A Guidebook For Social Media in the Classroom Edutopia February 27, 2014 The purpose of the Social Media Guidebook that I wrote for Edutopia is fourfold: To help educators understand why social media writing styles are appropriate for teaching in schools To help educators understand the difference between using social media and socializing To help educators understand ways you can use this form of writing without having kids on popular social media sites To demonstrate using 12 examples of how popular social media sites are being used in classrooms of all ages in successful ways with hyperlinks.   The post A Guidebook For Social Media in the Classroom [Link] appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

AdvancED Wyoming: Slides, Free Internet Safety Poster, Free Chapter AdvancED Wyoming Conference March 3, 2014 Today in Wyoming was incredible. Such wonderful educators working hard to do the right thing (and I saw the best speech I’ve ever seen given by a state administrator bar none. Wow.) If you want to see the slides I shared on 12 Habits of a successful 21st Century Educator, 7 Steps to Connect Your Classroom, or Technology Driven Differentiated Instruction, they are all there. Plus.. I put a link to my free Internet Safety Poster and to download Chapter 1 of Flattening Classrooms. I thought all of you might benefit from those freebies or slides, so enjoy. The post AdvancED Wyoming: Slides, Free Internet Safety Poster, Free Chapter [Link] appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

Karen Stadler @ICT_Integrator , from South Africa, is an educator on a mission to save the rhino. The Traveling Rhino Project creates awareness one child at a time. She was in a local reserve in South Africa when she took a picture of five rhinos. The photo has haunted her as she realized that four or perhaps all five of these rhinos are now dead, killed senselessly  because people mistakenly think their horns will cure hangovers and cancer. These five rhinos now have names and travel the world.And yet, Karen has combined her love for these beautiful creatures and her love of children to mobilize and create awareness about this problem in a way that is respectful and appropriate for children and gets their parents talking. Save the Rhino by joining the Traveling Rhinos Project Karen literally has 5 rhinos traveling  the world. If you like Flat Stanley, sign up to host a traveling rhino at your school. I’ve had several elementary teachers say this is the best project they’ve done. Listen to this show Listen to the show on iTunes "The Rhino Project: Teaching Social Consciousness" Learn about Traveling Rhinos The five traveling rhinos travel the world creating awareness about saving rhinos, one child at a time. Sign up to have one of them travel your way. (You may have to wait until the next school year, so sign up now.) Add Karen to your PLN Karen Stadler Blog: http://karenstadler.wordpress.comTwitter: @ICT_Integrator Project: http://saveourrhinos.wikispaces.com Below is a video Karen made about the project to help you understand why it is so important. Here is another example of a teacher changing the world one child at a time. She’s running a great project as part of her job as IT Integrator that is helping her students and making our world a better place. But here’s the thing and the reason we should be sharing the project — IT ISN’T JUST ABOUT THE CUTE RHINOS nor is it just about white rhinos. It is about suffering animals who are having their horns taken with the mistaken understanding that the horns can cure hangovers and cure cancer with neither proven by research. These animals are having their horns cut and left to die and they don’t have time to waste. Let’s turn this into a movement to protect and help these creatures.Please tell everyone you know to join Karen and her traveling Rhino project. Time is running out. Every Classroom Matters is a bi-weekly podcast by Vicki Davis on BAM Radio network. Every classroom matters because every child matters. Listening will help you teach with better results, lead with a positive impact, and live with a greater purpose. Subscribe. The post Save the Rhino: Join Karen Stadler and The Traveling Rhino Project appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

As long as we talk about reaching every child - it is someone else’s problem. Instead what we should each be asking ourselves is how to reach that child right in front of us. Then we reach the child sitting beside her, and then, new one who just enrolled. We must focus on the living breathing children in our eyesight not just looking at the numbers on a page. Reaching every child should be what we do. It is in the educator’s DNA. This is not someone else’s problem it is the problem of everyone who claims to be an educator. I’ll be attending the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai next week. The organizers asked me to share my thoughts on reaching every child. This is not an easy topic but one each of us must consider in our daily lives as teachers. They Are Everywhere Wherever you work or are located, this is your problem because there are unreached kids everywhere. They surround us. You can make a child put their body into a seat in a schoolhouse, but they are the only one who can truly bring their entire being to school. It is a conscious internal decision to become educated because education is not something given. You can’t give a child