My Beauty Best Teacher

Via memeorandum I came across this story- In the Arena: Libyan opposition has less than 1,000 fighters:

During "In the Arena," Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for The New Yorker reporting from Benghazi, Libya, tells Eliot Spitzer that the number of opposition fighters on the front lines are fewer than anyone would think and that they are poorly armed and badly trained. Anderson says, "Effective number of fighting men, well under 1,000. Actual soldiers, who are now in the fight, possibly in the very low hundreds on the opposition side."

If Obama is correct and the situation in Libya is a humanitarian crisis which demands that the United States act, then the United States needed to act while it was still possible to act, or else resign itself to the humanitarian crisis which would result. But Obama did not act while it was still possible to act, and the reason for the delay was his own incompetence and ignorance, for which he, and he alone, is to blame.

Obama is ignorant that it takes real people to fight wars and real hardware to engage in a revolution- and his delay in acting meant that Qaddafi was able to kill many fighters and retake many weapons- Obama has no experience in the military and has shown little familiarity with military subjects and is ignorant that battles are fought with people and hardware and are not simply chess pieces to move around a board. Obama is incompetent in that he does not recognize his own ignorance on this issue and instead of acting on advice from those smarter than him he instead worried about his NCAA bracket or jetted down to Brazil or hosted fancy dinners and events with celebrities.

Early on in the conflict (February 27) I wrote this:

(Obama's) failures resulted in a longer, more drawn out, less sure conflict, one in which the moderates saw the President of the United States doing nothing and so decided to support the established powers, one in which the revolutionaries saw their morale drop due to lack of support, one in which the established powers in Libya believed that is was okay to use deadly force and hire international mercenaries to keep control.

Several weeks later I had become disgusted with Obama's handling of the crisis in Libya and wrote this:

...I have no problem blaming Obama for the ensuing humanitarian crisis that is going to unfold in Libya. It was okay to wait a bit, because the US shouldn't just jump willy-nilly into every conflict, but the minute the rebels stalled, the math was pretty simple- either jump in now in support and knock Muammar Qaddafi out while building goodwill with the rebels who would then march to power and restore order, or stay out of it and watch Qaddafi retake his nation and punish the rebels and build goodwill with him and his son...

...But President Paintywaist instead anguished about the decision and tried to hide and ran around yelling 'present' on the issue while issuing empty rhetoric and throwing pixie dust at the situation. I don't care how hard he tries to re-write history on this one- he sat around, watched the rebels get pushed back, watched them lose their best fighters and leaders and most dedicated freedom fighters, watched Qaddafi take back cities and kill and rape everyone who was against him in those areas, watched both Qaddafi and the rebels get weaker, and then when the French and British said 'screw you, we're doing something' he fled to Brazil and let Hillary make the call....

Let me be clear- President Obama waited too long to commit the United States to this conflict, and his waiting let Qaddafi forces kill too many revolutionary fighters and recapture too many revolutionary resources, and now the outcome of the situation in Libya is more uncertain. His address this week did little to explain why this critical and increasingly important delay happened, in spite of his efforts to retell the story, and he should be held to blame for the now greater cost that it will take to avert a humanitarian crisis in Libya.

Genocides piss me off and I hate it when people die when they shouldn't, and the blame for this situation should be put squarely and fully on Democratic President Barack Obama.

UPDATE: This does not cause me to become less angry- according to the Jawa Report, there are now less opposition fighters left in Libya than there are members of the 501st Legion, a group of Star Wars fans who dress up like stormtroopers and other characters from the movies, prompting him to ask the important question "Are There More Actual Stormtroopers Than Libyan Rebel Fighters?"

UPDATE II: RedState's Caleb Howe has produced an awesome graphic comparing Obama's war in Libya with Bush's war in Iraq. Check it out, via Doug Ross.

Right now my students are enjoying Kodu and making Xbox style video games on the PC to teach digital citizenship. Here are some very advanced student projects and I hope you'll vote! (It ends 14 hours from the time of this post -- some time about 4 am EST April 1st, 2011. So, review and vote.

From one of my friends at Microsoft:

"It's no secret that the U.S. is falling behind when it comes to science and math. It's estimated that by 2014, there will be 1 million new jobs in science and technology related fields added to the U.S. workforce, but the U.S. will only be able to fill 50% of those jobs with qualified US graduates. Now, more than ever, is the time to support and encourage the next generation to pursue opportunities in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and design.

Microsoft's Imagine Cup<http://www.imaginecup.com/

>, the world's premier student technology competition, provides a unique opportunity to showcase positive examples of students who are making an impact around the world. This year, over 70,000 students in the US registered for the competition, creating real solutions for real problems while learning valuable skills to prepare them for future.

Today we are launching the People's Choice Awards<facebook.com/MicrosoftTechStudent>, a fun opportunity to meet the finalists, view videos of their projects and vote for your favorite team. Students this year created a mobile app to detect malaria, video games to help teach environmental responsibility and a supply chain system for humanitarian efforts. The Software Design and Game Design teams with the most votes will be crowned champions at the Imagine Cup 2011 US Finals awards ceremony on April 11th.

Check out this video<http://bit.ly/hguWcE> to get a feel for the event and don't forget to vote!"

Image by twm1340 via FlickrSome days you open the milk in the fridge and it has gone bad but you don't realize it until a big clump of pre-cottage cheese has fallen on the cereal.

Some days your youngest child comes in with a "Moe" haircut because he wanted to get the hair out of his eyes and couldn't wait until Monday.

