Evernote

If you are not already using Evernote, I have a few personal and educational uses that work for me, and may be beneficial to you as well!

Step 1:  Go to www.evernote.com and create a free account.  On my personal laptop, I downloaded the "webclipper" tool that puts a little elephant icon in my tool bar, so I can click it to capture screenshots and save to my Evernote "Notebooks."

Step 2:  Decide what kind of "Notebooks" you want to create.  I just created a new account that will apply directly to my new grade level, so all of the notebooks I create will relate to the units I want to create for my new fifth grade class.

Do you ever see recipes on Facebook that look amazing, but you just don't want to "share" them in order to save to your wall?  I created a Notebook in Evernote and named it "Recipes Captured Online."  It's not unlike pinning to your recipe page on Pinterest.  I open the Recipes Captured Online notebook and click the + New Note button.  I title the note the title of the recipe, then copy and paste from Facebook.  Voila!  Captured for my future browsing or cooking attempts.  

EVERNOTE - FOR UNIT PLANNING

Teachers, I'm not sure why this didn't occur to me before, but Evernote is making it SO much easier for me to wrap my mind around unit planning.  The first unit I am working on for the beginning of the school year is a 5th grade literature unit based on the novel Out of My Mind, by Sharon Draper.  As part of this unit, I will be doing an assistive technology project.  As I browse the web finding resources, one way I'm finding to organize my data is by copying and pasting into my applicable Evernote files.  If you are anything like me, when you start to Google your topic, you will most likely come across topics and great blogs and sites that will help you in other areas.  To avoid losing those great resources, simply create more Notebooks and save everything that looks like it truly will be helpful in the future.  Just take the time to organize them as you go.  

Once I have a nice assortment of resources in my various notebooks, I'm ready to refer to them easily to help me as I write my unit plans.  This will help me to avoid the distraction of browsing online at the time I need to just focus on the writing, with the resources close at hand.

TAGGING

If you know you are going to be adding a lot of notes, it will be helpful to find just the right post later on by tagging your notes as you go.  I put any and all keywords I might later think of to describe the material in each note.  

This is what my Evernote page looked like after just thirty minutes of browsing and saving to my notebooks:

OTHER USES

• Save a copy of all your receipts.  Add the Evernote app to your Smartphone, take a photo of your receipts, store them in a Notebook and tag as personal, school-related, or other.  
• Create a Notebook for each student in your class.  Save work samples, audio files, and conference notes.  There is a feature to email directly from Evernote, so you can share work with parents quickly and easily while you are conferring with students.
• 10 Tips for Teachers Using Evernote
• Prezi to illustrate features of Evernote

Keeping Track of Links & Blogs

One of the great websites I found this week to help me keep track of the amazing websites, articles, and blogs I'm finding while I have some free time this summer is Symbaloo.  

The picture above shows you how you can arrange each link on a "tile."  You can find it by icon and you can also have the title of the page printed in text along the front of the tile.  


This is the "mix" page where I am currently adding my links as I find them (through my Twitter activities).  As I add tiles, I am thinking about color coding.  I will go back and color code by subject, maybe.  The Symbaloo mix page shared by SimpleK12, where I first heard about Symbaloo is here.  VERY much worth adding to your own account for future reference.

I know I have several teacher-friends who will want to take a look at these at their convenience, rather than have me send them a hundred random links to their email or Facebook accounts.   

I love that it has tabs across the top so I can organize by subject area.  That might be easier than color coding.  One tab or "mix" for blogs, one tab for tech tools, another for family and personal sites.  I love the idea of being this organized!

Do you have a great Symbaloo Mix you'd like to share here?  If so, please post your link in the comments below!

Scratching the Surface of Google

This is just the best way to learn during summer vacation.  Many thanks to SimpleK12 for the day of Google learning!  I have had a gmail account for years and I used it a little through my masters work at USF, but I didn't know all the features that would make life a little easier and more organized until today.  

Disclaimer:  None of this is likely to be helpful to anyone, other than the links.  I like to post my notes here so there will be a good chance of finding them again!  Information overload, anyone??