an education. Education is always earned. You can give the opportunity to be educated but you can’t force someone to be educated. Becoming well educated is a decision to make the best of the educational opportunity presented. (Yes, there are far too many who have no opportunity to be educated as well.) The Global Education & Skills Forum in Dubai next week will tackle conversations about reaching every child. Educators Who Care, Share Best Practices Engaging Every Child Matters. So, as we meet and discuss this most important issue, we’ll need to talk about engagement and effective use of technology (my forte) but we’ll also need to discuss the responsibility that each of us have to share the best practices we discover in our classrooms, outside our classroom walls. There are some of us who are experts at helping students make the most of the educational opportunities they have. Every Child Having Educational Opportunities Matters. Some of you specialize in providing educational opportunities to those who have not had them. You have best practices too that need to be shared. Because lack of educational opportunities often means a complete lack of hope. More opportunities must be given to all students of all races and genders worldwide. Reaching Everyone: Intergenerational Learning I’m a teacher in a tiny rural private school in South Georgia United States. Many of the farmer’s kids I teach don’t have high speed internet and computers. Yet, as we learn and work together, I’ve taught them that we have an obligation to share that learning with the world. Right now, my ninth graders are compiling an Encyclopedia of Learning Games using evaluation rubrics developed by Dr. Lee Graham’s graduate students at the University of Alaska Southeast. They are learning web design, programming, and game design principles as they engage in a project to help more teachers find more free engaging, high quality games to teach kids in their classroom. (See http://gamifi-ed.wikispaces.com  for our work in progress and join us if you want to.) This work has run alongside an OOC (Open Online Community) studying gaming in education run by Dr. Verena Roberts and includes a component where students create a serious game in Minecraft with Colin Osterhout. We were discussing just this week that really we’ve created an Intergenerational Online Learning Community that is as powerful as anything that we have experienced. We’re creating Open Education Resources (OER’s) as we study. Sharing Best Practices is something that we should do as educators.Photo Credit: iStock Photo. Sharing Your Story I’m looking forward to the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai next week to hear the stories of others (and share mine briefly.) Some of the leading educational leaders and practitioners in the world are going to be there. If you’re not there, you’re still here reading this and you can share your story online everywhere you share. Your story is important. It matters that we help each other move forward because teaching is a noble profession but a very hard one. Many of us are passionate about reaching every child. Never forget that the root of passion is: Latin passiō  suffering, from Latin patī  to suffer Having a passion for something requires sacrifice and giving all you have. Are you willing to sacrifice in order to help educate more children? There are no easy answers, my friends. I’ll be on a panel with some amazing educators (and one very cool student) as we discuss leveraging mobile technology, social media, and gaming to improve education. If you have questions or want to follow along, you can follow the Twitter handle. Engaging Every Child You can be anywhere and help educators everywhere. But you must be willing to share. As for me, I dream not only of helping my students learn - and I love them dearly. But I also dream of helping other educators develop the same nurturing, empowering relationship I have with my own students. The 3 Essentials We Need to Reach Every Child Opportunity. First students must have the opportunity to learn. Engagement. Second, we must understand that education isn’t something you give a child, it is something they earn. We must focus on engaging the ones we have. Alarming numbers of children are walking away from education opportunities every year. We must engage those we have to help children become more intrinsically motivated to learn. Sharing Best Practices. Likewise, excellent teaching practices cannot be given to teachers — we earn them with every moment we teach and reach out to our PLN. We sacrifice our time and energy to pursue this passion because we must earn the right to be called an excellent teacher. Reaching every child always starts with the one right in front of you. And it continues with sharing with other educators exactly how you did it. Looking forward to continuing these important conversations with some of you in Dubai where we’ll discuss all three. Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher is an award winning blogger and full time teacher at Westwood Schools in Camilla. She is coauthor of Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds and the upcoming book Reinventing Writing and has created more than 15 global projects connecting students around the world. She’s featured in the World is Flat, writes for Edutopia, and hosts a bi-weekly radio Show Every Classroom Matters on the BAM Radio Network. The post The 3 Things We Can Do To Reach Every Child appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

