August 2008 archives

I’m happy to begin taking the wraps off of Stratepedia’s latest project: Coaching Calendar. For the most part, Coaching Calendar is exactly what it sounds like it is–an easy way for teachers to schedule instructional coaching appointments.

Coaching Calendar is a significant overhaul to the previous version, which was limited to two schools in the Virginia CLC implementation project. Now based on a more solid framework, teachers and coaches can view customized schedules and record session information privately and securely. Site coordinators can quickly schedule coaching dates with time slots custom to the school, and have access to coaching histories for both the site and individuals.

Since this is a pre-preview and not a full-on demonstration, I’ll share one image with you:

We began rolling this new version out last week, migrating two schools from the previous version to this new one. Next we’ll be working with two other schools, who have never used an online solution for coaching scheduling. My personal goal is to work with these schools over the course of the school year to make Coaching Calendar as useful as possible, then make it available to other sites beginning in Summer 2009.

When time allows–hopefully in the next few weeks–I’ll sit down and do a more thorough, video-based introduction to Coaching Calendar. In the meantime, let me know if you’d like more information.

We lost building power for a little while earlier today–unfortunately I was away from the office when it happened. Everything’s back up and running now. Sorry for any inconveniences–let me know if anything seems amiss.

You now have yet another way to keep up-to-date with the latest news from Hello (the somewhat official name for this here blog). Follow Stratepedia on Twitter, and receive notifications whenever we post new articles here.

By the way, I’m using a free service called Twitterfeed to automate this. You can, too. It takes a few minutes to set up, particularly if you don’t have an OpenID account, but after that it’s smooth sailing.

After a long week of getting Coaching Calendar up and running for the Virginia CLC schools, I’m taking a brief break and catching up on other projects today. First up: I’ve added the following feeds to feeds.stratepedia.org, our one-stop-shop for CRL and SIM-related RSS feeds. For those of you who haven’t latched onto an RSS reader yet, this is the next best thing.

New feeds:

• CRL Learns
• Stratepedia on Twitter (which I’m planning to start using more)
• For Your SIMformation (Sue Woodruff’s new blog)

Eric Langhorst was the keynote speaker at MACE and actively contributes to his blog, Speaking of History.   Today he gave a shout out to our buddy Flip! I just love it when my blog entries intertwine.   Langhorst is constantly coming up with new ways to make his lessons interesting for his students while selecting tools that are affordable for the district.

Check out his Flip project here.

Are you, or anyone you know, using video in your professional development?  Tell us about it!

A couple of weeks ago, Jim Knight began using Twitter as a communication tool for coaches. It’s gaining some traction, and many of you have begun following both me and Stratepedia.

If this is the first you’ve heard of Twitter, fear not–EDUCAUSE has released a brief overview of Twitter and its application to learning that’s as good as any introduction I could write. Better yet, visit Twitter, sign up for an account, and give it a try for yourself. Many people suggest that’s the only way to get what it can do.

I’m not a Twitter pro by any means–I only post a couple of times a day at the most, and, last I checked, I could still count my followers on my fingers and toes. But I’ve stumbled upon a few little things along the way to make using the service a bit less cumbersome.

1. Get a client. A Twitter client is a standalone program you download to your computer and configure to keep an eye on your Twitter account. This means you don’t have to go to the Twitter webpage each time you want to post or read others’ posts. I use a Mac client called Twitterific (the free, ad-supported one) on both my computer and my iPhone. More clients are available on Twitter’s downloads page, and even more can be found on the Twitter Fan Wiki. If you find a good one, tell us about it in the comments below (and/or in your Twitter stream).
2. Make replies trackable. This makes more sense in action than in words, so try this: Next time you’re replying to someone’s tweet (or just trying to get their attention), begin that tweet with the person’s username preceded by an @. For example, if you wanted to reply to something I said on Twitter, begin with @ruralocity. Then I can easily track things that are responses to something I posted by clicking my Replies tab. See “What are @replies?” on Twitter’s support site for more information, or just try it yourself by clicking the Reply icon associated with another tweet. One last thing–replies are not personal, private messages! They will show up alongside your tweets, so don’t say anything you wouldn’t say out loud in a crowd.
3. Don’t feel the need to follow everyone who follows you. Having a lot of Twitter followers is a badge of honor for some. Unfortunately, Twitter is also becoming yet another platform for spammers to do their dirty work. Both of these types of users will add you in the hopes that you’ll reciprocate. You can usually tell these types by looking at their following-to-follower ratios. My general rule of thumb? If someone’s tweets look interesting, I’ll follow them back. If I know someone in real life (or in some other, non-Twitter capacity) I’ll follow them back. How you handle it is your call.

