Live Binders

Back when I was in the classroom, I had binder after binder of training materials on bookshelves.  Usually, they were nothing more than dust collectors.  We would receive the binders during a training and then they would live on a shelf rarely to be touched again.

Now that my job is to train teachers, and knowing what happens to training binders, I went in search of a way to put my materials in a more accessible space.  A few years ago I learned about Live Binders.

Simply put, Live Binders  in an online 3 ring binder.  It's a free way to store your documents, and as the owner, you can choose to make them public or private.  You can also import documents or links from other people's binders into your binder.

I've since created several binders, but I particularly like the shelves they introduced last year.  So far I'm up to 5 shelves, and I use those shelves to "borrow" binders from other folks who have generously shared their binders.

Live Binders can also be used as an ePortfolio, a place to store documents for your substitute teacher, and storing parent newsletters, forms, and other documents.  Adminstrators can use the tool to create an interactive, real-time staff handbook.

Live Binders has apps available for Android and iOS, a bookmarklet tool that easily allows you to capture a web page to your binders, and, for you Chrome users, there's even a Chrome app.

Live Binders is free, but like most web tools now has a paid option.  The free version will give you 100 MB of storage space.  So far I haven't come close to filling that up.  Below are the price comparisons for the Educational users.

Learnist

If you're a fan of Pinterest and you're an educator, then you'll love Learnist. Just as Edmodo is called "Facebook for School", Learnist is referred to as Pinterest for educators.  Personally, my interest in Pinterest is through my wife who finds new recipes or new "honey-do" projects for me.  I usually hear complaints that Pinterest keeps crashing on our iPad1.

However, when my supervisor shared Learnist with me, I actually gravitated towards it.  I've not been using it for long, but I have found it to be immediately useful.  The iPad app is more stable than Pinterest and I find it easier (for me) to navigate than Pinterest.

From Learnist's help page, this description tells you all you need to know about Learnist:

What is Learnist?

Today, almost anything you want to learn is available on the web via search tools and wiki references, like Wikipedia. The problem isn’t getting to information anymore, it’s collecting and assembling all of the great web resources and making sense of it all. This is what Learnist is all about. People, helping other people learn. Learn something, teach something. At Learnist.

To learn more check out a 60 second video giving an overview of how Learnist works.

What do I use Learnist for?

Learnist is the best place to learn about anything. Real people with expert knowledge share what they know by creating web “learning boards” from the best blogs, videos, audio, twitter feeds, slides shows and other web resources. You can watch videos, read blogs and books, view documents and images to learn something new.

If you want, you can click on the title to go to the original web page, leave comments, ask questions and share the the things you like. When you’ve completed one of the learnings you can check it off and keep track of the things you’ve learned. And, when you’ve learned something that other people would like to know, you can create your own board or recommend a learning to an existing board.

I'll be creating my first "board" soon, so I'll be looking for you to follow it.

What will you learn today on Learnist?

Paper.li

For awhile now, I've seen friends and colleagues pushing out "daily newspapers".  I kept wondering what they were using, and yesterday, I decided to investigate.  I discovered they were using a free product (with a pay option) called Paper.li.

Paper.li was developed in Switzerland, and is designed to curate articles from you Twitter and/or Facebook posts.  Since Facebook is blocked in my district, I have chosen to create my Daily Paper using posts from my Twitter account.  As a Paper.li editor, you select the content you want in your paper.  In my case, I chose some of the most influential people I follow on Twitter, such as Richard Byrne, Steven Anderson, Jayme Linton, and Lyn Hilt to name a few.  I'm also following products and companies such as SMART, SimpleK12, and Microsoft Lync.

If you have any suggestions for improving the Ed On Tech Daily, I'd love to hear them.  You'll find the link to Ed On Tech Daily on the home page of this blog.

Virtual Book Club

Recently I had the opportunity to participate in a virtual book club for Professional Learning in the Digital Age by Kristen Swanson. Because I'm responsible for training my district's teachers on integrating technology into their lessons, I was not only intrigued by the title of the book, but also in the concept of a virtual book club. Over the course of three weeks, the author posted various topics on Twitter as well as other options for responding to group discussion questions. While my job prevented me from participating live, I'm still able to go back and add to the discussion.

The Virtual Book Club is a great idea, particularly as it relates to Swanson's book. Now we can expand beyond the traditional whole faculty book club into a worldwide discussion of educational books. Teachers will be able to participate in book studies that actually interest them and meet their career goals and personal professional development. I wish this had been around 8 years ago when I was forced into reading books that didn't pertain to my job functions.

I'm so intrigued by the virtual book club that I'm considering adding one to my Ed On Tech repertoire. Anyone interested?

Delayed Posts

I apologize for the delay in posts. I am smack in the middle of training our pilot teachers on CIITS. For those of you outside of Kentucky, CIITS (Continuous Instructional Improvement Technology System) is the comprehensive data system our state is developing to improve instruction. I'll post more about this later.

With the President's Day weekend coming up, I'm hoping to get some posts written ahead of time and scheduled to prevent delays in the future.

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