Teachers on Twitter: It’s About Professional Development

Image from Twitter

The Web 2.0 Classroom Blog, TeacherHub.com, features a good introductory post about Twitter and its professional development potential.

Teachers on Twitter: It’s All About the Hashtag introduces the social networking tool to educators and explains a bit about how to identify professional education resources. The post explains hashtags, how to use them to search for Twitter chats, and how to create a hashtag.

An earlier piece from the same blog provides a list of Twitter chat hashtags for educators, and I’ve listed a few of them below along with several of my favorites.  A more comprehensive list of educational chat hashtags is posted at Cybraryman’s site.

21 Signs You’re A 21st Century Teacher

Check out 21 Signs You’re a 21st Century Teacher over at the  SimpleK-12 Tech blog.

Some of my favorites:

• You give weekly class updates to parents…via your blog.
• You realize the importance of professional development…and you read blogs, join online communities, and tweet for self-development.
• You take your students on a field trip to the Great Wall of China…and never leave your classroom.

Read the whole post.

Gizmodo Explains How to Make an iPad Textbook in Under Five Minutes

The Gizmodo Blog shares lots of info about Apple’s new iPad Textbook Maker.

Read the article.

Article for Schools: Thinking About iPad One-to-One Programs

The Journal has just published an article, Launching an iPad 1-to-1 Program: A Primer  (and republished at the 21st Century Fluency Project).

The article, by Mitchell A. Salerno and Michael Vonhof, is a primer for schools that are considering adopting iPads in a one-to-one setting. Both authors have set up and run successful iPad programs.

Educational technology staff who are considering iPad programs will learn a lot by reading information about the following categories, though other area are also covered.

• Leadership
• Cost
• Network function
• Security
• Inventory Management
• Philosophical framework
• Implementation schedules
• Pedagogy

Blogging Resources from Discovery Education

This web workshop, Fear Factor: Taking the Fear Our of  Blogging, was conducted by Discovery Education on January 3, 2012. The site includes links to many, many resources on blogging — lots to help teachers get a sense of how to use a blog in the classroom.

Google Launching YouTube for Schools

According to an article on the Mashable blog, Google is launching a new YouTube arm that will include convenient educational bells and whistles designed for the world of schools, students, and teachers. YouTube.edu contains features that make the service easier to use for schools that normally restrict YouTube, however the new site will be useful to any teacher that wants to customize videos for classroom viewing.

Teachers from around the country and 600 organizational partners such as the Smithsonian and TED helped to select the initial content for the site and YouTube edu organizes video materials by grade and subject.

How to Make up for No Adobe Flash on Your iPad

The Wired Educator blog has published a list of iPad applications that will help users view Flash based content on their tablets. So far, here at GDS, we have used Cloud Browser, and it has worked with the apps that we wanted to use.

Take a look at the iPad/Flash enablers on the blog’s list if you need a Flash intermediary on your personal iPad. I’ve spoken with educators at other independent schools who have used the Puffin web browser which is cheaper than Cloud Browser and the blog WE blog has a link to a Puffin review.

However the Wired Educator post lists perhaps a dozen more Flash-friendly browsers for a user to explore. It looks like there are options.

Making PDF Documents: Some Tips

In MS Word for Mac

• Go to file/save as.
• Click on the arrow to the right of format.
• Choose PDF.
• Save.

In MS Word on a PC

Making PDF Files – Some Tips to Get You Started

In MS Word for Mac

• Go to file/save as.
• Click on the arrow to the right of format.
• Choose PDF.
• Save.

In MS Word on a PC

• Go go file/save as.
• Mouse down the window that opens on the right.
• Choose PDF or XPS (don’t worry about XPS).
• Save

What is a PDF???

•   PDF stands for portable document format.
•  If you save as a PDF, just about any computer anywhere can open your document — it’s a universal format.
•  When you send a PDF, it’s impossible to make changes — which a lot of people like when they are sending around a document. However, this means that if you open it you can not make changes either. So you may want to first save as a regular MS Word document so you can edit later on.