Some days you go to school to see that the unexpected air conditioner repairmen have trashed your room and that a full 1/3 of the computers are unplugged.

Some days you try to move the computers back with the help of the janitor and a monitor and table fall on your head while you're back in the corner.

Some days something precious to you has been taken off your desk and you know it is one of 8 students - all of whom deny it.

Some days you turn off messaging when your child is with you overseas and the cell phone company messes up and starts charging you for every message your child sent when they returned and sends you a bill for over $1200.

Some day I'll be happy...

No. I won't be happy someday - I'll be happy today.

Sure sometimes things fall on you like the monitor fell on my head yesterday morning.

Things happen. That is life.

At the end of yesterday (my someday in the story above) I came home, got in the bed and turned on my old time favorite, Little House on the Prairie,  and Mary Ingall's baby died in a fire that Albert inadvertently started when he was smoking in the basement of the blind school. (I found out this script for May We Make Them Proud went on to win several awards for Michael Landon, the author and actor who played Charles Ingalls.)

So, I sobbed. I cried as Mary was lost in insanity for a period as she denied the baby was dead and her husband went to New York to get away from her and Albert ran away. Life is so unfair. It all welled together into noiseless sobs (noiseless so my family wouldn't know I was crying - that upsets them.)

But then, at the end, as usual, there was a very touching scene. Johnathan - Charles Ingalls' best friend, whose wife had also died in the fire - said something like this to Albert Ingalls who had run away:

"We can't bring them back, but the question is, are we going to live our lives in a way that will make them proud?"

I can't undo the computer on my head - I CAN get the cell company to straighten out their billing mistake - I can buy new milk - My son's "Moe" haircut will grow out -  I can buy another of the thing stolen from me - but I can't buy another day ruined by unhappiness of my own making.

These are the things of life.

Some days things just happen like this but we cannot wait for some day to be happy.

If we do - we're never happy because something is wrong with every day - but you know what - something is RIGHT with every day too!

During the day, my baby sister Skyped me and called me as she was driving home to check on me - and she's one of the busiest women I know. She loves me.

After school, I came home, and my oldest son gave up his Xbox game so I could watch 2 episodes of Lost. (That is a BIG deal.) He loves me.


My Mom called me to check on me too. She loves me.

 I ended up yesterday flipping between a show about married people losing weight and American Idol sitting on the bed and laughing with my youngest son and daughter. My husband listened to me vent after we went to bed even though he was tired.


These people love me.

Today I will be happy and grateful for this day God has given me. Today is the someday I will be happy.

How about you?

• Education | Mint.com

  interactive online game to help students see the "impact of smart money decisions."

  tags: education money finance math math_teacher

• Cranes For Kids

  For every crane you make, oshkoxh will donate clothing to the children of Japan.

  tags: education Japan communityservice

• ScreenCastle | One Click Screencasting

  Easy Screencasting tool. This is super simple and from camtasia. WOW!

  tags: education screencasting techintegrator

• Screencasting-Presenter: Lorna Costantini - Classroom 2.0 LIVE!

  A link of a screencasting webinar that came to me. If you want to record the screen, this webinar by Lorna Costantini is one that can help you.

  tags: education screencasting technology

• Tony Comstock's Kōan of Silence » Blog Archive » The Comstock Foundation SubGenius Grant and Residency Fellowship

  Talk about a great grant! Tony is giving time aboard his boat to a "subgenius" in return for dinner with his family as a grant. I LOVE this idea. What if more of us did this! Wow! Thinking I could talk to Dad about our lodge at the shed and offer a week of quiet time away to a subgenius of my own.
  
  I love this!

  tags: education grant

• Student-Centered Learning Environments: How and Why | Edutopia

  As is typical of Edutopia, this is a masterful aggregation of articles about student-centered learning.

  tags: education learning

• Kids Teaching Kids - The Vision

  With recent coverage in the Huffington post, this platform where kids teach kids is supposedly taking off - let me suggest they buy a proper domain name first instead of a weebly url, but besides that - this echoes what the students "invented" in past conferences - whether it was "Aha" (Amateurs Teaching Adults) or programs where kids would help each other - they want to do it and are already helping each other on Facebook through IM as it is.

  tags: education learning

• Needlebase - Twitter List Creators Who Love @RWWGeo

  Marshall K is using Needlebase to build some pretty fascinating Twitter lists. This was a group of list makers who love RWWGEo the most.
  
  Owl.ly reports in Hootsuite is trying to do something similar although it doesn't have near the detail.

  tags: education twitter

• Needlebase

  A website that marshall K uses to aggregate and compile information. I want to understand how he uses it. Here are many of the public database this service aggregates. This is delving more deeply into data and something that our students have to get to. Past just the surface of "a verbatim Google search" into making meaning of the data.
  
  It looks like this is an important tool for researchers - particularly those researching things pertaining to technology and the ecosystems that are emerging in so many places.
  
  Teachers - I promise you could do some fascinating data aggregation and excel mapping projects with the databases on this page - no sign up required.

  tags: education

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

In June 23, 2009 I wrote a post against attempts to regulate smoking, but apparently at that time I did not write a post stating my views on the local Michigan smoking ban. I did call in to some local radio shows then and express my view that the smoking ban would likely lead to less patrons visiting bars and resulting less tax revenue and more unemployment, but most of the radio hosts and other people in the state ignored that sort of advice, and so our Democratic Governor and Democratic Legislature went ahead and passed a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants.