Session 1:  Productivity and Collaboration in the Cloud With Google Drive
More learning to follow with the resources provided by the presenter, Kyle Pace:  Google Drive Resources

I learned a new trick to keep my school and my personal Google accounts easily accessible.  While in one Google account, do the following:
1.  Click on your picture.
2.  Click on "Add Account."  
After adding the details of the second account (email address and password), both are easy to view in the top of each Google App you might be using.

Sharing documents from Google Docs with a link seems like fewer steps to take than adding as attachments to emails and within websites like TeacherWeb.  

I found last year that I filled my Dropbox account very quickly with videos and pictures.  I learned that Google Docs has a 30 gig max capacity.  However, what does NOT count toward the 30 gigs would be any docs created in Google Docs, any docs or files uploaded and converted into Google Docs.  This is good news for me, since I neared my max capacity with Dropbox last year.

Session 2:  Simplify Data Collection and Documentation with Google Forms
Monica Burns' Blog
classtechtips.com/2014/01/23/25-more-ways-to-become-a-tech-savvy-teacher/
I am looking forward to creating forms to use in a variety of subject areas.  Creating docs for those observations we need to make regularly throughout the year will be so convenient when, at the push of a button, the data can be sent directly to a spreadsheet.  

This past school year I kept daily anecdotal records about the behaviors of a couple of students.  This would have been great for me to use collaboratively with the parents.  Type up the text within the form, save, and share with parents, with each days' data saved in a spreadsheet.  

I can envision a few ideas right off the top of my head related to tracking student needs and progress within the writing workshop.  If I were teaching Everyday Math again this year (which I am not), I would make a checklist of skills each child mastered at the end of each unit.  There are papers in the assessment binder, but this would be a better snapshot, I think.

Session3:  Going Google:  the Quick Start Guide to Getting Started with Google Tools
Kimber Thompson
This is kind of cool.  When searching with kids, you can click Search Tools then narrow the search results by readability level.  

Safe Search - Turn off/on as needed to keep explicit video and images OUT of the search results.

Virtual Field Trips:   Cultural Institute/Virtual Field Trip

Professional Development

After spending the day watching educational webinars, I feel the need to gather all my notes and links together in one place.  This will help me refer back easily in order to better utilize the links I learned about.  Keeping it closed up in my scribbled handwriting in the composition book will probably not be terribly effective!

First, I started following the webinar presenters on Twitter.  I know, who has the time for Twitter?  I am slowly starting to see the benefits of connecting to educators on Twitter as a new (to me) place to collaborate and find new ideas.  If you want to connect with me, I am @twimom23.  (" Twi-tter" mom?  No, it's from my Twi-light phase, of course!)

Digital Storytelling:  tinyurl.com/dsthilt  Excellent assortment of digital storytelling tools.

Facilitate a Writing Workshop Using Google Docs:  I loved this session, since I am still learning all that Google Docs has to offer.  Susan Oxnevad's blog is full of great ideas:   http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com.
Notes:  The writing workshop can include lessons on sharing and commenting, peer editing, and the use of the amazing research tools available via Google Docs.  Hello?? Citations inserts?  Where was this class when I was writing those college research papers???

A tip for helping students create projects in Slides is to have them begin their writing in Docs, then copy and paste into the Slides program.

Students within the workshop should have lots and lots of opportunities to write, write, write!  Meanwhile, students are peer editing, and completing specific jobs related to peer editing.  (See Peer Editing Job Descriptions here:   http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-docs-to-facilitate-writing.html#.U6HyFfldWa8)

I am very excited about the Assignment Tracker - a simple form created in Google Docs.  http://d97cooltools.blogspot.com/2011/10/create-assignment-tracker-to-manage.html#.U6Hyy_ldWa8

Love this idea for language arts and social studies:  Go to www.Fakebook.com and create "fakebook" pages based on a character in a story or in history.  

Teaching about dialogue?  www.toondoo.com
Need a comic strip format?  www.makebeliefscomix.com
Creative uses of timelines: Timelines

The final link to share is a wonderful visual "favorites" page where we can store our links. Symbaloo!  I am working on creating my own pages, but this is too good not to share!  http://www.symbaloo.com/home/mix/freewebtoolwebmix