If you peek in the pocketbooks and briefcases of many people, you may just see their personal library of Alexandria. Did you know that you can download the complete works of Mark Twain in less than 2 minutes after paying 99 cents. It almost feels wrong. And yet, something truly epic and special has happened because these books are accessible. Many people still like paper and there are times I want paper too, but let’s talk about why so many people have begun to favor the ebook. 11 Reasons eBooks Can Improve Your Life 1. Highlights and Notes. In the Kindle, these notes are available at kindle.amazon.com You can organize, sort, and retrieve notes and highlights. [See How to Export Your Kindle Notes Step By Step or Export iBook Notes to Evernote Step by Step] 2. Search. Find quotes easily by typing a word in the search books. (That paper you wrote in high school on the symbolism of Queequeg’s coffin in Moby Dick would be so much easier to write now.) [See a YouTube Video tutorial on how to do this on Kindle] 3. Portability. Book fans no longer have to pay for overweight luggage. Need I say more? 4. Shareability. Share favorite quotes on the world’s new water cooler: Facebook and Twitter, with a simple highlight. (Goodreads, the social site for booklovers is now also available on the newer Kindles.) 5. Connectedness. Popular highlights of other readers show you what resonates and adds a whole new dimension to reading nonfiction. [Anyone can see them on https://kindle.amazon.com/most_popular but they show up in your book] 6. Organization. Organize your books into collections so when you want a classic you can find it or when you want to open your Bible, it is there.  [See Reading Tips to Program Your Mind For Success for tips.] 7. Readability. Make any book large print with one click. Some models have backlighting turn on when the lights go off. See the book and read any time you wish. [Kindle How To or iBooks How To] 8. Learning. The new Kindle lets you click a word and it becomes part of your "Vocabulary Builder." This is a flashcard including the original quote and a definition of the word that you can review until you know it. 9. Availability. You can have your book on your iPad, Surface, Computer and phone. Anywhere, the book and notes follow you. 10. Price. You can get many free or inexpensive ebooks like the must read The Mill River Recluse or huge volumes of Agatha Christie. 11. Opportunity. The best thing about ebooks is that the cost of publishing has decreased so anyone who can use Microsoft Word can write an ebook and distribute it. Some great new authors have emerged. [Read AJ Juliani's post 5 Free Easy Ways to Publish eBooks] ___  In this series on ebooks, I’m going to dispel the mystery and confusion many have with using these tools. Learn how to purchase and download ebooks, how to find free ebooks and even how you can check out ebooks from our local libraries. When the printing press emerged, many appreciated and enjoyed hand copied books and didn’t like the look of printed books. But printed books meant more people could have more books. We have a new printing press and we carry them in our pocketbooks and briefcases. You don’t have to crank ebook apps and readers, but if you do, you may just find more books and more opportunities to learn improve your life. Lets learn together. Note: This is part of a series of columns I’ve written for some local newspapers and has been enhanced for the web by adding hyperlinks and resources. To read more of my past newspaper columns go to my "Tech Tips Newspaper Column" to read past columns or to contact me about having these columns in your local paper. Photo credit: iStock photo The post 11 Reasons eBooks Can Improve Your Life appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve seen my posts with pics of gold plated bathrooms that juxtapose against the harsh reality of an Afgani woman who went to school on threat of death from the Taliban. "Education is worth dying for," she said to a spellbound and quiet crowd who then went on to give a resounding standing ovation to her parents, the brave impetus to her secret work to become educated. We’re in Dubai at the Global Education & Skills Forum with many world leaders (over 30 education ministers from different countries from China to Saudi Arabia and Iran.) It is quite an interesting mix of people here as Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK urged that "Education should become a priority for the G8 because good education is a precondition for economic development." We’ll hear from many more leaders today and much of it will be live streamed and shared over at Big Think and the Global Education and Skills Website. You can’t gold plate the education struggles that are happening worldwide as we all struggle to bring the education system into the 21st century and it is exciting to be part of this event with many other incredible speakers. You can follow the #GESF hashtag or follow tweets from @GESForum or watch the live stream on the website. The post Join Global Education & Skills #GESF Live Stream as Education Leaders Around the World Talk about Using Technology and Creativity to Reach Every Child appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