I’ve got to do some work on Dossier’s server this evening which may require me to shut down the site for a bit, starting around 6:00 CDT. I’ll have things back up and running as quickly as possible.

SIM Professional Developer extraordinaire Sue Woodruff has started her own blog. Says Sue:

I’ve decided to document this year’s journey with a blog. I will invite other SIM professional developers to tag along. I am involved in adolescent literacy projects around the country, and I am going to share my experiences. (At least some of them.) I would like to pose questions and get advice, and I would love to hear from other SIM professional developers and instructional coaches. It is sort of an experiment. We talk about about making our teaching public; let’s make our professional development public, too!

I’m really glad Sue’s taken the initiative to start a blog and share her own perspective with others. Check out her blog for yourself to learn more. Don’t forget that RSS makes it really easy to follow along as she adds new posts–refer to Amber’s great RSS write-up to learn how.

How can I start my own blog?

Blogging is easy! Well, the technical part of it is, anyway–the writing part is as easy or difficult as you make it. Let’s get the technical part out of the way.

Sue is using Blogger, a popular, free blogging service from Google. (Sue, maybe you could leave a comment here or make a post on your blog about this process? I haven’t used Blogger myself but from what I hear it’s pretty easy to get started.) Or check out one of these options:

• WordPress.com
• TypePad.com (not free)
• Tumblr (this is a neat alternative to regular blogs–Tumblr is tuned to sharing quotes, clips, and other materials you find online, or your own abbreviated musings)
• Edublogs (I haven’t used this service myself; if you try it out let me know what you think)

There are tons more out there, of course; if you use a blogging service you particularly like let us know in the comments. Better yet, if (when!) you start a blog of your own make sure to tell us about it!

Sometime this week, I’m going to shut down the S.O.S. (that’s “Stratepedia Online Support”) section of the Learning Labs. I thought providing a level of peer support was a good idea, but it never really caught on in this case and I think confused more than it helped. Not to worry: Our Stratepedia Guidebooks are still online, and you can always e-mail your questions to us at help@stratepedia.org.

If you have any questions about this transition, drop me an e-mail or leave a comment.

In other support-related news, Amber and I are in the process of revisiting and revising the aforementioned Guidebooks to make sure they address the kinds of questions we find ourselves answering more often than not. These new Guidebooks will be rolled out as we get them done and will be available for free in both web-based and PDF formats. The latter is suitable for printing, if that’s your liking.

We’re using a great new application I found a few weeks ago called ScreenSteps. It’s great for creating how-to guides for anything to be done on a computer, and can be exported to blogs (if you’ve been following my series on Goodreads you’ve seen ScreenSteps in action), straight HTML, or PDF. I think Depot’s Guidebook will be updated to this new format within the next few weeks; other guidebooks will follow.

But that’s not all! Keep following Hello (the blog you’re reading right now) for tutorials, case studies, and anything else that might not fit within the context of our guidebooks. If you’ve got tips or success stories to share with others, let us know and we’ll showcase your work within Hello’s virtual pages.

To recap: S.O.S. is going away, the Guidebooks are staying put but will be getting a significant facelift (and PDF versions), and we want to showcase your tips and successes on our blog. Thanks!