How to make a quick blog post

At Sylvia Currie's request (see the comments attached to her recent blog post, below), I've made a short slideshow tutorial on how you can QUICKLY and EASILY create a blog post here (or in any blogger.com blog).

Sorry, I couldn't get the slideshow embedded in this post. I guess blogger.com doesn't display flash (.swf) files. So...

Please click here to view the short tutorial.

If you have questions, post them to the comments box.

We're going from pink to green!

Since my last post I approached the steering committee for the British Columbia Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG) with the idea of transforming this blog into a shared space where community members can continue to build on Kate's amazing resource. The response was YES! Let's do it!

We've sketched out our next steps (and questions):

1. Brand the blog as our own with the ETUG logo / colours / URL
2. Invite ETUG members to take on an editing role for a period of time
3. In keeping with the PinkFlamingo tradition, continue to maintain this blog as a "resource site"
4. Keep PinkFlamingo's Resource Site as an archive
   
5. Decide if we should leave the blog at blogspot or move to another platform
6. Showcase the blog contributors. For example in ETUG News , in the community, through twitter / at the Learn Together Collaboratory, at the annual fall and spring workshops
   

A couple questions have come up (expect more!):

• Should we invite blog editors as a term commitment -- say for one month, or one year? Or should we simply invite anyone who wishes to contribute? (Think motivation here, and best ways to ensure the blog remains active.)
• What are some ways we can make it easy for ETUG members to contribute as part of their work flow?
  

What are your thoughts?

Meanwhile, as we work on the details I'll make this my home base for posting resources and get started on changing settings, colour scheme, and all that. Kate has been a huge help behind the scenes!

Where do I fit in?

Oh my goodness. I feel so honoured to be stepping into the world of the PinkFlamingo! I've followed Kate's work for so many years, always in awe of her energy and willingness to share OPENLY. Now look. I'm posting to her blog! In fact, I've inherited her blog! There is so much history here, and so much more to add. I barely know where to begin. So how about starting by looking back. How did I get here?

My first encounter with Kate was in November, 1999. She stepped into (what do flamingos do...tip toe? dance?) the first online seminar organized through the Global Educators' Network (GEN). The seminar was called "The Virtual Professor" facilitated by Linda Harisim. I was the community coordinator, and was nervous as hell about what to expect with this new venture. Here's an excerpt from Kate's first post:

Please ask me (The Pink Flamingo!) questions if you want to ask a
Learner who can also see things from the Educator’s perspective.

I remember thinking wow! Who is this person calling herself a Pink Flamingo? She seems so interesting!

Then the next post Kate changed to a pink font, and also changed her "pen" name to PinkFlamingo. I became event more intrigued. This person has a lot of pizazz. And so much to offer! Here is Kate's response to Linda's prompt to state reasons for participating in the online seminar:


Neat, I thought. This individual really gets it. She understands the value of communities of practice. A big story follows. but the short version is that PinkFlamingo became a regular participant to GEN seminars, and shortly after this first seminar launched her resource collection. To this day the "virtual professor" section remains. I've been following along ever since.

I haven't quite figured out the details of how I will proceed from here. I have a blog where I mostly talk about and reflect on my work in online communities. I'm also in constant contact with an amazing group of people in British Columbia called the Educational Technology Users Group (ETUG). We're looking for ways to share information about tools and resources related to our work. Perhaps a shared blog space for that purpose? We're all browsing, reading, testing, evaluating, critiquing on a daily basis... Imagine the benefits to sharing with a wider audience!

Whatever happens I'm committed to sustaining this amazing resource that Kate began 10 years ago. Thank you, Kate!

changes are a-comin' (to this blog)

As mentioned in a previous post, I'm retiring from the upkeep of this blog. Very shortly you'll see changes here, the biggest of which is a brand new site author/admin, Sylvia Currie. I'm excited to see what changes she'll make here.

