Top 5 Premium Web 2.0 Administrator Must-Haves: Dropbox

Another must have web tool for administrators is Dropbox. With this tool, I basically have both a virtual briefcase and document library that I can access from any where. I have Dropbox installed on my laptop at work, my personal laptop, and my Droid phone, which means I have access to it from any where. The files I place in it include: working documents, school handbooks, and any other file that I might need at any time. For example, a parent once caught me outside the office with a question about our curriculum. I have an electronic version of our school curriculum guide in my Dropbox. Since I have access to Dropbox on my Droid phone, I pulled up the document, and immediately found what I needed to answer the parent’s question. Add the fact that you can access these documents from a web account as well, and the files can be accessed from any place with a Web connection.

Currently Dropbox basic with 2 GB is free, with the ability to add more space by recommending others to use the product. I currently have a basic account, but as soon as use my free space, I will upgrade to the 50 GB account which is currently priced at $9.99 per month. Here’s the big pluses for using Dropbox.

• Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across multiple computers automatically. This means that any files I am working on at the office are saved to my Dropbox folder where I have access on any computer either with Internet access or with the Dropbox client program.  You can sync files of any type too, which allows me to sync specific program file types. For example, I was recently working on an Xmind map. I saved it to my Dropbox folder, and I continued working on it at home.
• Dropbox allows you to share files with others. You can collaborate on specific documents or presentations through Dropbox. You control who has access to these folders, and you can see their changes to these files immediately. I plan to use Dropbox when our school begins working on our new school improvement plan next spring.
• Dropbox automatically backs up the files online. That means I don’t need to worry about making sure there is a backup of these files. No need to worry about backing them up on a flashdrive. I simply save them to my Dropbox folder, and the software takes care of the rest.
• Dropbox has what it calls “military grade” encryption. That means that I can be fairly confident that the files are safe. Only those I want to have access, do.
• Dropbox has mobile access through the Android, iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry devices. Like I said earlier, you can place those files in a place where you can immediately find them.

This has to be one of the best tools I began using this year. In fact, because of it, I haven’t even picked up a flash drive in a month or so. It’s just too easy to use, and I am positive when I get to the end of my 2 GB storage limit, I’ll purchase the 50 GB storage. This is my second administrator must-have web tool. For more information or to download the software check it out here.

Technorati Tags: technology,Web 2.0,administration

Top Five Premium Web 2.0 Tools Administrator-Must Haves: Diigo

With all the free Web 2.0 options available, it is sometimes tempting to totally rely on these tools. Yet, there are some of these tools that are well worth the cost of the upgrade so that you can fully utilize the product. In the past several months, I have been trying out quite a few of these tools, and I have come to the conclusion that there are currently 5 that I believe are worth the cost of upgrading. For the next few days, I am going to post my top five Web 2.0 tools I’m willing to pay for. Today’s tool is Diigo, the social bookmarking site.

Diigo

The social bookmarking site has expanded to the point that it now does so much more. The ability to bookmark Web pages, highlight text, and annotate that text makes it a fantastic tool for anyone collecting information from the Internet. I use the Chrome Diigo extension which gives me immediate access to these tools, and it allows me to quickly share these resources using Twitter and Facebook. The cost to upgrade to premium is only $40 per year. I will admit that I have not yet upgraded. my plans are to do so when some of the premium features are available for the Chrome web browser, my browser of choice. Here are some features you get by upgrading to premium.

Feature	Description
Full Text Search	With this feature, all cached pages are indexed and become fully searchable. Any time a feature allows searches, the functionality of digital information expands enormously. For complete description of this feature check here.
Cached Pages	This feature allows users to fully archive pages forever, which allows for the first feature. For more information on this feature check this help page.
Capture	With this premium feature, users can click a “Capture” button on the browser toolbar, and store an image of a webpage, then annotate it with shapes and text. Currently this feature is only available for users of Internet Explorer and Firefox. The web site says it will be available for Chrome users soon. Check out the help page for a more complete description of this feature.
Collect Images	This feature allows users to collect images from Web pages by simply saving those images to Diigo. This is an excellent feature for those collecting specific images, and for providing a place to organize those images. For more information, check out the help page here.
Text View	This premium feature allows users to read their cached Web pages in a straightforward, uncluttered manner. This feature works especially well with longer articles. For a more detailed description of this feature, check here.

As I indicated earlier, I do not currently have a premium account with Diigo, but I will add this to my paid-for Web 2.0 tools as soon as these features are available for the Chrome browser.

One additional feature of note that adds functionality for Diigo is the Android app, Power Note. This app is free. It allows users to add text notes, bookmarks, cached pages, pictures, and text messages to your Diigo My Library. You also gain access to your Diigo library and to your “Read Later” bookmarks. To get additional information about Power Note, check this web page.

Technorati Tags: technology,web 2.0,social bookmarking

 Next Premium tool to review: Dropbox.

