Technology Medley

Would you like to have a classroom web site without having to learn to use a web editor such as FrontPage or DreamWeaver? Have you considered starting a blog but it just doesn’t seem to exactly fit your needs? Would you like to create pages that your colleagues could also edit if you chose to give them permission? Then you may want to take a look at Google Sites.

Google is providing web space for schools and businesses to use either as web pages or for simple collaboration with others within the organization. Go to Google Sites, enter your school email address, and click the Get Started button. You will need to wait for a confirmation email before you can actually log into the site. (Note: my confirmation came into my junk mail folder, so be sure to check there. Gotta love mail filters!) Click on the link in the email to get started.

A few of us have already been experimenting with sites. Once you’re logged in, click on the Sites link, and you’ll see “Pam’s Pages” which I created just for playing with the features. The direct link URL looks like this: http://sites.google.com/a/salem.k12.va.us/pam-s-stuff/Home Notice that “salem.k12.va.us” appears in the address, but the site is actually stored on Google’s servers.

You may notice that even though you can see all of my pages, you cannot edit anything. However, I set it up so that Tina could edit my pages since we were working together to plan the March 7th inservice. Presently, my site is set up so that anyone in the world can view it. However, if I wanted to, I could make the site completely private by changing the settings, or I could set it up so that only people signing in with a Salem school email address could see it. I can also set up additional sites that I could make public or private as appropriate.

Google makes it easy to add a calendar, countdown timer, videos, and of course, text and pictures. Set your site as public and share the URL with your parents and you have a quick and easy class web page that you can edit from any computer that is connected to the internet.

You might want to set up a site just for your grade level so that everyone could add links and lesson plans to share with each other and/or with students. It’s also a terrific collaboration tool to use when working on budgets, class lists, and other grade level items. Simply share it with the other members of your grade level, your principal, and anyone else who needs the information. Nobody else will even know that the pages exist unless you explicitly share with them or make the site public.

So, add this to your “to do when I have time” list and give Google Sites a test run. I think you’ll like what you see, and as always, don’t hesitate to ask for help!

I came across the following video a couple of weeks ago, and Melanie Smith, reading teacher at South Salem, shared it with me again after seeing it at the VSRA conference. It’s only 4 minutes long and definitely provides plenty of food for thought.

I completely understand how difficult it can be to provide students with the types of technologies referred to in the video with the current emphasis on SOLs and NCLB. By working together, we can provide students with more opportunities to show what they have learned by creating their own digital projects such as podcasts, digital stories, blogs, and slideshows.

Tina and I hope to create a similar video using Salem elementary students that we will share with you next fall. It will be very interesting to see how our students’ comments compare with those of the students in the YouTube video above.

There are lots of keyboard shortcuts that may speed up your productivity, and here is a list of some of the most useful ones. Most of these work in any program, but they all work in Word and PowerPoint. You might want to print out a copy and keep it by your computer as a cheat sheet!

Control Z - undo (Office programs will let you go backwards numerous levels, but some kids’ programs will only undo the last action.)

Control Y - redo (This will undo the “undo”)

Control A - Select All

Control S - Save

Control X - Cut

Control C - Copy

Control V - Paste

Control P - Print

Control drag to duplicate in Word (control D in Powerpoint)

Control + Shift + > to increase size of selected text

Control + Shift + < to decrease size of selected text

Control + E to center text

Control + R to right-align text

Control + L to left-align text

Control N – create new document

Control O – open

Control W – close document but not exit program

Control F – find specific word(s) in the text

Control B – Bold

Control I – Italics

Control U – Underline

Shift F3 – Change case (toggles from lower to upper to title case)

Control End – Go to End of Document

Control Home – Go to Beginning of Document

I hope this saves you some time!

If you have ever experienced the frustration of having a great website bookmarked under your favorites on one computer but needing to locate that same site from a different computer, then you need to explore Delicious. This has become my one “cannot do without” website! Here’s short video that explains how it works:

Once you have your account set up, you can copy any URL, go back to your delicious account, and click on the Post link at the top of the page to bookmark the site. However, it’s much quicker to install and use the web buttons that will live at the top of your browser on computers that you frequently use. You will be prompted to install the buttons when you set up your account.

Like many web 2.0 sites, Delicious uses tags, which are simple ways to organize your bookmarks so you can search for them later on. When you first add a site, you will see the option to add tags before saving. Go ahead and add as many as you want. That way you can search for 3rdGrade or science or education or games…all for the same site. This is a huge difference between Delicious and PortaPortal, which only allows you to add a site to one category at a time.

The other really cool feature of Delicious is the ability to add people to your network so you can easily see what sites they have bookmarked. You can also save bookmarks for other people in your network by tagging them for:name. You can see who has saved the same sites as you by clicking on the “saved by (number) other people” link, and this may lead you to even more useful sites on the same subject.

If you don’t already have a Delicious account, I highly recommend that you set one up and start using it. If you do already have one, install the buttons for Internet Explorer or Firefox and get in the habit of using them.

You can download a handout for Delicious here. If you would just like to explore the site for a bit before setting up an account, go to my account or Tina’s account to find sites that are relevant to elementary education.