Filters don’t work, but Education does....

Digital Citizenship Week was last week (October 21-25) and I spotted this interesting post on the ISTE blog - Teach Instead of Filter.  Using the LA Unified School Districts’ iPad rollout debacle as a backdrop, the author hones in on the need to approach the “internet access” problem as an educational issue, not a restrictive use issue.  The irony - by-passing the firewalls, clever ‘work-arounds’ to access Facebook, Twitter, etc. - all demonstrate excellent learning skills (creativity, perseverance, initiative).

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Save Me Time ... & ... Make My Life Easier

One important reason for using all the 'ed tech stuff' is how it will save you time and energy. Piggybacking on someone else’s lesson materials is soooo much easier than making up my own.  So how about a simple search engine to find SMART notebook content on the web.  The customized search engine (uses Google Search) focuses specifically on notebook files (of which there are a gazillion out there).

You can also build your own customized search engine based on a different set of parameters.  Learn more from Google CSE.

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Tech Support website ... Coming soon

I’ve been experimenting with different approaches to make tech support resources accessible and available.  What I plan to begin implementing is a dedicated website (on EdLine) for tech support resources - tutorials, how-to documents, videos, advice and examples on application, FAQs, etc.  I also plan to include online self-paced “courses” (think of it as a mini MOOC) on specific ed tech applications.

The site is accessible in Edline from the My Classes & Shortcuts or MY EDLINE tabs as the Instructional Technologies group page.