 week program – online professional development for Technology Educators

Verizon Thinkfinity.org (http://www.thinkfinity.org/home.aspx)
-free resources for teachers, students, parents, etc
-free professional development, too – with emphasis on integration

www.tammyworcester.com

http://handouts.tammyworcester.com

On instructional uses of cell phones – yes they can be bad, and most schools ban them – but they can be used for good, too!

Most kids say when they come to school they are “taking a step back in time” when it comes to technology

1-800-Goog-411 – Free 411 service from Google

Text questions, any questions, to Google at 466453

Google maps – choose the “send” option to send maps and addresses to your phone

http://www.google.com/mobile/ - has lots of tools that can be used with cell phones

Posting to blogs by cell phone – via email – set up through blog settings – can create project-specific blogs and students “send” (aka email) assignments – show up as blog posts – caution: students have to sign posts somehow, either with id # or name, so teacher knows where they came from – nice way to post pictures on blogs

Cell phone to Flickr – can email pictures to flickr, too, just like to the blogs – be sure to include tags – http://www.db798.com/pictobrowser/index.html can then be used in combination with tags to create slideshows and embed in blogs (But Flickr is often blocked, not sure how this will work in that case)

Podcasting by cell phone – really easy using http://drop.io/ – “drop” audio files from your phone – click phone link and gives you a number to call to record your message – can embed the audio

http://www.geograffiti.com/ – leave voice marks – marks it on a map – call in and talk about where you are at that time – nice for geography or family vacations – Caution: there is no filtering so kids can say anything

http://www.polleverywhere.com/ – Student response tool using cell phones – nice example of instructional use of cell phones

Additional links at end of presentation – check the presentation link – one really cool one on ring tones that can’t be heard based on your age – http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/

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