Google Drive has enabled Google Add Ons and there are some that you and your students will want to enable right away. Others may appeal more to professional developers or those who work remotely . How To Enable Add Ons for Google Drive Here’s a tutorial on enabling add ons. Start with this and then look to see which ones will suit your needs. And Some Suggested Add Ons From Google Add-On #1: EasyBib You can insert citations directly into Google Documents directly within the Document using EasyBib. MLA, APA and Chicago Style are available. The EasyBib Add On for Google Drive is one of the first you should enable if you are a writing teacher.  Add-On #2: Mindmeister Mindmeister lets you take bulleted lists and convert it into a mindmap for a graphical depiction. This would be a fascinating way to convert a table of contents or outline for a paper into something easier to read. I’d really like it to go the other way and let students create a mind map and convert to a traditional outline, it is a very cool tool that will be useful for education. The Mindmeister Google Drive add-on gives a powerful punch to organizing your writing. Add-On #3: Track Changes Track Changes is an incredible functionality win for Google Drive as it is one that publishers or formal publications require. You can now add it into Google Drive meaning you can really publish a book out of Google Drive where you track and edit changes for each other like in Microsoft Word. One interesting note: At the end of the video it says "Track Changes Basic is Available Today" which implies to me that upgraded or add-ons may be available for purchase in the future as perhaps a "freemium model" for some of these add-ons may be the direction this is heading. (Freemium is where you get it for free - like Evernote or One Note - but you pay for enhancements or premium features.) Add-On #4: Table of Contents This Table of Contents add on lets you have a floating table of contents on the right that is always there. This will help you move quickly through the document. Yes, Google Drive can insert a Table of Contents but it is placed inside the document. This add-on puts it in the sidebar where it is extremely useful. We use Google Docs to create the scripts and plans for our online presentations  and this is now a LIFESAVER making the document much easier to navigate and move around. Remember that for it to work, you have to make things as Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.  Add-On #5. Thesaurus The thesaurus will look up words to show on the right. While this add-on isn’t as useful as the right click thesaurus in Microsoft Word, it is a start. Add a thesaurus into Google Drive. While it isn’t as useful as Microsoft Word’s right click feature (and it is a tad slow) — it will likely improve with time. If students are writing papers, it is a very useful feature. Add-On #6: Template Gallery If you want additional templates than those that come with Google Drive, this is a great add in, especially for those who create documents a lot. If you miss the large template gallery in Microsoft Office, this add-on template gallery is a start with many useful form letters, spreadsheets, and pre-formatted mailers. Add-On #7: Texthelp Study Skills Highlighting Tools This Read and Write Text Help Add in is free to try for 30 days and has many features for Special needs and ELL (English Language Learners) with text to speech and other tools built right in. If you have special needs students (don’t we all?) and are using Google Apps for education, Texthelp Read & Write is a must test. Google Chrome gives you a free 30 day trial inside their store. Note that this also lets you mark up KES files which are for special needs and visually impaired. ePub (for ebooks) and many other formats are available. If you’re sharing notes, this can be useful, although it should be pointed out that you can highlight without this tool, this certainly makes it much easier than the highlight feature that is built in and requires several clicks to activate. Additionally, it includes: read aloud, text prediction, vocabulary building tools, and many other features helpful for helping students write. The trial is free, but this is one you’ll have to pay for to keep. There’s also an iPad version. They’ve created a nice playlist about their product I’ve been embedded above and recommend it for special needs and ELL (English Language Learners). Add-On #8: Workflows Although this is probably considered more a business app, I can see a million uses for this in schools from approval of purchase orders to even signing off on finished student work for newspapers. You could also have peer reviewers sign off on work and track it that way as well. If you need a way to convince administrators that Google Apps can save time, this add-on may just do it. Add-On #9: Uber Conference Calls Voice Conversations Inside Google Docs. I could actually picture a school use for this as well. Could you picture having a folder for student work and you share the document with parents, etc. and then have a voice call to go over the work? It is so hard for parents to get off work and once you sit down to talk, it is easy to drag it on. What if you had short 10 minute calls and they could be connected during their lunch break or a 10 minute moment without having to leave the office? PRO TIP: You can Use Google Drive inside Google Hangouts - see this great video from Ronnie Bincer and Trevor Beck on the Presentation Tool in Google Hangout  or their video about using Collaborative tools