Sylvia will introduce herself, I'm sure (watch for the new profile), but let me just say this. I have a deep respect for all she does and she's a wonderful person as well! Since I met Sylvia many years ago (and long before that as well), she has been extremely active in the world of post-secondary online education. I know she's going to do a great job here! For a preview of some of what Sylvia is up to, see her LinkedIn profile.

Thanks everyone for reading, especially those who have subscribed to this blog over the years. I'm off now to have a great time running WORDS, my freelance copyediting service, posting to my brand new blog, a round tuit, and enjoying my semi-retired lifestyle.

All the best,
Kate Britt

I want to retire; here's an offer for you

I'd like to retire from working on this blog and on its associated Educators' Resources website, http://ibritt.com/resources. Having left teaching over a year ago, I find that my focus has shifted away from the world of online education, so it's time.

I don't want to "sell" this site. It's been a non-profit, non-advertising site since day one. I've kept it up just as a service to my global colleagues in education.

Yet, if I just leave it sit here, it's going to get "stale" fairly soon.

I could take the whole site down and delete this blog, but I'd hate for my loyal readers (about 9,000 unique visitors each month!) to lose all this resource material.

So here's what I propose:

- If you're an online educator who doesn't yet have a blog, perhaps you'd like to take this one over? It's at blogger.com, so I could just give you the login and the transition would be simple.

- If you do already have a blog or resource site of education links, perhaps you'd be interested in having a copy of the pages in my site (ibritt.com/resources). You could then add my pages to your site, or just mine the pages for links to add to your own pages. Each of these would be easier if you had my files. That Resources site is a bit old-fashioned looking, having been designed when I first learned HTML 10 years ago. However, since then I've applied CSS to format it, so it would be fairly simple to restyle the pages for your own website if you're using CSS.

- If you don't have a website yet and would like to take over the pages in order to start one, we can talk about ways you could do that using my existing site pages.

- I could do a combination of the above -- give the blog to one person and the pages to another.

I don't want payment. I just want these resources to live on after I remove them from my personal ibritt.com website.

I won't give my materials to just anybody. To qualify:
- You must be involved in the field of online education.
- You must enjoy reading and collecting good information for other online educators.
- You must not use my materials for profit or in conjunction with advertising or marketing of any kind. I stand by my sole reason for creating these sites: being helpful to fellow educators. (So all you software and system marketers, don't even bother writing to me.)

To discuss further:
Write to me using the "comment" form at the end of this blog post. Comments are set to be moderated, meaning I'll get your comment in my email rather than it being posted online. Tell me about yourself and your involvement in online education. If you have an existing blog and/or website, include the link to it. I'll take some time to review everything I receive, and then I'll get back to each of you.


**NOTE TO MY READERS: After somebody takes over the pages from my site, I'll post a referral URL for a few months so that people can find where the resources have gone.

Professional Writing Services: Fair Play?

This site was recommended to me by a parent who found her high school son plagiarizing and found this helpful resource to share & discuss with him. Don't be put off by the name of the site or the services offered on the homepage; it seems an unlikely place for good advice on plagiarism, but the page I'm linking you to seems quite instructive and has some good links.

Covers topics like Academic Writing Services; Cheating Goes High-Tech: Online Term Paper Mills; The Web Versus the Honor Code; Paper Mills; How to Avoid Plagiarism and Cheating; Understanding Plagiarism, What it is and how to avoid it; You Wrote It, You Quote It (Interactive tutorial). It also provides links to discussions about Potential Consequences; Facing Penalties; Legal issues of cheating and what happens when students fight colleges.

The page also links to Resources for Teachers and Professors: Cheating Prevention; Anti-Plagiarism Strategies; Glatt Plagiarism Services (software that creates a test for suspected cheaters).

9 great reasons why teachers should use Twitter

I like Laura Walker's WordPress theme for her Education-based blog; almost selected that one myself for my eventual site re-design. OK, now to the article: Ms. Walker covers some excellent points, and they're not all about teaching with twitter. They instead address the theme I've been promoting -- that all of us (not just teachers) can use Twitter for our own learning experiences + communication +more!

