BP3_Minutes.io

As a teacher, I am constantly looking for 2.0 tools I can use with students in my classroom. Yet there is so much work I do outside of my time with students, sometimes I overlook ways to make that part of my job easier. The tool that I chose to review for this post is Minutes.io, and I plan to use it during any time the staff gets together to plan for the school.

This is a very simple, easy to use app that makes taking minutes (notes) of a meeting and then getting those minutes out to others a breeze. Gone are the days of typing up a Word document, printing it off, making 75 copies, and then passing them out to teacher mailboxes. With Minutes.io, the note-taker uses a template that makes recording information in a fast-moving meeting simple.

Once the meeting is over, the note taker can instantly share the minutes with the participants online, or even with individuals who may have missed the meeting via email. There is even an option for printing them off.

This app is free, and does not require a user to sign in. It was created in 2011, and was intended "to provide a simple, effective solution for meeting note takers". The Minutes.io website lists the following as features:

~take notes without logging in

~access all feature for free

~share notes by email or private URL

~record notes locally without an internet connection

The following screen shot is an example of how I will use Minutes.io while I take notes during our Building Leadership Team weekly meetings after school:

This app stands out to me because of its ease of use and simplicity. It makes it easy for the note- taker to pass the notes around digitally after the meeting. The layout is crisp and clean, with a virtual piece of white copy paper on top of a textured gray background. The meeting can be named anything the note-taker chooses, and the date and time are automatically generated. The location, minute-taker, and attendees area can be easily completed. The entire document page stays organized with simple note types of "to-do, okay, info, and idea". Due dates can be added to each note with one click of the mouse.

When using Minutes.io, team members have real time access to what was discussed. This will save me the time and paper used in the past. I am looking forward to putting this into action with my colleagues and administrators.

BP2 iGoogle PLE

I would like to start my post on iGoogle by saying this is a tool I learned about in the first course (MLR), and I have already become so dependent on it I couldn't imagine not using it. I love the fact that I can access everything from my MacBook, my desktop computer, the computers at school, and literally everywhere I can get online. In the past I simply used bookmarks to remember sites, but that only worked if I was sitting in front of my desktop computer. My team, TeacherTechies, has been using the power of iGoogle since the first course to help us stay connected and organized. We are utilizing Google+ to communicate often, and it is awesome how iGoogle and Google+ work together. I did not have multiple tabs set up until now, just the "home" tab. I did not realize that was possible, and was just running everything off my home page ~ but that was starting to get long and I had to scroll to the bottom to see some gadgets. As I continue learning and growing with iGoogle, it becomes even more invaluable.

Above is a screen shot of my iGoogle homepage. I have my theme set up to "theme of the day" for variety; no, I am not addicted to shoes! I have been using this for three months now. I have found box of links to be incredibly helpful, and google docs are amazing too (it doesn't show up in the screen shot, but when I scroll down it is there). For collaborating with people who are geographically diverse, google docs can't be beat!

The screen shot above is my FSO/ Action Research tab. It will come in very handy to have links for some of the sites I visit most often while working on my Action Research over the next nine months.

The next image is a screen shot of my resources page. I have included a countdown to Full Sail Graduation to keep my eyes on the prize!

My final Screen Shot is one still in progress. I would like to have a page where I can have all of my cohort's blogs from this course. I have put my team "TeacherTechies" in one box of links, and plan to add links for other people in the cohort once I subscribe to them all. Looking forward to sharing ideas with new friends.

Finally, I would like to make note that I have changed to the Blogger platform since most people are using this and I wanted to expose myself to new technology. I have a class blog with Edublogs. I started off my first post with the Edublogs platform, but decided to change to this to make my subscriptions easier to see, and to have more experience with different blogging platforms. I am going to send everyone an invitation to follow my new blog now. Hope to hear from many friends soon!

BP1_Welcome to my blog

"A teacher affects eternity: he never can tell where his influence stops." ~ Henry Adams

This blog is a place for me to share my thoughts, questions, emotions, worries, successes, challenges, concerns, accomplishments, skills, knowledge, and other ramblings as I work through the Emergent Technologies course in the Education Media Design and Technology Master's program at Full Sail University.

I lead a very busy life; I am a full time teacher with a challenging new position. More details to come on that =) I am also a full time mother to three amazing young men, ages 5, 10, and 14. Add to those roles that of wife, student, colleague, friend, leader, and coach. Sometimes sleep is the one thing I wish for the most!

Full Sail has been a very good fit for my life so far, and I have learned so many new tools to use in my classroom. I am becoming comfortable with iMovie, podcasts, VoiceThread, Animoto, and Wordle just to name a few.

I chose the name "affecting eternity" for my blog because I have always loved the quote by Henry Adams. I have had students come back to visit me as adults and they remember things about elementary school that have affected them in profound ways. I hope to be someone who students can look to and remember long after my class is over.

Speaking of hope, here is a short iMovie of my Second Grade Vikings last month talking about their hopes and dreams for the school year. Enjoy!