Getting My Ducks in a Row

I'm back!  Well, at least I hope so.  As you can see from the last post, it has been almost a year since I have posted anything here on Digital Doors.  The part of my contract that says "or other duties as deemed necessary" really took charge this last school year.  As a part of the Teaching and Learning Team and my insistence that tech should be integrated into all parts of the curriculum, and the addition of an elementary tech lab program and an ipod pilot, I was busy leading the charge on moving forward with Standards Based Instruction, creating a K-6 tech curriculum, designing an iPod program and meeting with grade level groups to build instructional models.  I had to let go of my blog, my weekly Digital Literacy Workshops and my monthly Digital Literacy Coach meetings.  This summer, I am working on systems, hoping that if I build efficient systems, I might be able to carve out more time to work more directly with staff and students on integrating technology and building skills this next year.

My big challenge for the summer is to figure out how to streamline my communication so that I get a bigger bang for my buck when I create and share content.  As I work through this process, I am keeping in mind that my audience in as busy as I am.  I need to create systems that work for busy teachers.  I need to meet the teachers where they are.

Here are a few of the things that I am working on. 

1. I've set up the front page of my workshop website as a portal.  There is a calendar with all of the workshops and classes listed.  You can access my blog from that page.  The resource links that I bookmark are available on this page.  Hopefully, it will become more of a one stop shop.
2. I am using a web tool called ifttt.com  (If this then that).  This site helps me to set up up if then commands so that when I bookmark something one place, it pushes it out to other useful places, for instance, my blog posts and bookmarks will automatically appear as status updates on the Facebook Page I created.
3.  Trying to meet teachers where they are, I will be pushing links, blogposts and announcements to a Facebook Page that teachers can "like".
4. I am creating just in time video tutorials.  These will be available on our website and through iTunes U.  

So stay tuned to see how all of these connections work for me and for you.

Here are a few of the other tools I have in place to help me gather and share information.  More information on all of these in a later post.

• Diigo: This is my bookmarking tool of choice.  
• Google Reader:  This is where all of the great blog post I read from others are collected for me to read and share out with you. 
• Paper.li: Is just one of many similar tools for curating information and creating newsletters.  I have paper.li set up to create a newsletter that is linking to my website each day. 
• Twitter and Plurk: A great group of educators share wonderful resources and participate in interesting conversations on these two Social Media Sites. 

Pin It Now!