Hosting your files on your blog

Box.net is one of many great sites to host your files on. Essentially, it is a virtual storage place for your files! For free you get 1GB of storage.

A great feature is that you can also create a great widget to put on your blog to share your files with others (see my box.net widget in the sidebar).

It's reasonably easy to join and upload your files. I suggest if you are interested in a widget for your blog that you join and upload your files all on the one page here at the Box Widget page.

Once you have browsed and chosen your files, create a box.net account using your email address. You can then upload your documents and grab the code to put on your blog.

In Blogger blogs go to Layout>Page Elements>Add Page Element>HTML/Java script and paste in the code to add the widget to your sidebar. You can then save and view your new box.net widget and files on your blog!

Another popular hosting site used by educators I know is esnips which gives you a much greater storage (5GB) although you don't get a widget that is quite as good to add to your blog. Wikispaces could be yet another option! (if you want a wikispaces account for educational use click here)

It's really handy to have some of your important files hosted online, either to share or just to have access to your most used files across a variety of computers. As a teacher, you could also host documents for parents and caregivers to access, like notes to help with homework or documents for how they can help their child with their reading etc.

Please feel free to browse my Box (in my sidebar), currently it's all blogging related. I'll continue to add to it with more documents over time! If you find any useful, please leave me a comment :D

Who Moved My Cheese?

Thanks to Jane @ Central I have recently been introduced to a fantastic book that has been around for quite some time (since 1998).

"Who Moved My Cheese?" by Dr. Spencer Johnson is a fantastically simple book written as a parable. It is both amusing and enlightening and is the story about four characters who live in a maze and look for cheese to nourish them and make them happy.

The "Cheese" in the story, of course, is a metaphor for what we want in life - a good job, great relationship, possessions, money, health etc. The "maze" represents where we look for what we want - be it an organisation/business, or the family or community group we live in.

Four characters are featured that certainly encompass the majority of teachers that we come across, especially when trying to educate teachers to embrace technology as a positive change and incorporate it in their teaching.

Two are mice named "Sniff" and "Scurry" and two are 'little people' named "Hem" and "Haw". The funny thing is when you get to know these characters, you actually look at the people you know and see which character in Who Moved My Cheese that they most are like.

• "Sniff" is able to sniff out the situation and see the changes early.

• "Scurry" goes into action quickly to make a change.

• "Hem" wants to stay in familiar territory and doesn't want to deal with the change (ignores it) - either is too uncomfortable or too scared to change.

• "Haw" initially hesitant but eventually sees what he's doing is not working. Is open minded enough to learn something new, act differently, visualises the changes and make the change.

In the story, Haw, goes through the biggest learning curve to find the "new" cheese. This picture is of the major points made throughout the book. We all need to anticipate change, adapt to change quickly, enjoy change and be ready to change quickly again and again. A pertinent message for teachers and I.C.T. in these incredibly changing times.

Another pertinent point made is "If you do not change, you can become extinct". It sort of reminds me of another saying along the lines of technology will not replace teachers, but teachers who know/use technology will.

The question is:
How can we get our teachers to behave more like Haw and less like Hem?!

You can also read a summarised version of the Who Moved My Cheese story here at Wikipedia.

Teachers will do anything for chocolate...

Ok, so it turns out teachers will do anything for a chocolate sweet fix!... how different my life may have been if I had only figured this out earlier!

After my late night challenge (read about it here at the end of this post) to our teachers I arrived at school at 8:20am after having a much deserved sleep in only to find...

... 6 emails from excited teachers who had gone to the wiki, read the information and corrected the spelling mistakes. My favourite emails I got were from Neroli & Viv; they read:

Hi Rachel,
Just to let you know I think I might be a bit of an 'expert'. I corrected 'computa' to 'computer'!!
Cheers
Neroli

Hi Rachel, This is a good game.  I edited the ing on or off really on data
projector.
Cheers Viv
This excitement is great because it assures me: that they checked their emails; that they visited the wiki; that they read through the wiki and that they had a successful experience of editing a wiki!

I will leave the thought of wikis with staff for a few weeks; now that they've seen one and edited one, they might be able to think of a way that they could be using these in their classrooms.... what fun!

Our New "Other" Blog

Having worked hard with my students (6 & 7 year olds) during last term on the basics of blogging they are now ready to be set loose on their own!

They have learned how to independently make a new posting, add a title, write a post and include our names as a label (tag). Later we will be building on this, adding more formatting and layout to our text and inserting pictures/photos too!

A new blog has been born... it is the "Room 9 Writing Spot". I had originally envisaged doing this on Class Blogmeister, however the students had just come to grips with competently using Blogger so I decided not to throw a "spanner in the works".

The Writing Spot is to be totally student run.... with only troubleshooting advice from me... they really are venturing out on their own! I will, however, add a hit counter and a clustr map later if they ask for it. We will continue to add to our existing Class Blog as usual also!

During writing time each day one child will be making a posting on the blog, so theoretically we should have 4-5 posts per week which will be great. They are adding their names as labels (tags) and we have displayed them down the sidebar - this is great because effectively (once there are more posts) it will allow each child to "virtually" have their own special writing page with only their posts on it! I'm sure this will be a hit with parents too!

I have made a conscious decision not to correct the students' punctuation, spelling and grammar. The posts will be as they intended. I am also not providing any guidance as to what they should write when it is their turn on the computer... although we have talked about writing about our personal experiences and more importantly, our reflections on our learning (this will probably take some time to develop).

This is an exciting time for both myself and my students.... I am enjoying seeing what they are choosing to write about and seeing their confidence develop. Please feel free to pop over from time to time and have a visit!

"Oooooh.... look at our Clustr Map!"

PS: We will also continue posting to our Class Blog as usual :)