One year later the results are coming in, and like most attempts by Democrats to govern our society, the result is a society that is less richer, prosperous, and free (and although the data would be hard to come by, I would also contend that since smokers now are forced to smoke in their own homes now, there are more home fires caused by smoking and so more losses of life). And as business has fallen and sales of food and liquor have fallen due to this smoking ban, that has meant less revenue to the state to support police, fire, education, and libraries, all things that liberal Democrats pretend that they support.

From story Bar Owners Plan Smoking Ban Protest -- With Taxes:

...the group Protect Private Property Right in Michigan is proposing some pretty drastic measures to get lawmakers to take a second look at it. They want bar owners to stop paying taxes completely until the smoking issue is brought back up. And some bar owners TV5 spoke with didn't think that’s a bad idea...

“It's hurt us. I don't know anybody in the small bar industry that it's helped,” said (Co-owner of the Red Horse in Saginaw Chris) Adams. Just down the street from the Red Horse, bar owner Jerry Baleck at Patty Flemings feels the same way.


“I’m against it. I think it's private property here, and I should be allowed to say whether I want to smoke or not,” said Baleck.

That’s why a growing number of business owners are taking matters into their own hands. They love their bars and hate the smoking ban law, so some are trying to get Lansing’s attention where it hurts -- right in the wallet. A group of Michigan bar owners said they'll set up private escrow accounts and hold off on paying their taxes. “Maybe they ain't got enough money to pay their taxes in the first place with the smoking ban,” said Baleck.

“If we're not making money, why should we give them money?” said Adams. At least 200 bar owners have pledged to stop paying their taxes. It's a drastic step and owners TV5’s Liz Gelardi spoke with aren't sure if they're ready to go that far. “I don't know. I’d have to know the ins and outs and know all the particulars before I would jump in and do something so drastic,” said Adams. “But yeah, I probably will consider it.”

“Are you going to keep paying your taxes?” Gelardi asked Baleck. “Well, yeah, [I] don’t need no tax problems,” responded Baleck.

“Hopefully we can get more numbers,” said Adams. “Hopefully we can double that, you know, so we can get twice as many people together and make a statement to the state and tell them we're tired of being pushed around.”

On one hand, you have someone who provides a service to society (a restaurant or bar where people can smoke) that people freely engage in and harms no one except others who freely choose to go to those bars and restaurants. This person works hard and pays your taxes. On the other hand, you have a government official, usually a Democrat or liberal, who wants to control this person and make him make his bar or restaurant non-smoking so that he can go with his happy rich family and not have smoke in their faces, and so passes a law that results in a society that is less prosperous and free. That's the story of Michigan's smoking ban in a nutshell.

UPDATE: Thank you The Daley Gator for linking to this story!

Image via Wikipedia
But I've spent the morning captivated. Enraptured. I have a segment of my RSS reader called "hotlist" and into it go the blogs and feeds that I can't ignore - my "media diet" as Mark Hurst of Bit Literacy would say.

Relationship Gem #1: My friend, David Truss
In the first post in my reader -- I had to stop and say - Happy Blogaversary, David Truss - it has been five years and you've given us a heck of a lot more change than a "pair a dimes!" (couldn't resist ;-)

Be part of the lives of your friends. My dear friend Julie Lindsay left a comment on Friday's super-popular Facebook Friending 101 for Schools post - it means a lot for her to fire up her VPN and read my blog sometimes.

RSS Gem #1 from Marshall K + Bookmark #1
I started with Marshall K's post about departing Twitter co-founder Evan Williams. Not only was it touching for Marshall to show what Evan (cofounder of blogger AND Twitter) meant to him but the description of how Marshall K massages and extracts meaning from Twitter was fascinating to me.

Marshall said:

"I’ve used the tool Needlebase to discover patterns and benchmarks in social media activity by leading corporate practitioners around the world by scraping Twitter lists, and to scrape and map people who’ve been listed by other users as Journalists who have more than 2,000 followers and live in the South Eastern US. I used Needlebase to scrape the messages and locations of thousands of Tweets from Twitter staff members and find one needle in the haystack that indicated yes, the rumor that Twitter was opening a data center in Utah may have been correct, since an engineer Tweeted that he had begun work that day and geotagged the tweet from the area."

Led to... Teaching Idea #1
Now, college professors - take that and study it. We're going to look at this one with my tenth grade NetGenEd students today who are studying augmented reality and location based apps.

Led to... Technology #1, Bookmark #2
This led me on a journey into Needlebase and a list of free databases that would be fascinating to use with students. But then, I came across the list of twitter users on Needlebase  that Marshall made in less than an hour. Ok, then I begged for an account on needlebase to understand and test the service.

RSS Gems #2-5 from Stephen Downes
Back to the 30 items in my Google reader widget on my iGoogle start page only to be inhaled by the brilliance of Stephen Downes. Whether he loves me or not, I don't care but he is by far, the most useful and widely read aggregator of education news alive today. If educational blogging had a grandaddy, I think he'd be it. I learn from him every day I hit the reader. Here are the three articles that hit me there:

Led to Bookmark #3

Paul Stacey from BCcampus: Open Education and Policy  - "Paul Stacey is as much an authority as anyone on the subject of open educational resources, and in this interview by Creative Commons he offers a useful resource in the form of a chart cross-referencing OER projects and the licenses they select."

Led to Bookmark #4 and a Comment on the Huffington Post
A link to an article on the Huffington post about Kids Teaching Kids. (The only thing that bothered me is that the writer on Huffington is one of the people who founded Kids Teaching Kids and the article is written very much like a news article - not sure the disclaimer fully discloses there.) Yet, it is a good article that reminds me of the student idea for Aha! (Amateurs Teaching Adults) from Mumbai's Flat Classroom Mini-Conference in 2010. (We'll be back in 2012.)

