I am on vacation with my family in Colorado–Rocky Mountain National Park to be exact–one of my all time favorite places on earth. Our first two days here we hiked our little hearts out, and then last night we watched the thunderclouds roll in, and it has been cold and rainy all day. No matter, we played games, read books, took naps and relaxed before heading into Estes Park to find some Internet. I needed to post for class, and of course everyone wanted to check their Facebook.
So, my resolution to blog every day was interrupted by this trip, but I figure that everyone needs to unplug every once in awhile. Although we did not unplug on the trip here! 18 hours in the family RV with Mom, Dad, Laura (sis), Jordan (bro), and Tim (sis’ fiance) and I; and dominated many iPod Touch apps! Our apps of choice? WordWarp, WordSearch, and FallDown. Hmmm, we had an RV full of nerds! Ahh, the sun just came out, so farewell until I plug back in…
Monthly Archives: July 2010
Share it Forward
Share it Forward: I just invented a new post thread for my blog, and I shall call it Share it Forward. I read many ed tech blogs and spend an embarrassing amount of time researching ed tech (for my Master’s class…most of the time!). So in this little corner of my blog, I’m going to Share it Forward. If I think another teacher or nerdy individual will benefit from a tool, site or resource, here it will go! And since Share it Forward was born on a Friday, I will continue to post it every Friday. This will work very well, me thinks, I’ll collect my resources all week and Share them on Fridays. Check back again for next week’s edition of Share it Forward!
- First of all I would like to plug this fantastic blog resource: Free Technology for Teachers. You should subscribe to it immediately so that you don’t miss out on any of the resources or recommendations that this handy little blog has to offer! I will also add it to my blogroll so you can find it any time.
The latest post on this blog is about a fantastic website Your Next Read. Let me tell you how cool this is! Type in the title of any book you love, hmmm, I think I’ll put in “Chasing Vermeer”, a book I wish all my students would read! Then click search and *BAM* the site will create a book recommendation web of other books you might like. You can give your opinion (thumbs up, thumbs down) of each recommendation or you can click on one of the books and it will create a new web of recommended books based on that new book. Mmmm, love it. What a great resource for your kiddos or for YOU.
- Next recommendation is brought to you via Ask a Tech Teacher, the website recommendation is Protopage. This website helps you make a customized homepage for you to share with your students. There are lots of widgets you can add including blog or podcast feeds, bookmark lists, To Do lists and MORE! This reminds me of an iGoole page with out the Google part, and I can certainly see setting my homepage on my classroom computers to a Protopage so that my students can easily find all the resources we use in my classroom. Right now all our computers are set to our school homepage, but I could link our school page to the Protopage so that the kids could still easily find it. I started working on mine here Oelschlager’s Protopage. It’s a work in progress, but I really like this versatile tool. Although, if we use Google Apps for our e-portfolios, blogs, email etc…then I’ll probably stick with an iGoogle page. But Protopage is a great alternative.
The wave of enthusiasm…is dead.
Remember that wave of enthusiasm I told you about last week when I excitedly made my way to school on a Saturday? Yeah, that’s dead. It ran out yesterday, on the last day of summer school. I promised my wonderful custodian, Jose, that I would have all my stuff put away by Friday (at the latest) so he could clean the carpets in my room. (I saw the panicked look in his eye when he looked at my disaster)
What, you can’t clean around my mountains of boxes and random piles? After I finished getting everything wrapped up at Summer School, I headed to my lair classroom, and I just stood there staring at the piles, as the waves of enthusiasm slowly ebbed away, and disappeared into the ocean of Summer. So, what’s a girl to do? She starts stuffing things into cabinets, bookshelves, and drawers as quickly as possible, of course! (Is this the way anyone else “cleaned” their bedroom when they were a kid?) Caution: Do not open the big storage closet, or you may be hit by falling math manipulatives! I know I will regret this come August, but I simply could not be at school for a minute longer! After everything had been “put away”, I drove my sleepy little self home, and took a THREE hour nap! It was like my body had been waiting for summer, and knew the exact moment it arrived.
I’m so glad that I went in last weekend, and I did finish the library:
Don’t you worry, even though I won’t have any trouble staying away from school until August , I still have lots of nerdyness to share with you until then!
Nerdiest Purchase I’ve Ever Made
A few months ago when I decided that I wanted to organize and catelog my classroom library I decided I was going to need a little help. I imagined the 1000+ books that were stored in my garage and mentally calculated how long it would take me to type them all into Excel. And of course I would want to include the AR Level and Points, and while I was at it I wanted to label all the books into categories…I would probably be done by 2020, if I was lucky. So I did a little Googling and THAT is how I discovered the Intelliscanner, dun-dun, dun. Confession: One of my secret desires has always been to be a librarian. All my childhood books have numbers written in the covers, and my sister was forced to play library on more than one occasion. The Intelliscanner is basically a library scanner for the common man teacher.
This handy little scanner connects to your computer, scans the barcode on your books, and puts them into a fantastic software that looks a lot like iTunes. It loads all the information about your book, including the title, author, type of book, date, price, and even adds a cover picture (if available). It’s a nerdy teacher’s dream device.
Click the picture to see this up close
It would take me YEARS to enter all the information that this program looks up online for me. When you double click the book it gives you additional information, including a summary:
You can customize your own categories , and I created columns for the Reading Level and AR points. You can order your books according to any of the categories by clicking on the column heading, so I can arrange them by reading level, author’s name, or type of book with just a click of a button.
I love this feature of the Intelliscanner Software, I can click the “Statistics” button and it breaks down my library for me. I have 1,325 books in my library with 845 unique titles. (I told you I have a book problem!) I also scanned in the movies I use in my classroom and the audio books I have in my listening center. It even tells me how much I spent on books if I paid sticker price, I certainly hope I didn’t spend $6,320.89 on books, good thing I shop at Half Price books :)
Oh this next part just warms my nerdy, little heart:
I can lend out my books, just like in a real library. My kids will type in their name, and I’ll be able to keep track of who is reading what. I know, I know, what can’t this program do?
One more thing it can do, is that you can share your library online with the handy little “Share” button. It publishes your library to your own website (for free!), check out mine here http://www.intelliscanner.net/aoelschlager/books/. I love all the options and features that the Intelliscanner and software offers. Not only does it fulfill a childhood dream, but it is a great organizational tool and will help me manage my classroom full of eager readers.
Upcoming Post: An Intelliscanner alternative…LibraryThing
Wireless Dreaming
Today is the last day of summer school for me, which means that summer officially starts tomorrow! I can’t wait to turn my alarm off (5:15am, you will not see me until August!) and sleep until the spirit moves me–or until my Coffee Headache rears its ugly head. Which, let’s be honest, will probably be about 6:30am. Stupid internal alarm clock and caffeine addiction. Confession: I have been known to get up at 6:30 on a Saturday with a caffeine headache, make and drink my coffee, and go back to bed. I’m trying to decide if I will try to kick my coffee habit this summer or not…If I do, you can look forward to a few days of “Confessions of a Crabby Teacher”.
In other news, I have been researching SMART Solutions and discovered the SMART WC6-NA Wireless, that is Tech Talk for SMARTBoard Bluetooth wireless adapter, which is less-Tech Talk for a Wireless SMARTBoard!
For all you teachers out there that have a SMARTBoard in your classroom, wouldn’t it be awesome to be able to use it from your laptop anywhere in the room? And our Tech team was very interested in NOT having to run USB cabling up through my asbestos filled ceiling! I wish everything could be wireless, can’t you just imagine your classroom filled handheld devices and laptops? Hmmm, maybe if I win the lottery…