inside the hangout. This sort of thing could be very useful in education but remember that you can use Google Hangouts and have it running in the background. This tip is not for the average everyday person, so that is why Uber Conference Calls should be helpful. Another Option for Collaboration: If the live chat doesn’t work for you, there is a feature called  "Letter Feed Messenger" which is sort of like iMessage meets Google Drive. Add-On #10: Consistency Checker Consistency checker will be helpful for longer documents. This one is useful for those creating very long documents (doctoral dissertations come to mind) or other documents that have to be consistent. It will do an extra check for spelling but also looks to make sure you’ve handled numbers, hyphenation and other types of writing mechanics in a consistent way. For a subset of writing teachers or for college students writing long documents together, this is a great tool. Add-On #11: Gliffy Diagrams Oh, I love Gliffy and have used it a long time. Now, you can add the many diagrams to all of your Google Drive. I used this tool to map out the layout of my computer lab complete with measurements. From organization charts to layouts of just about any kind, this is a great addition to Google Drive. Note: Some of you may prefer Lucid Chart, but I’ve not use that charting tool and love Gliffy, but think it is worth a mention. Add-On #12: Twitter Curator Twitter Curator is an App that you can use to pull together the tweets your class makes as you share your learning. You can also use it to share tweets that are successful or even those made by authors and others to document further information about what you’ve learned. This is sort of like Storify meets Google Drive. This add-on is a Google Doc version of Storify and could be a way to pull in tweets from your class Twitter account or another source as you annotate and discuss them. Add-On #13: Kaizena This tool is one that is going to take further notice. The purpose of Kaizena is to help teachers give better feedback to students. You can pull the document into Kaizena with one click using this add-on to easily add voice comments and thoughts on student work. This is a very impressive emerging tool for teacher feedback. (Free)  Add-On #14: Document Merge You might need to be a tad more tech savvy on this one, but go with me here with the 2 main uses I see for this in education. Document Merge will let you merge documents into new Google Docs or into email and can be a handy tool for the more tech savvy educator who has to customize things for others. Instead of using a Google Doc template, you could create a standard document and then have a list of the data to go in each document and merge it to make new Google Docs. So, for example, you were going to have different documents for different student groups on different topics — so you might have 2 students write on robins and 2 other ones write on bluejays. But they are younger students and you want a common format for these documents. You can have an original document and have certain fields come from your data (like a merge) and then have this tool make those documents. While a small class might not be a big deal to do them individually, if you’re one IT person working with a whole elementary or  a teaching librarian who wants to do many google doc projects with children, THIS IS GOING TO SAVE YOU SO MUCH TIME!! You can also use this to customize and merge emails. If you’re not using an offline app like Outlook or Thunderbird (many of us don’t) - you can produce customized emails with this service. Add-On #15: Open Clip Art Clip art is always an issue and this handy tool seems to mitigate the problem of worrying about licensing for students and clip art. With 50,000 clip art items and icons, it is a great start for quick icons. So, you want to include clip art and not have to worry so much about clip art issues. This app has 50,000 thousand pieces of clip art and may just be what you’re looking for to use with students for quick graphics. I particularly like that they include icons so you can make it easier to navigate to other sites by making buttons. Other Notable Add-Ons for Some Teachers Music teachers will want to check out Vextab Music Notation. You can embed Google Translate into Documents. Geography and history teachers may want to insert Google Maps into their Document. Finding More Add-Ons While there are other add-ons including those that can let you send a fax from within Google Drive and others that let you sign contracts and documents, these are my favorites for educators. Let me know your favorites in the comments. To see the whole store, just open a document or spreadsheet and go to Add-Ons >> Get Add-Ons If you want to learn more about how writing has been reinvented, sign up for my monthly newsletter on the right hand side of the overview of my new book Reinventing Writing coming in early June 2014 from Routledge Publishing.       The post 15 Best Google Drive Add-Ons for Education appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