Led To Teaching Gem #2 for the Digiteen Project

And a useful tool from Media Awareness Network to help kids be safer cybercitizens.

Full of learning, I go back to my reader widget on my iGoogle page.

Vicki, you've got to start writing your post this morning. This is your blogging time, not your learning time, remember?

RSS Gem #3 + Bookmark #5
POW! A post from Edutopia's Betty Ray that aggregates a wealth of writing on Student-Centered Learning. Who needs a textbook when you've got an article like this to read.

Time Elapsed: 25-30 minutes

So, then I came here, to write to you. (My bookmarks will be posted on this blog in the morning automatically by Diigo which aggregates the things I tag for you and posts them automatically around 5:45 am.)

Here are my conclusions.

Questions for You About Your Learning

• Look at your RSS. I've written about selecting your Circle of the Wise and it is even more important today. Who is in your @Hotlist on your RSS reader?
  
  
• Look at those in your Feed. You become like those you are around and mirror those we are around. Who are you around?
  
  
• Look for inspiration. If you're only around yourself. Only writing about yourself. Only thinking your own thoughts - how interesting are you? Dad always told me that there are two things that can influence my life - only two: the people we meet and the books we read.
  
  I tell my children now that there are two things: the people we meet and what we read. (magazines, blogs, Kindle - these things are more than books.
  
  
• Get past "Googling" into Thinking. Are the students I teach prepared to go deeper? Most students expect to type something verbatim in Google and get an answer. What happens when they have pre-processing required to figure out what to search. In Digiteen, we intentionally changed up the words we used to force students into authentic research. We've gotten pushback from kids who say "I can't find anything on global awareness and virtual worlds."
  
  (They are missing that they are studying how various countries are using virtual worlds - HOW do they find information on THAT. It is hard for most students to get to that level of thinking. But if they can't get THAT how on earth are they going to figure out how Marshall K figured out that Twitter was opening a new data center? How could they use something like needlebase.)
  
  
• Take Time to Learn. We need time to amble through learning experiences. We can find meaning and learn a lot.
  
• Are you Set up for Serendipity? John Hagal, John Seely Brown et al in the Power of Pull call what I've had this morning "serendipitous learning experiences." Have you designed your start page to bring serendipitous experiences to you?
  
• Take Time to Learn! (Yes, I repeated myself!) Can you take 15-20 minutes at least 3 times a week to learn something new. This is about lifelong learners. I just became a lifetime member of Weight watchers - I have made a decision to be healthy and live it out every day of my life. You will make a decision to learn and grow or stew in self centeredness. What will it be? Lifelong learner?
  

You can't learn everything but you can learn something. Take time today to amble through your circle of the wise. You'll be glad you did.

• My Own Social Media Experiment « coal cracker classroom

  Love this response, bonus opportunity by Suzie Nestico. When she emailed and asked for a response and the first would get bonus - 5 replies - listen to what DID get them to respond:
  
  "I sent a message to my students via our Google Group around 8:00PM on Sunday night. This message said, “Need any more bonus? Respond to this message for two points. If you tweet it, text it, call your friends, post as you FaceBook status, and another student mentions they got word from you, you get FIVE points.”
  
  Guess what? By 11:00PM on Sunday night, I gave out bonus points to over THIRTY of the ninety students. By 8:00AM today, I gave out bonus to an additional eighteen students. In just changing one thing I did, I just reached nearly half of my students. I could have said, “the first ten students to respond will get bonus,” in order to foster competition. But, I tried a bit of that several weeks ago. In Heidi’s words, “Competition 0, Collaboration 1.” "

  tags: education socialmedia curriculum all_teachers

• Free Social Teaching and Learning Network focused solely on education

  A place where people can create "academically credible" learning units. They are presenting at a conference in Arizona to attract additional investments. Will this be a new way we teach?

  tags: education

• Sophia Founder to Showcase Free Online Social Teaching and Learning Platform at Education... -- MINNEAPOLIS, March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

  This press release tells more about Sophia.
  
  "Sophia is a social teaching and learning application that makes free, credible academic content available to anyone at anytime. It is a mission-driven organization that aims to break traditional cost and access barriers to post-secondary degree attainment. For more information, go to www.sophia.org."

  tags: education learning elearning

• Square – Accept credit card payments with your mobile phone

  Mobile access that lets you take credit cards. This would be very convenient for school fundraisers and mobile events.

  tags: education payments iphone

• ISTE SIG Mobile Learning Wiki

  Now, this is a good use of a wiki. Nice work happening here on ISTE's SIG Mobile learning wiki. They have a video contest coming up as well.

  tags: education mobile

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Embedding professional development can be as easy as volunteering to judge or serve as an expert advisor for one of our Flat Classroom projects. We mentor you, share rubrics, and bring you into the project as one who can observe closely what is happening.

Being a judge and/or an advisor on a Flat Classroom project is excellent PD and also helps you understand the project better, leading in many cases to teachers putting students into the project the following year.  We also encourage teacher-educators to build this into their course and encourage pre-service or in-service teachers to participate.

Flat Classroom projects have students studying the trends in Thomas Friedman's book, the World is Flat - updating his information and mashing it up with current research to produce a wiki chock-full of information and learning experiences. Then, they create final videos on their topic and outsource part of their video to their partners. Expert advisors mentor students on the wiki-creation process. Judges review and judge the video portion of the project.

