One of my favorite resource-sharing blogs, Instructify, has announced that it will stop publishing new content in a few days. It’s always sad to lose a valuable resource, especially because it is likely linked to the current economic troubles affecting the State of North Carolina.
Bill Ferris has said that all existing content will continue to be available for the foreseeable future.
Rest in peace, dear friend Instructify.
The last few weeks have been a flurry of activity related to my “day job” and the many responsibilities that I have (voluntarily) taken on there. I’ve spent a lot of mental time trying to figure out how to maintain the conversation here that I value so much personally and professionally, while slogging through the day-to-day joys and challenges of being a middle school teacher.
An idea that I’ve come up with is a new type of post called That’s What I’m Talking About or TWITA, for short. I plan to use this type of writing from time to time to share the work of other authors that jives so well with my thinking that I wish I wrote it. In each case, I’ll add some commentary of my own and try to start up some interesting conversations here.
Recently, I was looking to set up a page of web links for my students to use in class and at home. I thought of Diigo and its social bookmarking, but that required a little more setup and “front loading” with my students than I was hoping for. So, I did some research and found some great resources.
First, I found some great examples of collections of links. Online Schools has an article about Space Science. It has a wealth of great sites from a variety of sources, and has a nice clean look to it. It became a model for what I sought to accomplish.
Before long, I began to realize that I really didn’t want to make separate webpage because of the time involved. That’s when I discovered that the URL shortening service called Bit.ly has a “bundling” feature that allows one to create a page of links and descriptions that all share one URL. Fur.ly is another tool that goes one step further and includes thumbnail screen shots of the webpages that are all linked from one page.
I would strongly recommend either tool for those of you finding yourselves in the same situation.
As much as I crack corny jokes and “pun”-ish those around me with my cheesy humor, I am actually not a big fan of tired cliches. Nonetheless, I feel the need to wrap up every calendar year with a look back on the things I learned and the highlights of my digital world. To this end, and possibly just to put them all in one place, here are the ten blog post and articles that influenced me the most in 2010. They are sorted by the effect that they had on me.
Short Imagined Monologues by Timothy McSweeney (and others)
This entire blog deserves your undivided attention for about one hour. Go ahead, I’ll wait. Okay, wasn’t that AWESOMELY funny?!? It’s easy in a year that bashed teachers and promised that firing them would make education better to get depressed and forget how to laugh. That’s when I visit McSweeney’s for some much-needed hilarity.
The Oatmeal Comics at TheOatmeal.com
I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who said that the funniest jokes are about the things all around us that we all grumble about in our daily lives. The Oatmeal is a perfect way to turn grumbling into laughing.
7 Class Size Myths (and the truth) by Valerie Strauss at The Answer Sheet
This is one of several WaPo blog articles that really pushed my thinking this year, as well as fed my growing frustration with the class size problems that we all see coming. I walked away from this article realizing why my biggest classes struggle more and why so many policy makers want to make us believe that teachers are the biggest factor in a kids life.
The Social You vs. The Professional You by Jeff Utecht at The Thinking Stick
I use the ideas in this blog post when I’m talking to teachers about the difference between Twitter and Facebook and why it’s helpful to write a blog.
Education Experience is Paramount by Kurt Wootton at Huffington Post
The new education blogging section at the HuffPo has been very interesting and a nice range of views get shared there. This one has immense significance for so many districts across the country that are hiring superintendents from outside the world of education.
Finding the Strength to Write by Chris Lehmann at Practical Theory
Chris, who is the antithesis of every administrator I’ve ever known, expresses himself in ways that I wish I could match. He strikes directly at that feeling of hopelessness that plagues all ed bloggers and classroom teachers from time to time. Is what we are doing actually making any difference? He convinced me that the answer is a resounding YES!
Roger Ebert: The Essential Man by Chris Jones at Esquire.com
Always a fan of movies (of the crappy B variety or the Oscar-nominated cerebral kind), I have always had enormous respect for the film critic Roger Ebert. This article is a must-read for any film buff as it shares the largely untold story of Ebert’s major surgery and his writing since.
Seven habits of highly effective technology trainers by Doug Johnson at The Blue Skunk Blog
For better or worse, more and more of my time over the past few years has involved providing edtech professional development to my colleagues. This piece did more to improve my presentations than any other single resource.
tl;dr by Will Richardson at web-logged
As most of my like-minded colleagues, I often bow at the altar of Will Richardson. This post uses the “too long; didn’t read” shorthand to symbolizes the way that reading is changing and reading instruction is not. Great stuff!
Ignore the Test by Scott McLeod at Dangerously Irrelevant
Scott makes some very good points about standardized multiple-choice tests being the scapegoat for the poor preparation we are giving many of our students.
What do you think about these? Where’s your Top Ten list? Well, get on it!
I’m a admittedly a huge RSS fan. I use my newsreader, Google Reader (and Reeder on my iPhone), on a daily basis to pore over hundreds of news items, blog posts, YouTube recommendations, and student work. I find that it keeps me in the know without taking up too much of my time. It also makes it easy for me to find topics to blog about and pass along to friends and colleagues.
It has always bewildered me that so few of the folks that I work with make use of this technology. New teachers, fresh from education programs, have often heard about RSS but don’t see the benefit for them. Veteran teachers, even those who consider themselves techies, frequently think of it as “something extra” that they don’t have time for.
I also use Facebook actively, but only on a personal basis. I almost never interact with colleagues or companies/brands that I like through Facebook. Lately, however, I’ve noticed more and more that organizations are creating Facebook pages to allow users to “follow” their updates and news. While this isn’t something that I enjoy doing, it seems to be becoming more and more popular.
Which leads me to the question: Will Facebook’s increasingly aptly named News Feed surplant RSS as the mode of choice for consumers (of products and information) to stay up-to-date? Will Facebook mean the end of RSS?
What do you think?