Obama Administration: Too Much Prescribing of Education Policy-Not Enough Enlisting

Several months ago, I wrote to the North Carolina Democratic Party, the National Democratic Party, and even the Whitehouse to express my concern of the heavy-handed rhetoric coming from the administration regarding teachers. This was just after Secretary Arne Duncan and President Obama applauded the firings of the teachers at Central Falls High School in Rhode Island. The kind of response I received from all three of these entities is demonstrative of why the Democratic Party suffered the great election losses this past Tuesday. They have lost touch with those who voted for them. I received not a single response regarding my concerns, except for requests for campaign contributions. Some would say, “What do you expect? They can’t write every single person who sends them correspondence.” Then how is it that the Republican Party so responsive to those who express concerns?

Over the years, I have written a number of politicians at the state and national level, and I always received some kind of acknowledgement about the concerns I expressed. What’s more, those who have always responded have been Republicans. Republican officer holders from the state level to the US Senate have always responded to any correspondence I sent to them. I wrote to my state representatives, both are Republicans, and I received a personal email from one and a letter from the other. I wrote to the Congressman who represents my district at least three times, and every single time, I received a response. I even wrote our two state US Senators, and both sent a letter acknowledging my concern. What party did all of these belong to? Republican.

I am by no means trying to sell one political party over the other, but the Democratic Party has a serious problem to overcome. It is certainly more complicated than providing a simple response to those who express concern over the direction of their policies. Simply put, “They need to get back in touch with people.” Over the past two years, especially in education policy, there has been too much “prescribing” and not enough “enlisting” of stakeholders in the discussion. You can’t simply dismiss those who disagree with you as “supporting the status quo.” You have a responsibility to try every means necessary to convince them to get on board with your reform. Innovation is not something done to people. According to researchers Peter J. Denning and Robert Dunham in their new book The Innovator’s Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation, “Innovation is the adoption of new practice in a community.” Without allowing deliberation and discussion, there is going to be little true adoption and by default no innovation.

5 Guidelines to Keep from Making Unwise Software Purchases

One of the most important decisions administrators can do is regarding what software is purchased. I have know many well-meaning administrators who have spend hundreds of dollars on software, only to have it sit idly on some lab computer or laptop on a teacher’s desk. I’ve often wondered how many schools have expensive software packages installed in their schools, and no one is using them. That is a tremendous waste of money and resources. What exactly can an administrator do to maximize the purchase of software for schools? Of course, the easiest way is to pass this task to someone who knows and then trust them to do the right thing. But it is a much better solution to have administrators who neither foist unwanted software on teachers, and who can be involved in making sure scarce technology money is spent wisely. Here’s six things administrators can do to be more involved in making decisions about software purchases in his or her building.

1. Don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions. Who will be using it? For what purpose? What kind of licensing options do we have? These are only a few questions an administrator can ask. There are certainly more. Administrators can both protect their schools from getting scammed from great sounding sales pitches, and also make sure their teachers are getting the appropriate tools for their classrooms by not being afraid to ask the hard questions.

2. Be wary of salesman bearing major promises and benefits. I am a skeptic through and through, and that means when someone tells me a benefit for a product, they had better show me the money. For example, saying a software program is user-friendly is one of the most common sales pitches. User friendly to whom? Let’s face it, the word “user-friendly” is meaningless. The only way to find out if something is user-friendly is by allowing the users who will be using it to try it out. They’ll tell you whether it is user friendly or not. Sales pitches make a large of boasts. Before I will buy hundreds of dollars of software, the salesman better be able to demonstrate those boasts.

3. Consider the software from the users perspective, not your own. How many times have we seen a piece of software demonstrated, and thought to ourselves, “That’s fantastic!” The temptation is to go ahead and sign on the bottom line and make that purchase based on our personal experience. It might look useful from an administrator’s perspective, but if you are purchasing it for classroom teachers, you need to get their take as well. You may find yourself either having thousands of dollars of software sitting on computers without users, or forcing teachers to use it, which is never an effective practice. Still worse, you may find yourself with thousands of dollars of software and some teachers in a lab somewhere are forcefully subjecting students to a product that is actually killing their desire to learn rather than enhancing it. Both are good reasons to get the end user’s perspective before making that investment.

4. If salesmen is making promises about things such as increased academic gains, ask him or her to show you the studies. If they are making such claims, then there should be peer-reviewed independent studies backing those claims. If they offer testimonials to support their claims, check with those testimonials and ask to see the data. Never purchase software based on testimonial alone, especially when a software company is making boisterous claims of academic achievement increases. If their product raises student achievement, then make them prove it to your satisfaction. Remember, your school is the customer. They need to convince you.

5. Test the software’s utilitarian use versus the amount of labor and training it will take to utilize it. How many times is software purchased without any consideration regarding hours of extra work it adds to an already busy schedule? (And I would be skeptical of promises too!) Any software you purchase should not force users to become inefficient and expend greater energy in its use. If its use can’t be seamlessly integrated into the school’s routine, then perhaps it’s utilitarian value is not greater than the headaches and labor that must be expended to use it. Software should enhance the school environment not complicate it.