The NetGenEd project is run once a year and mashes up the Horizon Report and Don Tapscott's NetGen Norms from his book Grown Up Digital producing a powerful, authentic research wiki on today's hottest trends as they relate to this generation and written by this generation. This is an intense project and one that always teaches us a lot!


We have THREE amazing projects happening right now:

• Flat Classroom Project 11-1
• Flat Classroom Project 11-2
• NetGenEd Project 2011

We need Judges and Expert Advisors to sign up NOW. All information is on the sign-up form, leading to wiki links.
http://tinyurl.com/flatjudge2011


We look forward to hearing from you via the online form, and will be in touch again very soon.

For those of you who missed Obama's speech last night, here is a replay of it:

To be super serial for a moment, I thought it was a great speech as long as you had little knowledge of the actual order of events or his past leadership on Libya and just went along on the whole hope and change wide-eyed ride of fun. My favorite part was where Obama became the medium through which the world communicated legitimatacy- at some point, he sensed the Libyan leader had lost legitimacy and then sprang to action by flying down to Brazil and saying nothing- the very definition of boldness! Now, go away, or I shall taunt you a seond time.

Celebrating the Arab Spring:

Via Al Jazeera

I've ignored my web browser for a long time - took away every toolbar and just tried to make it lean. That has changed with Firefox 4. My Favorite Feature of Firefox 4 is the Firefox Sync. I've been using it since downloading the beta version weeks a go and have every computer I use AND my ipod Touch syncing bookmarks.

Let's take a look at my start page and close up on my bookmark bar to show how I use this:

Here is my browser start window. It is the same wherever I go. Firefox Sync handles that. the MOST important page for you is your Browser start page. It should be the launchpad into productivity for you. Note that I removed google cal because that is now a desktop gadget on my Windows 7 computer.

Meet Firefox Sync
You can set up your bookmarks / passwords to sync across all platforms where you have signed in. For security reasons the set up on the second computer and your handheld can be cumbersome, but honestly, I like it that way. My low security passwords and userid's are remembered. (I followed these instructions from Mozilla and it worked beautifully the first time.)

The Efficient Bookmark Bar
My productivity gains came from setting up my bookmark bar over time and working to make it efficient for me. I've used Activewords (recommended by Mark Hurst of Bit Literacy) and enjoyed it and the purpose is to quickly launch and handle keystrokes. I've found that doing this in my browser helps me.

Step 1: Find the Sites You Use Most Often by Looking At Your History

Step 1 to find your most frequently Used Sites. Go to Firefox --> History --> Show All History

• Open History Window: Click Firefox --> History --> Show All History.
• Look at This Month. Now that your history is open, click "this month" or if it is the beginning of the month, you may want to click last month.
• Sort by "Visit Count" by clicking Visit count on the column. If the Visit Count column doesn't show go to Views --> Show Column --> Visit Count. You'll now see what websites you are using most. These are your first target.

My blogging, email, and use of Hootsuite (to access all the twitter accounts I manage) are at the top of my usage list.

Step 2: Put the Bookmarks on the Bar
Go to the sites you use most and drag them to your toolbar by clicking on the icon next to the hyperlink on your web browser and dragging it to the toolbar.  (This is called a favicon.)

Favicon for Blogger.

Once I have them there, sometimes I map out on paper which ones go together. As David Allen talks about in Getting Things Done (I use some of his method but definitely not all) it is helpful to have things in context.) So, I've grouped things and separated them with separators.

At some point your bookmarks WILL run off the bar and you may decide to take a break from grabbing those bookmarks that you use to go ahead and organize the bar.

Step 3: Find the Hard to Find Bookmarks that You Will Have to Hunt For If you Can't find them.
IP Addresses (if you are an IT Administrator), webinar rooms, webinar moderator links, anything "weird" and so long you'll have to search in your email to find or open up a manual on your self. These should also be on your bookmark bar - renamed to make it simple, of course. I do this with all the elluminate / Blackboard Collaborate rooms we use.

Step 4: Rename, Shorten Everything!
Rename. You should also rename most things to be 5 characters or less. My longest folder name is Digiteen. Right click and go to properties to rename the button.

Dissecting my Toolbar: You can see the top left of my browser bar and the things I use most. Note that my Google mail for school shows the mail count because that is a new feature in Google labs not of Firefox. Left to Right: Google Cal, Blogger, Disqus, Cool Cat Teacher gmail, Hootsuite, Google Docs, My Bank, and a Folder of Cool Cat Teacher-related websites. Then, I have my Kindle Daily refresh (a hidden feature of the kindle that lets you see your notes and highlights from Kindle books), my favorite Pandora music station, and then begins my school section of the toolbar.

 On the top left of my browser I have those things I use a TON or want to use a TON (like making sure I check my bank balances.) Note that you should also rename things for privacy - I renamed my bank's name to the word "bank" for example.

Step 5: Add Folders and Separators
Add Folders. By right Clicking on the bookmark bar you can add a new folder and you can also put folders inside folders. It is a bit glitchy sometimes as most folders are added ON the toolbar and not within folders, but I still prefer to see this on the screen instead of launching the bookmark editor. Make these short and efficient.

In my IT Support folder I have links to the things I update a lot (google calendar, website), as well as the IP Addresses for every wireless node, router, and printer on campus. I have all the links for PowerSchool administration, the SAT Studyguide I use in my class and a link to the ordering portal for the main company I use to buy hardware. when I'm in "IT Mode" it is all right there for me. I no longer have to get out my IP Address book.