Games for Learning and Assessment | Edutopia

Games for Learning and Assessment: "Computer simulations are natural learning tools for a generation of video game players."

"Inventive computer sims can turn dull lessons into hyperreal experiences -- if we can get educators to use them. ...This article on computer-simulation technology is about how and why yet another technology that could be enormously powerful for our kids' learning is getting short shrift in our educational system -- despite the successes we can, in fact, find and cite. Simulation is not just another in the long line of passing fads (or short-term opportunities) in educational technology. It is, rather, a real key to helping our students understand the world."

Classpress.net: Headlines for School Subjects

A list of RSS feeds that provide daily postings for subject teachers: today's view shows Art, Design & Technology, English, Geography, History, Maths, Music, Science.

Twiddla - Painless Team Collaboration for the Web

"Painless team collaboration on the web."

"A no-setup, web-based meeting playground. Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly."

FREE features: use for meetings, document sharing, voice chat, screen capture. Other features available by upgrading to the paid version.

Resource Links You Might Have Missed

This list of Language Arts links is the sixth installment of in the "Links You Might Have Missed" series at the Free Technology for Teachers website. This set of links features Language Arts resources. The previous installments of this series featured links to resources in the areas of

Math

Science

Geography

Digital Presentations

Google Earth.

FREE textbooks: Flat World Knowledge

"Our books are written by leading experts and are peer-reviewed, edited, and highly developed. They are supported by test banks, .ppt notes, instructor manuals, print desk copies, and knowledgeable service representatives. Instead of $100 plus, our books are FREE online. We don't even require registration! Students enter the URL they're given by their instructor and start reading. It's that easy."

I'm just sayin'

Put this report:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/twitter/5050261/Twitter-is-put-on-new-primary-school-curriculum.html

together with this quote:
"Every company needs to embrace and leverage Twitter before Twitter replaces them."
(http://thebillionairegirl.wordpress.com/twitter-for-dummies/)

Heads up, Education. And educators!

SAVE THE WORDS!

A site chock full of neglected or abandoned words. Click to see definition; sign up to adopt a word or more. This would be a great site for people studying for a spelling bee contest. For anybody who just loves to see WORDS, words, words.

Twitter for Teachers: A Collaborative Effort to Teach Teachers About Twitter

A wiki site where you can read and/or contribute your own ideas.

"This e-book is intended for use by teachers from primary, elementary, secondary and post-secondary schools. The contents of the book are made available under an attribution, non-commercial, share-alike Creative Commons license."

Teaching with Twitter

Steve Wheeler shares:

"Ever since I first began to use Twitter I have been thinking about how to harness the potential of microblogging for the benefits of my own students, and have tried out several ideas to exploit it already. Below are my 10 top uses of Twitter for education."

Is Twitter a good tool for education?

A description and analysis of one educator's trial run at using twitter with her students. Christine Morris talks about Setup, Did They Understand, Interface Dilemma, and more.

Twitter for Academia

Dave Parry explains:

"I must admit that when I first heard about Twitter I thought it represented the apex of what concerns me about internet technology: solipsism and sound-bite communication. ...Although I am still beginning to wrap my head around all of its varied uses—I think for the most part Twitter users themselves are still figuring this out—I have been using it for over six months now and come up with some academic uses. ...Some of these ideas are general, and some are specifically from a Twittering assignment I did for a class last semester. When I first added it to the syllabus I had no idea what to expect. It was just sort of an experiment that I had planned for the end of the semester (all of the students signed up for twitter and followed each other). After using it I have to say it was one of the better things I did with that class, for reasons I will explain below."

Can we use Twitter for educational activities?

In short, yes! Of course! The full article is interesting, but if you're in a hurry, scroll about halfway down the article box to "Potential Educational Uses of Twitter". Excellent tips and ideas.

21 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom - Google Docs

A slideshow; each slide has an excellent, fun, educational suggestion. I'm impressed by the creativity of the educators who contributed these ideas!

I tried embedding the video here, but it was too big for my column and the right half of it disappeared.