PDFs + Windows = Happy Teacher

As most people who know me already know, I am a Mac Girl.  To me, Macs make more sense, they work better and I think they are a better value for the money (we still have an iBook G4 at home that's working-although since it's PowerPC it doesn't get updates...point is, it still works). 

I have noticed that while most PCs hardware isn't great, their software (and especially their operating systems) are improving.  It seems that Windows has been inspired by much of Apple's OS functionality and is copying them-which is great (since I'm PC at work).

One such item is the abilty to make PDFs without downloading things.  Office 2007 finally worked this in and now it seems so has Adobe/Windows. 

Everyone that knows me knows that I also 'do' interactive notebook in my classes.  This year, I have started to post all work in the notebook by page on Blackboard, which has been fantastic for both me and my students. 

They are able to get (and stay) caught up in class and they don't have to ask me for everything anymore.  It's especially nice when my students miss class. 

One problem I had early on with posting everything on Blackboard  was that all of my kids didn't have Word 07 (some didn't have Word at all), but by posting all documents as PDFs, all students could open the files.  I now convert everything to a PDF or upload it to Googledocs. 


Recently, my Dell has made PDFing much easier:  just right-click the Word file, and without opening anything, convert documents to PDFs (the picture below will show you all the steps).  Love it.

And, you can also convert websites into PDFs, so if your students need to use an online resource to complete some work, you can easily make it a PDF for them.

Huckle*Buckle*Beanstalk

Inevitably when my sisters and I get together, we talk about this game called Hucklebucklebeanstalk.  I won't lie, most people think I'm crazy when I talk about Hucklebucklebeanstalk, but it was honestly one of my favorite games when I was young.  I remember one of the best hiding things was this strawberry eraser (yes, it smelled like strawberries).  It got me thinking today, it would be nice if I could send my kids off on a scavenger hunt of sorts at school. 

Geocaching would be a great thing to try around school.  Geocaching on its own is pretty neat.  Bascially you use a GPS device (a/k/a my iPhone) to find things...

It seems like doing this at a school would be great-except that my adminstrators would probably not like it so much. Have any of you tried Geocaching with your students?  How did you work it out?  How did you set it up?  I'm curious, because I think I would like to try it...maybe I will.

Facebook & Your Students (or you)

I've been on Facebook for awhile now (even though I was totally anti after college), and I always have my name/details hidden.  A couple of years ago, I shortened and mixed around my name a bit to make it difficult for my students to find me.  It seems that kids are now doing the same thing for similar reasons.  In this article in the NY Times from this weekend (Thank you, NYT iPhone app), it explains the prevalence of students 'hiding out' from their potential college/university until they get in. 

It makes perfect sense to me.  I mean, I don't post a whole lot of shady stuff on my Facebook (I'm not sure why anyone ever would), but I still don't like my students to have access to that type of personal information, so hiding myself makes sense.  If I'm thinking like a high school student for a minute, I'm probably posting some questionable things/being tagged in suspicious photos and I wouldn't want college admissions officers looking at it-so it makes pretty good sense to hide on FB.

Are your students worrying about this or doing it?  How are they dealing with the challenges of getting into college in a social media/connected world?  Maybe share this article with them-see what they think.

Smiles

This morning during my junior/senior elective course, we had a discussion about moral dilemmas, but after that, there was a bit of time left over.  I stumbled upon CertificateStreet.  I wanted to try it out, so I made a certificate for one of my seniors who said her skin was particularly clear this week.  I was very surprised at how many options there are, and how easy they are to use-especially for a free site!

Try it and brighten one of your students' day.

Deal$.

 Lately, I've gotten into fun deals.  Namely, ones that cam through switching my gender on Pandora.  I know it sounds silly, but I changed my gender from female to male in my Pandora settings.  Now, rather than getting birth control, cleaning and 'lady' stuff ads, I get advertisements for concerts, technology stuff and (one I really appreciated) Living Social.  The whole point of Living Social (and others like Groupon) is to make you aware of insane deals.  I'm talking crazytown deals here.  I've services that are discounted by 90%, which I don't typically see in my regular life.  It also sends you deals on things you wouldn't typically look into yourself, like this one:

I'm not going to lie, I definitely wanted to do this, but didn't end up buying it-I sort of regret it now.  But seriously, what a fun date for $25.  Sometimes they are less amazing (one was some sort of dental work, which isn't exactly my idea of fun).  But very frequently, they are deals on food, where you purchase a (sort of) gift card for $20 and it's actually worth $40-nice if you plan to go out anyway.

Groupon definitely has more cities.  I live outside DC and I have three specific areas I can choose.  Living Social does not, they have one for the DC area, with most of their deals focused on The District.  They are pretty friendly, they send you an email in the morning (a nice surprise in your inbox), and if you delete it, you don't hear about that deal again.  There are also iPhone apps for them, and Living Social will give you push notifications, which are handy when you are stopped at the stop light waiting to turn into school.

All in all, in this time of teacher layoffs, no COLA or steps, getting deals where you can get them is good.  These aren't deals at Wegman's for groceries, but who doesn't need a break from real life every once in awhile-even if you don't have a six-digit savings account to fund it.

Music

Music is huge.  I love to listen to music (I know most of my kids do, too).  I usually listen to Pandora during my planning periods, which is fab.  You can't download any of the music directly from Pandora, and I usually don't hear anything new.  My stations on Pandora (more about Pandora later) tend to play music I already own & like.  The kids often get their music from less than legal sites. 

Now that I'm (reasonably) grown up, all my music downloads come from iTunes/Apple.  When I was in school, I used Napster, Bearshare, etc-I won't lie, but there are still some places that (reasonably) responsible adults can download new music for free.  Gimmesound is one of those websites.  It has a pretty great player, so you can just listen to tunes, but you can also download them for free.  Don't expect to find too many groups that have 'made it'...you won't find Paramore or Metric on here (I checked), but it's a great way of finding new bands & music to like.  Enjoy!

Ask and you shall receive...

I stumbled on Wallwisher, and I've honestly already begun using it.  Wallwisher is essentially an online bulletin board.  Students (or anyone) can post 'notes' onto it.  I have one for my elective asking students what they want to learn this quarter and I have on for my World History II course asking students what they'd like to review for the SOL (our state test).  

Students can post anonymously and anyone can edit, move & delete the 'notes'.  They're a great way of gauging how things are going in your class, soliciting advice, mind webs, or anything else you can think up.  You can customize what your Wallwisher looks like and who can post, who can edit and if you want to moderate (or approve) all postings, that is possible too.

Write on my Wallwisher and let me know what you think, what you'd like to see... http://www.wallwisher.com/wall/techinteaching

How would you use Wallwisher?