Add Separators. Separate when you have a new context. You can see I have four basic sections. My personal section, Personal Enrichment Section (Kindle, Pandora), School Section, Flat Classroom Project Administration, and a folder for all the meeting rooms. The only bookmarks that are there twice are those for meeting rooms as they can get unwieldly I put them in two places to make them easy to find.

Here you can see that under Flat Classroom I have links to the projects, websites, meeting rooms, and also a link to Julie's unread emails so I can quickly go to her emails in my inbox. To do this, just click search options, type in the email address for the person you want to create the filter for and say "unread messages" or use a tag and add is:unread to it. Then, drag it onto toolbar.

See how I use the separators there to be more efficient as well?

Step 6: Evolve
I tweak this continually and add things I know I will use a lot (like new Elluminate rooms.)

A Word of Warning
We have a family computer and I didn't set it up on that one. This will give the kids access to "my stuff." So, I have a separate userid on that computer for when I want to use Firefox and set it up to sync to that account. Your browser is a bit of a key to your life so be careful about the administrative key as well.

Go Everywhere
Set this up on all your computers and your handheld. I didn't think I'd use it on my handheld but if I have a quick task or website I need to go to - it is just incredibly efficient.

Take a Look at Your Start Page
The Most important webpage is the page that you start with. Firefox 4 does have a problem of taking me to a standard google page and asking me if I want to restore and I have to figure out how to turn that OFF. Starting up to a well-designed igoogle page is important.

These productivity tricks can save lots of time and keystrokes and time saved is time you can spend doing things you really enjoy.

Remember your noble calling and that there is nothing noble about wasting your time. Don't play the martyr - don't work harder - take a good look at your life and routines. Simplify and be more efficient!

The revelation again that Democratic President Barack Obama's biography Dreams from My Father was supposedly written by Bill Ayers reminded me again of the time that I had Bill Ayers come into my classroom. Since I have a lot of new readers who haven't likely taken to the time to go through my excellent old posts, I thought that I'd take you all on a trip down memory lane and repost on it below. Enjoy!

My Experience Meeting Bill Ayers

Yes, I have personally met Bill Ayers. At some point in my career, I was told that he would be coming in to speak to my class. As I am a little young, I looked him up, and immediately discovered his past connections with terrorism and the Weather Underground (memo to Obama- it's kind of easy to find out that information- you have to be an idiot not to know that Ayers was a terrorist).

So I went to my principal, and told him that I didn't want to have this guy come in to speak to my students. I am repelled by him- I don't want to be in the same room as this unrepentant terrorist. I wasn't even alive when he attempted to murder innocent and decent Americans, yet I don't want to be associated with him (unlike Obama, who wants to associate with terrorists).

My principal told me to just let him come in and talk. I guess the parent who was bringing in this terrorist was influential in the district, and had some pull with the administration. So I took my class in to hear him speak. He talked about the usual communist drivel.

Mr. Ayers gave me the impression that teachers should primarily be community organizers, dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. He said that teachers should be promoting radical, leftist, communist values. My brother forwarded me this link where he elaborated more on this stuff, and this other link too. This link talks about Obama's association with Bill Ayers.

Before my students met him and heard him speak, I wanted to talk to them about his ideas and discredit him; and after my students heard him speak, I wanted to talk to them about his ideas and discredit them. But I was told I was not allowed to do this. So I just pretended it had never happened and that that day was a snow day.

But it wasn't in reality. The students were given the impression that it was okay to be a terrorist, that it was okay to believe in communist ideas, and that Bill Ayers vision of the world was an accepted one. They were given the impression that being an Obama voter was okay. And personally, this day marked a turning point for me.

Months later, the administration let me go, and the union worked to make sure that I wasn't brought back. I was quickly grabbed by another district, where I have proven to be an exceptional teacher. One of the factors that led to my release was my disgust and verbal protests over having people like Bill Ayers come into the classroom. So that's my experience with this terrorist scumbag.

UPDATE: Several people have emailed me about this post, suggesting that if my new district ever finds out that I thought badly of Bill Ayers, I could be fired, and I would be wise to remove this post. But I refuse to be intimidated! They can not control my thoughts! Our nation may be turning towards fascism, but I am going to fight as long as there is fighting to be done. You can't stop the signal!

I'm not sure about you, but I have several electronic devices that can hold files. I have a gigantic backup drive, several smaller flash drives, an iPhone, a laptop, and a desktop at work. I realize that, oftentimes, I run into the simple problem of needing a file that's on a different device. While it's not a huge deal to transport materials via e-mail or flash drive, it can get to be a pain after awhile.

That's where Dropbox comes in and makes your life oh-so-much easier.

The basic version is free and allows you to store 2GB worth of material. You download the Dropbox "program" from http://www.dropbox.com/. It creates a folder for you that's easily accessible. You can drag and drop items into this folder, and it updates that file on every other electronic device you own that has Dropbox on it. When you get to the home page of the website, there's a simple and short video you can watch to show you exactly how Dropbox works.

What I like best, though, is its ability to store things online. I've been e-mailing things to myself for years and thought that was a fool-proof method. And it's fine, but Dropbox sounds easier and a little bit cooler! There's no "e-mailing yourself" with Dropbox -- everything just updates automatically (so long as you have the Dropbox application installed onto your computer). As a very busy gal, I can appreciate automatic things!

Before I started making my classroom website, I viewed dozens of other high school English teachers' sites. I tried to figure out what they posted, what their daily work was, how they graded materials, and even what school supplies students were required to bring to class every day. I found that several teachers required students to purchase flash drives (jump drives, USB drives, thumb drives...external storage...whatever you want to call it)! I was mildly surprised since they aren't THAT cheap. I was always of the mindset that students could just e-mail documents to themselves if they needed to store a copy; no need to buy some fancy flash drive for my class.