Serious games can help with serious learning and fun. Using a research based rubric developed by educators at the University of Alaska Southeast, my students and the teachers in Dr.Lee Graham’s course evaluated games. There are 34 completely finished and ranked and others who need teacher reviews. (You can join in and review, anything tagged teacher_rev needs a teacher review, and we have quite a few so we could calculate the final score. When you ask to join, just let me know who you are, where you’re from, your school, and that you’d like to help. Thank you!) My students will be presenting today at 1:20 pm EDT and tomorrow (time tentatively changed to 9:15 am EDT tomorrow due to a schedule change). Scroll down for the links. The nice thing about scheduling through Google Hangout and YouTube live is that after these presentations, the links below will become the official video for you to watch if you come upon this post later. We are experimenting with a new way to share slides and audio and these are being created as OER resources as part of the Gamifi-ED OOC. I hope that some of you will watch the stream and pose questions using the Q&A Tool that you’ll see on the screen. (I"m not sure if that tool shows up on YouTube Live but I know it shows up when you watch on Google Plus.) Here are the links you’ll need to watch today or to view the videos after they are presented. It is Time to Curate Our Own Apps These students have tested hundreds of games and one of the biggest things that has emerged is that we are trusting the app stores to curate for us and we shouldn’t. (See my Edutopia post from last week on this.) The best apps from an educational perspective are not rising to the top. I really like the model that the students and educators worked out for both Workflow and evaluating the games and if enough of you want to join in and add to the database or have your students test games, then we can keep adding to the great repository of reviews and information. Just reply to this post or contact me and we’ll explore further. I have lots of student mentors who would love to help students of all ages get started adding their game reviews. When you see the students present, you’ll hear them talk about a Gamifi-ed score. The best a game can receive is 30. Gamifi-ed Student Evaluation Criteria There are 7 aspects evaluated by students including:  Problem Solving, Player Freedom, Game Play, Motivation, Real-World Connections, Teamwork, and Creativity. Gamifi-ed Educator Evaluation Criteria There are 8 aspects evaluated by educators including: Purpose, Narrative Context, Organization/ Problem Solving, Engagement Level, Collaboration, Scaffolding and mastery, Feedback, and Utility. How the score is calculated For each aspect, a game is rated as a "Rock Star" (2 points), "OK" (1 point) or "Not OK" (0 points). The points are totaled and put at the top. Top games so far include Sparx (30 points) - A game out of New Zealand to help kids with depression and coping that you have to play to believe (this will be talked about in both sessions.) AIC Conflict Simulation (28 points) - the Simulation run by the University of Michigan that helps students understand current events and the Middle East You can also view the games by topic: Current Events, Health, Social Studies, Language arts, Languages, Math, Science. Class Period #1: Serious Games Smackdown - March 26, 2014 1:20 pm EDT YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfB2xOjCHoA Google Plus Link: https://plus.google.com/events/cen2p8f3uc0drnbdjb6t57mgv8k Class Period #2: Serious Games Smackdown - March 26, 2014 9:15 am EDT YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWxd6QpCy4U Google Plus Link:https://plus.google.com/events/c1pi424k7pp8212i95c41m049mc Feel free to join us or to watch the videos and leave your thoughts. You can find all of these games on the Gamifi-ed wiki. The post Join My Students in a Serious Games Smackdown appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

Email is a problem for so many of us. If I had been taught good habits early on, it could have avoided email overload and been more responsive many times when people needed a response. My students use gmail through our Google Apps for domains but often filters and other such things are a challenge for them. The Mailbox app is a great app for anyone who struggles with email. While all of my students don’t have an iOS device, the principles of inbox zero fit everyone and I make sure all students understand basic filtering. This lesson features: Inbox Zero Concept Spam and how to handle it Phishing and What to Do How to use filters and labels Multi-tab inbox feature of Gmail and how an app like Mailbox can help students manage their email and habits Here, I’m just taking you through the points as I cover them. Depending upon this class, this could be a one day, but typically, I build this over the course of several days or weeks until their habits are established. This is sort of my notes as I teach this concept. Take your notes and cover the points as you want to. I’ve included resource videos for students but also for you in some cases. Remember, this is an overview of how I teach it, I’m not necessarily including each item to teach you about handling this, although if you want me to write posts tackling any of these, let me know and I’ll share more content knowledge. Optional "Teach Like a Pirate Intro" I’m big on having hooks as students come into class. I usually start it the moment the first student comes into the room. This is music, videos, sounds, or something to set the stage. With this lesson, I use the Spam Video from Monty Python - it is usually over before the bell rings. When I do this, it is amazing how many are disappointed if they aren’t there quickly. You don’t have to do