Blogging 4 Everyone

Blogging 4 Everyone is a resource for anyone who wants to learn how to blog. It has very simple, straightforward instructions for starting a blog including a video.

It does not mention Blogger, so here is my instructions for getting started with Blogger.

This would be a good resource to use if you want to create your own blog or if you are trying to get your students using blogs in class.

Creating a Personal Learning Network with Web 2.0 Tools

Creating a Personal Learning Network with Web 2.0 Tools is a site that helps teachers set up and create a PLN. It has information and resources from multiple teachers and includes a variety of resources for teachers to use to connect with other educators. The site was created as part of a presentation for FETC 2009.

I'm a huge proponent of PLNs and this is definitely a great site to use to create or expand your own PLN.

Related Articles:
http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/p/create-personal-learning-network.html

Great resource for career info for students

The CBIA (Connecticut Business and Industry Association) has a great site with education resources. One part of it is called "Career Pathways." In this section, there are videos and teacher's guides for helping students learn about different careers. I've used them and the resources are excellent. For the engineering career one, they have interviews with engineers and follow them on their daily work. The teacher guides have lesson ideas and student resources that make these very easy to use.

I recommend them to career teachers and counselors as well as class room teachers. You can use these to connect what you are teaching to real world careers.

The career areas are: Energy and Green Technology, Engineering, Health and Biosciences, and Manufacturing. Even though it is geared towards Connecticut, anyone can use these resources.

Free Apps - easily find free software for your computer

FreeApps is a web site that aggregates free software and lets you download it all from one site. You can choose free software ranging from web browsers, to email and communications, to utilities like anti-virus and firewall. Most of the free software they offer is well known, such as Firefox, AVG, Adobe Reader, and the like, but this site makes it easy to find it all in one spot. It also bundles the software into one file for downloading. There is a very large variety of software available. See below for some of them.

Teachers can use this themselves, but it is also a very good resource to let your students know about so that they can easily find some of this great free software that is out there.

Loving Zumodrive

Zumo Drive - is another sync and sharing service with similar features to Sugarsync and Dropbox. I use this also. A great feature is being able to stream music from Zumo Drive to your mobile device. In fact, you can stream and access different types of files. You can use this to access your files on any device. I have linked folders on my main laptop at home and can access them on my netbook, Palm Pre+, and school computer. Easy to use also. 

There is a free 2GB version. Zumo Drive actually works and looks like another drive on your computer. 25 GB is $6.99 / month.

3 Conferences in one week - lots of great stuff

It's Educational Conference Time!

This past week I presented at and attended three great conferences. Here's a little summary and links to the resources for each one.

Saturday, October 16th - Glastonbury, CT
Discovery Education - Connecticut Day of Discovery (pre - CECA conference).
I presented a session on all of the free resources from Discovery Education. This one was free. 
There were also presentations on Web 2.0 tools, differentiating, and much more. Steve Denbo (@teach42) had some great presentations and shared some great ideas and resources. Hopefully we'll do this one again next year.
Original Info on Conference: http://blog.discoveryeducation.com/connecticut/2010/09/16/registration-open-for-free-ct-day-of-discovery-saturday-october-16-2010/


Presenter resources: http://www.multiurl.com/la/CTDoD

Monday, October 18th - Hartford, CT
CECA (Connecticut Educators Computer Association)
I presented two sessions. One was on Innovative Free Technologies for Teachers and the other was on Creating a Personal Learning Network.
http://www.ceca-ct.org/page.php?pid=93
Gary Stager was the keynote speaker and Richard Byrne was one of the featured speakers. There were a lot of different sessions and a large number of vendors. All-in-all it was a great learning experience and I made a lot of contacts to add to my PLN.


Presenter resources: http://www.ceca-ct.org/page.php?pid=111

Friday, October 22nd - Tarrytown, NY
TechForum NY (sponsored by Tech&Learning Magazine)
I was one of four panelists on a session entitled "Web 2.0 Smackdown" where we will share our favorite Web 2.0 tools for educators. Kathy Schrock was the keynote speaker. 
http://www.techlearning.com/events/techforum/newyork10/index

I didn't have a chance to attend any afternoon sessions due to a death in the family, but the morning sessions were very good. Our session did have a lot of audience feedback and dialog. 


Presenter materials can be found under each session description here: http://www.techlearning.com/events/techforum/newyork10/program


This was a great week of learning, sharing, and connecting. 

CECA 2010 Conference

Yesterday, I attended and presented at CECA (CT Educators Computer Assoc) conference in Hartford, CT.

It was a great conference with lots of great sessions, discussions, vendors, and of course networking.

If you couldn't attend, here are some links for you (and try to get there next year!)

Gary Stager - Keynote Address - virtual handout - http://stager.org/hartford/

Presenter Materials and handouts - http://www.ceca-ct.org/page.php?pid=111
(not everyone submitted things) My handouts are available on there.

Richard Byrne's presentations are available on his site - http://www.freetech4teachers.com/

Can't wait for next year's!

(And Friday, I'll be presenting and attending TechForum NY. I hope I'll see some of you there!)