But I actually think I like Dropbox better.

While I was working on research papers with my students earlier this year, I told several students to e-mail the document to themselves in order to save it. My kids looked at me like I'd grown horns. Some of them had no idea how to attach a file to an e-mail. While I know that that situation was a "teachable moment," it would be nice to have a program that is so simple, there's no way they can get confused. Plus, the whole process of Dropbox seems like it would shave some time off your task, and who couldn't use more time??

The great thing is, students could keep their online Dropbox for years...not just in high school. The e-mail addresses my students use are through the school. While that's a fantastic service to them, that e-mail address will eventually expire, right? So what happens to all their stuff? It's gone. What a bummer -- especially if you had important documents like a resume on there! But I view Dropbox as a sort of no-hassle e-mail address, and it would never expire. Students could easily access documents from years in the past. When I hear that, I have an image in my mind's eye: a student in college is trying to write a research paper. This student has only written a research paper once in her life, and it was years ago, so she doesn't really remember all there is to it. In a classic, Hollywood, "lightbulb" moment, this student remembers about her high school Dropbox. She's able to access notes and even a paper that she wrote in high school. With these examples and study aids, she's able to write a paper that makes her and her professor proud. Isn't that a happy image?

...OK, all cheesiness aside: I really do think Dropbox is a valuable tool for students, teachers, and everyone in between. Check it out.

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April 7th edit: Well, I just tried to share a folder with a colleague. I'd been having a lot of trouble being able to post podcasts, so I was trying to figure out if I could post them on Dropbox and then share my podcasts folder! It may work, except everyone you share the folders with has to be a member of Dropbox. Of course, if you're using Dropbox in your classroom with students ANYway, then maybe it doesn't matter. My kids aren't currently using Dropbox, so it would be a hassle for them to sign up right now. Just some extra info I thought might be helpful to anyone reading this...

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August 18th edit: I use Dropbox ALL the time! Seriously. I have a personal account and a teaching account. Obviously, the teaching account gets used a lot more frequently. But this is only HALF the stuff I've uploaded on there


and I've still only used 15% of my free storage! (And this picture isn't including all the SUB-FOLDERS I've created. Seriously, this is an organizer's DREAM.) Check it out!!

Image via WikipediaThe great book, The Way We're Working Isn't Working (which I read because of Arvind Grover's review of the book Focus- someone I know and admire) states that 95% of what we achieve is due to our habits.

Do you have rituals?
Routines?
Habits?

I've been working on restructuring my habits and I'm finding that I get a lot more done and am at peace with how I'm living my life.

Think on this question today. If it is worth doing it is worth setting an appointment with yourself?

Other great reads on this topic:

• The Power of Less
• Focus: A simplicity manifesto in the Age of Distraction
• Leo Babauta's blog Zen Habits

Image via WikipediaThe Dealia's swimsuit catalog came in the mail for my teenage daughter and I handed it to my youngest son and asked him to take it to her. He padded in the den and I heard him say,

"Here's your bathing suit catalog, sis. Pick something that won't scar me for life!"

Scarred for life? lol. Hmmmm. Not a joke if I think about it.

Scarred for Life.
As I listened to my book on iPod and cleaned the kitchen, I started thinking that that is what is happening to many of today's teens.

We have driver's education because we want to protect kids from themselves. A car is a powerful machine and can kill.

We have sex education because we want to protect children as well. Sex is a very intimate thing that shouldn't be taken lightly. Sex can also kill if one contracts various STD's.

Cell phones and the Internet are powerful vehicles. Yet parents give kids cell phones like they are the latest gadget, ignoring what can happen if a child makes a childish mistake. They can be scarred for life.

Driver's education cannot stop accidents among teenagers - but well done - it can reduce them.

Sex education cannot stop sex among teenagers but it can prevent STD's and have students take it more seriously.

Digital citizenship education cannot STOP the headlines of people who do scarring things through improper use of their technology but I believe it can reduce them.

Margarite's Mistake
In the Saturday New York Times Article "A Girl's Nude Photo, and Altered Lives" ( a story we'll be talking about in Digiteen this week), Margarite is an eighth grader who posed nude in her mirror and sent the picture of herself to a popular athlete, Isaiah.

Isaiah forwarded this to a former friend of Margarite's who then forwarded it to every contact in her cell phone with the message:

"Ho Alert! If you think this girl is a whore, then text this to all your friends."

Pressed Send.

The video went viral and through four middle schools. When parents started calling in to complain, the Middle school principal at one school launched the investigation that led to the confiscation of student cell phones and three students being charged with dissemination of child pornography (a class C felony.)

The county prosecutor, Mr. Peters said, "The idea of forwarding that picture was bad enough," he said, "But the text elevated it to something far more serious. It was mean-girl drama, an all-out attempt to destroy someone without thinking about the implications."

As other kids left school to go home at the end fo the day, Isiah and Margarite's former friend were led off in handcuffs.

Scarred for life.

The article goes on to say that sexting (between adults) is protected first amendment speech and that many magazines are giving tips on "how to look good" in sexting photos. However, as many as 24 % of 14-17 year olders have been involved in "some type of naked sexting." (AP & MTV Poll - PDF)

Forwarding such photos can land you in jail.

Don't Freak Out, Fan Out
I think that banning cell phones and removing them from schools is NOT the right answer. You might as well dam the Mississippi in a few weeks during flood season. See if that will hold!

