An even fresher start

Wow-Over a year since I created a blog post. There is actually a reason why. I got scared off by all of the publicity last year of a teacher being fired over comments she made in a blog post about her students.

This fall I am participating in the Flat Classroom Teacher Certification; back to blogging I go. I promise not trash my administration, my school, or my students. Actually, Challenge #2 involves talking to administration about any rules or conduct for professional blogs. I admit I have never thought about this, but it is a conversation I will have with my principal. What I HAVE thought about is interaction between teachers and students on social networks. I make it a policy not to friend my students on Facebook, but tell them I will be happy to after they graduate. but I am not aware that my school district has any rules regarding this and would be happy to hear other feelings on this matter.

Anyway-Challenge #1 was to set up an RSS Reader-I chose igoogle for it's simplicity and the fact that I already had a Google account. I will freeely admit that I had never used on before--but wow! I really was wasting a lot of time reading blog posts that I really didn't care about. I was getting most of my PLN communication from Facebook, from Twitter, on my cell phone, read only when I had time. An RSS reader is so much more efficient AND faster.

I am all about efficiency and not wasting useless time this year. Case in point--I have just never seen what all of the fuss was about Google docs. Never used them until I figured out this year that all of those parent contact forms that I have students fill out and then input into a spreadhseet could be done FOR me by having the students complete an online form that fed into a Google doc. HELLO-why did I not think of this before. How else do you save time? I would love to know!