There are quite a few companies trying to get us to purchase their product, and they may actually have something that will help us raise the academic achievement of our students, or help make our jobs easier. But in these very tight budget times, we need to be very careful on the products we purchase. I provide these 5 guidelines in the context of software purchases, they could, just as well, be used for purchases of any instructional product or program.

True Effective Teachers Teach Students, Not Subjects

I just purchased the Dalai Lama’s new book My Spiritual Journey. Like many of his other writings, this one is full of wisdom. In a section entitled “In Our Blood, a Vital Need for Affection” he states:

“If a teacher doesn’t limit himself to academic teaching, if he also takes on the responsibility of preparing his students for life, they will have respect for him and confidence in him. The things they learn from him will leave an indelible print in their minds.Conversely, subjects taught by someone who doesn’t care about his students’ well-being will be of only passing interest to them and will soon be forgotten.”

When I think for just minute about the teachers who heavily impacted my life, everyone that comes to mind were teachers who more interested in me rather than my test scores.

The whole problem with today’s “accountability culture is that it’s generating a culture where a student’s score on the latest standardized test becomes more important than individual student needs and interest.

The Dalai Lama’s remarks reminded me of my third grade teacher. I was fascinated with science, and she encouraged us to have class discussions about our own experiences with the world. It was not about memorizing and test preparation. It was about her guiding us to a scientific understanding of the world. I learned much more about science that year.

Then, there was my sixth grade teacher. I remember how excited she acted when students brought into her classroom fish, insects, reptiles, amphibians and anything else that could crawl or walk, even fly. She asked endless questions about these natural treasures, often prompting more than one student to go to the library to look up information so that she could answer her questions. She also frequently asked students to write original stories, fiction and nonfiction, to share with classmates. She always delighted in what every student wrote, and once even told me I would make an excellent writer someday. Her unrelenting interest in me was much more than test scores and how we did in the subjects she taught. She was genuinely engaging students, not subjects.

Later, I encountered Mr. - - - - , my geometry teacher. He taught the only math class in which I have ever made an A. While I learned a great deal in his class, what I remember most from his class was his “joke of the day” that was always extremely corny, but it never failed to solicit laughter. This action made him human to his students, and said to us, “Yes there’s geometry, but there’s also life out there.” He used geometry to teach us bout life, not the other way around.

What did all my most influential teachers have that make them still stand out to me today? Each of these teachers taught me, not a subject. In those days, of course, there were no standardized tests checking up on my performance or their teaching, but in that time you still had teachers who taught subjects rather than their students and those teachers and what they taught does not easily come to mind.

I think this is the distinction that the Dalai Lama makes in the above statement.  As teachers, we must never get entangled in subjects and test scores to the point that we forget we are teaching students. When the academic becomes more important than “preparing students for life,” our true impact on our students’ lives will be minimal. True teachers teach their students about life, and that impact is eternal.

Fossils, Technology, and Leadership

I have read all the predictions about the"death" of the desktop and laptop. All the predictions say there's a migration to smart phones and handheld devices. In that spirit, this old digital immigrant educator is composing this blog post from my Droid phone using the app, Blogger-droid, while standing on parking lot duty. How's that for multitasking?

While I'm reluctant to place a great deal of faith in tech predictions, my being able to post this to my blog from a device while standing in a parking lot shows the unending promise of all-the-time Internet access. With my Droid, I can do everything that I'm able to from my PC.

I have conversations every day with school leaders who still shun technology. They barely use a cell phone. Mention Twitter and Facebook, their eyes glaze over, and their brow furrows deeply. I don't even have to guess their thoughts. "That stuff is useless and only causes problems." Any thought of using this technology is dismissed immediately.

Describing school leaders who have failed to embrace technology and this ever-connected world as "irrelevant" seems weak to me. What comes to my mind is the word" fossil." Perhaps our admonition should say, "Don't be a fossil." I say that with all love and respect, but there is greater lesson in all of this. We, and I speak to myself as well as all school leaders, don't really have choice. Disruption is happening all around us. No amount of policy and rules is going to prevent the all-the-time-connected world from moving forward.

Well, parking lot duty is ending and it's time to go back in the building, but here's a final though that occurs to me. I like this being connected everywhere. I can certainly understand why our students like it too. At least I'm a fossil who is always connected.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4

Democratic Reps Propose Bill to Tie Teacher Evaluations to Test Scores

Democratic Representative Jared Polis of Colorado and Democratic Representative Susan Davis of California have proposed a bill that would basically require states to tie teacher evaluations to test scores. Check out Stephen Sawchuk’s “Teacher Beat” article at Education Week for more details about this legislation. It is amazing to me that the political party that has in the past always been friendly to educator concerns has decided to take up the failed accountability policies of the Bush administration.

There was a time when educators looked to the Democratic Party as Champions of Education. Now, that party seems to have taken up the failed policies of the Bush Administration.