this, but it is hilarious (and also many kids haven’t heard of Monty Python.) I do it at the beginning so it doesn’t interrupt the flow, but you could also put this at the spam section instead. (See my review and interview with Dave about Teach Like a Pirate - awesome book!) 1. What does eMail let us do? Start off with a discussion about what email is used for in school and the business world. Make a list on the board of the things that students send and receive email. Also make sure they list annoyances with email (most of them get way too many updates from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (Point out at the bottom of those messages how they can unsubscribe to them. Most don’t know this.) I like to have students compare email to mail that comes in their mailbox. What needs to happen to physical mail: Opened, acted upon, shredded, thrown away, saved for later. We discuss the equivalents in regular email: open, acted upon (2 minute rule - if it takes 2 minutes, act), throw away (delete), shred (delete out of trash), saved for later (archive.) We also talk about email and what it lets us do. 2. Then, we compare email and a to-do list Remember that your inbox is a very poor to do list as is. (Jill Duffy from PC Magazine said it well and we’ll come back to this later.) What does a to-do list help us to do? (Remember what to do that day, remember and act upon things) What does email help us do? (Get information and send information easily, turn things in, reference information that we need to know, review information, it gives us items we need to do.) Why does email make a poor to-do list? (We don’t look at it all the time. We get too many notifications. We end up with too much email. We have too much email and the important is cluttered by junk and spam.) Note: This is why I prefer a to-do list manager that takes incoming email. I use Nozbe and forward my emails to it and it will turn it into tasks, but for students, they could technically use the Mailbox app that I get to later in this lesson if they have an ipad or iphone. I also use Evernote to file my most important emails and have an email set up in Evernote to accept that. This is beyond most beginners but something I’d teach more advanced students or adults. 3. We talk about spam and junk email. I write this on the board: Email is free. And ask: "Why or why not?" We have a discussion about junk mail and if it is free. What does it cost us? It costs us our time. Time is the most valuable resource on this earth because it is nonrenewable. Once time is spent, it cannot be gotten back and is gone forever. No one has invented a time machine to give us more. We are finite and have each second for just a moment, so when we save time, we free ourselves up to do other, more important things.  A Simple Explanation of Gmail This cute cartoon is the BEST explanation of the features of gmail that I’ve found. At this point, I’ll show this video to give us a framework for the conversation. Then, we’ll learn: How we report spam (the exclamation point) How we handle junk mail (unsubscribe or filter to delete) Also we mention here why it is not really an ok to mark a company spam that we subscribed to ourselves. We can always unsubscribe. They aren’t spamming us b/c we gave them permission to add us to their email list. How we handle phishing (use the "report phishing button") But we also talk about how serious it is and how it is all our responsibility to look for it and report it quickly. Usually students have no phishing in their inbox so I’ll have to pull some up from my personal gmail as I can always find an example in there. Do not practice this on someone’s email because it will literally report the person as a phishing or spammer. Treat it seriously and just point it out and have them point to it with their finger and check their neighbor. This is one time you find the button but don’t use it. Talk about how these buttons are really used. (See the video below.) 4. Make your apps into a secretary. We talk about what secretaries used to do when most business professionals had them. They opened mail, processed things, typed letters, etc. They did many repetitive tasks and helped people be more productive by filing and organizing things and serving as a gatekeeper to keep a person from wasting time. Then, we talk about how apps can be a secretary for us and handle our junk for us. Here are the ways we discuss. a. Unsubscribe First, you can unsubscribe to mailings you don’t want by clicking unsubscribe at the bottom - or - you can use an app like Swizzle Sweeper to unsubscribe from mailing lists. Go into Twitter and Facebook and turn off notifications - do you really need/ want them? Think about what notifications you want and turn off the ones you don’t want. b. Then, look at the Tabs on the top of Gmail or use Priority Inbox You can drag emails into one of the tabs and train it, just remember that you need to check all of the tabs — and — when you check gmail on your ipad or smartphone those tabs aren’t there so you’ll get everything. Learn to train it for the tabs but be careful because sometimes important things can hide under one of those tabs. c. Set up filters Teach students how to set up filters for things they might want but may not want to read all of by filtering into a folder. Discuss basic folders and how they work but how you might want to wait on setting up too many folders if you’re going to use Mailbox. 