It would be like banning cars because too many kids die in traffic accidents. Not realistic. We have to co-exist with cars because they are part of our society and the way we get around.

Banning cell phones is not realistic. We must co-exist with cell phones because they are part of our society and the way we communicate.

When someone lost an earring in the grass the other day - we all took a small space and fanned out to find the earring and eventually did.

Likewise, we should all take the "plot of ground" assigned to us. Our classroom. Our Home. Our school. Our community.

We can't do it all but we can do something.

Don't Lecture, Learn.

This should be treated a lot like driver's education which does have a bit of classroom work but a lot of time IN a car navigating the spaces. If a kid is going to have a problem with a left turn or parallel parking you want them to have it under supervision so it is not scarring for life.

The final example from Facebook Friending 101 for Schools (about the student I named "Zipper) that I posted on Friday is from one of our Flat Classroom projects. (I did change the names.) The teachable moment that I discussed in that case study transformed our our kids and they all went in and changed their privacy settings.

Digital Citizenship in Situ
That is why I think effective digital citizenship education is done WHILE students are using educational networks (social networks for education) and cell phones. In fact, that is why we founded Digiteen and spun it off as a nonprofit - because we felt like the kids who came in to Flat Classroom weren't ready because they were clueless about managing their personal identity in safe, wise ways!

Kids DON'T get it, but neither do adults. We are learning as we go.

In fact, I received a SCATHING commenter accusing me of not knowing Facebook privacy settings because she says she has set lists to:

"I friend students. I also have a specific list just for them. This list is restricted so that they can't see:
- any of my default wall posts (unless I specifically select my "students" list, but even then when I post to that one, I ONLY post to students, so that my other friends can't see it)
- anything anyone posts on my wall
- any of my photo albums except for the one of my profile pics
- anyone on my friends list (you can even restrict that, it's just on the privacy screen under "Connecting on Facebook" rather than "Sharing on Facebook")
- any pages or anything else that I "like""

Now, I've got it on my personal PD list this week to check this out and learn if this is indeed the case. Furthermore, I want to test it and see if it actually works that way. I value commenters that let me know that there is more to be told.  

(Of course this commenter didn't do it in a very nice way and that, I feel was poor citizenship, but onwards and upwards - if we cannot learn from those who are unkind to us, then we are letting our emotions restrict our learning potential - aren't we? So, my friends, don't let your emotions on this topic cause you to make a decision not to learn either.)

If I wasn't on Facebook and wasn't blogging - how would I know? It is a MISTAKE to ignore Facebook. You should all also know how to send and receive text messages.

Case Study: Who is Mij Cosby?
I've changed this name because we don't really know if this is a real person or not. However, last week as my class and I were brainstorming our action project for Digiteen, a student said - we need to talk about friending because "WHO IS MIJ COSBY?"

I asked - WHAT?

He said -

"There is this girl over in an adjacent county who has no friends at her own school but who has asked to FRIEND every student at Westwood. I won't friend Mij because I don't know who it is."

We talked for some time and everyone in the class but one person (who said he needed a lot of friends) unfriended Mij because they realized that NO ONE knew who it was.

But I left the question on the board and didn't think another thing about it. My tenth graders came in and saw the board and several shouted out

"WHO is Mij Cosby? I mean really, Mrs. Vicki, who is it?"

They too had been friended - such was the whole day!! We don't know who this is, but what we found out happened is that this person was able to get about 5 kids to friend at our school and then everyone started friending Mij. In 2-3 days at least 50+ kids (that I counted) had friended Mij and NO ONE knew the person!

They admitted that they look to see how many mutual friends they have and then decide if they should friend or not.

Almost all of the students unfriended Mij because we cannot find ONE student in the whole school who knows her. NOT ONE. We don't even know if there is a family in that county of 2800 people with that last name! We think Mij is a fake.

And yet, several kids didn't want to unfriend. ("But I want to have a lot of friends, Mrs. Vicki.") And many didn't want to make their pages Friends only -- some have it set to public. ("I want people to know who I am.")

This live in-situ case study that happened because we were talking about what to DO about digital citizenship caused around 90+% of my students to change their behavior - at least for now. That did more to help them understand friending than anything else. Facebook is unblocked at school (at least for now) so they took action RIGHT THEN.

Get them talking and acting and learning and doing!


Time to Take Action

• Does your school have to end up on the cover of the New York Times for you to take seriously the need for digital citizenship education?
  
• Do you know that problems WILL happen and they will be WORSE if you ignore this issue?
  
• Do you think lecture from a fear-based uneducated un-social-media-wise adult is actually going to change anything? Do you want a person without a driver's license who doesn't own a car teaching drivers ed? Get someone who uses this stuff and can relate to kids to lead them in educated discussions - or join something like Digiteen.
  
• Do you think you have to find a place for this before you do it? We do what is important.
  
• Do you think educating parents on proactive ways to help will do more than scaring them into taking away cell phones? Cell phones are the identity of many kids. Face it.
  
• The best defense is a good offense. Are you going to be proactive or reactive? Which will paint you as more of a leader? Be a visionary, that is your job.
  
• What are you doing? Share.

Remember your noble calling. Handle this situation with nobility and wisdom and resist the desire to freak out and create fear.

And also remember this, I'm bringing attention to social media in schools because it is IMPORTANT. I will continue to talk about this and share what I know - but if I don't know something (and there is tons I don't know) please feel free to shoot me an email at vicki at coolcatteacher dot com and teach me something. ;-)

You are great readers and sharers. Thank you.