5. We discuss Inbox Zero Ask "how do you feel when things clutter your life? When your desk is a mess? Your locker is a mess?" (Note that many kids are fine with a mess but we are trying to get at what happens when they have a mess.) You want to be able to focus on what is important, so keeping your inbox clear helps you see exactly what is important and needs to be done. The kinds of things that come into your inbox are to-do’s, things you need to file to reference later, appointments, and usually junk. Because Mailbox will help us with todo’s, reference material, and we’ve already discussed spam and junk mail, we need to talk about making appointments. 6. Adding appointments to email While I don’t have time in this lesson to go into Google Calendar, usually I’ve already taught Google calendar byt this time. I’ll create an appointment and invite the whole class and ask them to go in and accept or reject the appointment. I tell them that we’ll see later how the calendar function works in Google Calendar but to realize that when you have a request for an appointment that it is fastest to handle it at that moment and put it on your calendar - but that you should have a place for your calendar — Google Cal or in a planner of some kind. Google has a an excellent set of instructions on their help site for Gmail and Google Calendar helps. 7. Now, the Mailbox app. Now, I know I said that you aren’t supposed to use email as a task list — BUT — if you have an app that lets you use it in this way, you can actually go back and let the app overlay a task list on top of your email. So, let me restate - -email by itself doesn’t make a good task list, but if you use Mailbox, it can help your sort your mail and could make a simple task list. I actually just use this more for sorting as I don’t handle personal mail at work and I can schedule things to come back to me when I’ll be at home or working on Saturday. The video below gives you an explanation. I wouldn’t use this one with students. Instead, I hook up my ipad to my projector through my Apple TV and just show students how I use it. This app is supposed to be coming to Google Play soon. The Mailbox app is a whiz but there is one thing it doesn’t handle well — SPAM. This is why I always teach students how to deal with spam and create filters within gmail before going into Mailbox. They’ll need to download and setup Mailbox so they can learn how to use it, so I typically show them with my app how it works to give a quick demo and then I turn them loose to handle their email and get to inbox zero using the app or method of their choice. (Mailbox is for iOS only, and although there are rumors of a Droid app, Boomerang for Droid should give you a lot of the functionality you want.   You can swipe left or right to do different things with your email. Once you learn it, you can sort your email in a zip. Swipe to handle email: Swipe right: Archive Swipe left: schedule to look at it a later time Here we talk about scheduling — handle personal things when parents are around. When are you going to review material. Do you need to put something on your to-do list. Add things to a list — this is a long swipe but I usually just hit the list feature — the lists make folders in Gmail so you can access these online. To Read, To Study, To Do are all things you can do. The one thing students need to know is that these items can be forgotten unless you write them down or look at them, but it does make it easy to find these items if they are on a list and you know to do them. I do know some students who use the Mailbox app as their to-do list but the flaw with this is that not every task comes in as an email unless you’re going to email yourself for every task and then put it on a list - and that would be a bit cumbersome. The thing I like about Mailbox is that it forces you to decide what you will do with each item and then, I stress what to do if something is small — handle it then and reply. We close by talking about some of the stats on email and I also mention that many of the most successful people on earth (including a striking number of Nobel laureates) don’t check email until later in the day. Email interrupts the flow of what you’re doing so checking it once or twice a day is important. Also, we talk about how in college that professors can and will email all times of the day or night and how checking email daily is vital. Also, when they go to college (or work) they will get important emails concerning financial aid, bills, and more and have to be used to checking email daily. Being brutal with what email you allow into your life is a very important lifeskill. If you’re going to be a human being instead of just a human doing, must of that involves putting email it its place and these are just some tricks to help kids. Written by Vicki Davis, author - Flattening Classrooms, Engaging Minds - Posted with Blogsy from my iPad The post Mailbox: Inbox Zero and email Productivity [An App of the Week Lesson Plan] appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.

29 WAYS TO STAY CREATIVE from TO-FU on Vimeo. Do you want to stay creative or be creative today? This cool video is less than 2 minutes and will give you thoughts about what you can do to be more creative today. This would be a cool type of video to assign to students. via To-fu.tv The post 29 Ways to Stay Creative [Video] appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog.