Neeah: The Simplest Way to UNkeep Notes

How often do you bookmark a webpage while surfing around the internet? If you are like many of us, that function on your browser goes relatively untouched. With apps such as Evernote, and social bookmarking sites like Pinterest and Diigo, there are plenty of resources out there to help you keep track of pages that you may want to access later.

But what if you forget to save the page?

What happens when you’re browsing the internet, clicking from one page to the next as so many of us do, but you don’t record any of the site information? Later on if you want to go back and find a particular page you really only have a few options. You can try a search engine to relocate it, but those rabbit trails often end up with you riffling through page after page of distractions and click-bait, and by the end of the search you are no closer than you were to start with. The other option is trying to look up the site on your browser history, but that list is difficult to wade through when the information is only a few hours old, let alone if you want to find something you saw last week.

Neeah.com, a new web archiving service, has got you covered. Neeah is a plugin that works automatically, recording your browsing history and organizing previously viewed content categorically to make the recovery of visited pages a painless activity. The program organizes your history into blocks that are easy to navigate, making your previous pages just a few quick clicks away. Neeah gives you control over your web archive, allowing you to keep your content private or to share it with anyone you choose. Additionally, the program can be deactivated when not in use, or just leave it running and never lose a page again. There are other bookmarking services and online research tools currently available, both on private and social platforms, but Neeah is the only one that is completely free to the user. Not only that, but Neeah gives you control over your history. Use Neeah to keep yourself organized, share research with a friend or colleague, or just to make sure you never lose a website again.

So be productive while online. Visit as many sites as you wish. Stop worrying that you’re hoarding web addresses you will never again use. With Neeah.com, you can forget worrying about your browsing history and focus on why you were online in the first place.

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Find your lesson plans fast with Rummage!

How much time do you spend looking for files on your computer?

How many times per week do you say, "Where did I put that attachment with the students essay in it?  I know I saved it before I deleted the e-mail!"  And then spent ten minutes searching where you *should* have put it, but obviously did not?

How many different places in "the cloud" do you store your files?

If you are like the average person, you have at least two places on the Internet that you store files.  You might have Google Drive or DropBox or Box or OneDrive or iCloud or <insert the flavor of the week here>, plus your computer plus your network storage at school!  How can anyone keep track of all those different places to store files!  Sure, you can try and be organized and create a folder structure and make sure you file things religiously -- but then what do you do when your department chair says, "I'm going to start a new series of folders for scope and sequence so we can all contribute to it on my DropBox!" -- But YOU use Google Drive?!?!

Well stop pulling out your hair, Rummage is here!  Rummage allows you to search your computer in just seconds by using some simple key words or phrases -- not just by file name.  In a mere few seconds Rummage delivers a list of relevant files and ala kazaam you have your file!  It's that easy!  Do you remember how long ago you saved it?  Or who sent it to you?  Even better!  This well-honed tool can use anything you can think of to help search through all your folders and locations to find the file or files you are looking for.  And you don't have to be a computer genius to make it work, either!

Rummage is a boon to anyone who deals with multiple classes, plus administrative documents and also happens to have personal files that they need help keeping track of.  Imagine being able to pull up a list of documents that pertain to that meeting about the list of courses for next semester that is coming up in an five minutes?  With Rummage, you'd be able to have a list of documents that are relevant in seconds sitting in a nice, clean, easy to read interface.

Try Rummage for free -- you'll love it!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Student Technology Assistants

When it comes to teaching students technology skills, each school looks at it and goes about it just a little bit differently.  Some schools have classes that address issues like keyboarding, Internet etiquette, Internet researching, word processing and spreadsheets.  Some teach those skills across the curriculum and only offer specialized courses such as photo editing or movie making.  But the only schools that specifically teach the skills needed to troubleshoot and fix computer problems seem to be VoTech type schools.  Some schools will say, "We just aren't that kind of school' or "there's just no time in the day for that".  And those are valid reasons... but there are other options!

I have worked with more than one school at implementing a student run technology support team.  The team consists completely of students with a faculty or staff advisor who can manage the students, instruct them and guide them in the proper techniques needed.  Techniques for what, you ask?  This group of students could be tasked with things as rudimentary as replacing toner in printers or as advanced as helping a teacher with an issue on their interactive white board.  And the most adventurous school has a student run help desk that actually works on computers repairing things like memory, hard drives and virus infections.  These are all ideas and programs that almost any school can implement, plus it can be an extra set of hands and eyes for your technology department!  Just imagine how great it would be to have a student help another student with an issue connecting to your WiFi?

But really, the ideas do not end there.  A student team could be tasked with assisting in creating tutorials, editing movies for the athletic department, installing updates on lab computers or mobile carts and much more.  But to do any of this you must have a few things.  First, and foremost is a faculty or staff member who is willing and able to lead the group.  Second, you need a solid base of support from the administration (and possibly the board, too).  You will certainly need a group of reliable and trustworthy students.  This is important, because the other teachers are going to have to trust them to help -- sometimes in a pinch.  Once you have these three things, you are on your way. But that's not all -- you need a plan.  Here are some bullet points for developing a plan:

• What will the students be able to do?  You certainly do not want students working in your student information system (ever) or your development database.  It is important for you (and the students) that everyone understands the tasks that students are allowed to tackle.
• How will students be trained to do these things?  Students may be interested but need to develop troubleshooting skills or specific computer knowledge.  Not everyone can just pull out a new toner cartridge and put a new one in.  An hour training on "Printer Maintenance" goes a long way!
• How will you staff your student staff?  Anyone who wants to join? Or will there be a selection process?
• How will students be assigned tasks?  Will there be a task board?  Web based help desk?
• Will there be a student hierarchy or is everyone equal in the group?  Some students will certainly have skills that others do not.  A train each other approach doesn't hurt if you've trained a certain set of reliable students already.
• How will the meetings run?  Will a lead student run the meetings to collaborate on issues and discuss what is happening or a particularly tough problem that they've encountered?  When I've run it as a class, we often had students do presentations on issues and how to solve them.

One of the best models for something like this is the club model.  The group meets together at specified times, but can do tasks when they are free.  Students (and teachers, administrators, parents etc) should be crystal clear that school work always comes first, but I've had clubs that have students that work on tasks during a study hall or other breaks throughout the day.  I've also run it as an honors level technology course, too.  That can work really well when students want school credit for the course.

But no matter whether you have it as an activity, group, club or class -- you need someone to lead it!  And the Faculty Advisor role is no small bag of potatoes.  With all of the above that needs to be considered -- what are the responsibilities of the adult in the group?  Here is a list of thoughts:

• Assess the technology needs.  This sounds simple, but if you have a small tech department (or none at all) you might find that the needs are varied, all over the place and not easily defined.  If the advisor is not part of the tech staff, they should reach out to the tech staff and find out where the group could be of assistance.  If they are, then a meeting with other administrators might help hone down the idea of what the needs are that the group could address.
• Choose, evaluate and deploy!  The selection of students is certainly key.  When first starting the group, it generally works best to be able to chose a small group of tech savvy students who are reliable, or at least can be guided.  As the program grows and gets roots, you can expand out to then take in students who are less savvy and require more training and hand-holding, but at first that might derail the program from taking off.  And you certainly don't want a student who thinks he is Jonny Lee Miller from Hackers and inadvertently wipes a teachers computer because he thought he knew how to do it, when he just could have asked for help.  So choosing and then learning the skills and strengths of the students is key!
• Scheduling and Overseeing.  At any time you may have two students working on a laptop cart, two others updating a lab and three others handling printer maintenance.  Being able to oversee, schedule and keep things moving forward is an absolute skill that any advisor will need... oh, and the time :).
• Promotion and Community Help!  It never hurts to get some good PR.  Plan to take the group to a senior center or church to help upgrade or clean their computers.  A student run technology table at a senior home during an afternoon is a great thing for both the students and the folks being helped!

So what kind of jobs/skills can students build?

• Hands-on technology break it/fix it with all types of equipment (computers, printers, monitors, projectors, cabling and more)
• Software programming
• Software updating and maintenance
• Staff management
• Inventory management
• Customer service
• Listening and pulling out key information
• Researching issues
• Leadership of peers
• An understanding of technology standards
• ...and more!

These are just some ideas and guidelines for implementing a program like this at your school.  It doesn't require fundraising if you have the right advisor to do some training, and it doesn't require a lot of resources to implement.  This is a win-win for any school that can put the time into it.  The students develop leadership, troubleshooting, logical thinking, practical hand-eye and useful computing skills.  The school can gain a valuable technology asset to help out in a pinch and everyone ends up just a little bit happier at the end of the day!  Personally, I've had students come from my teams to: found their own technology company, work in graphic and editing for a major television network, work in technology in the military and even one who decided to go on and teach computers himself.

And think this is just for boys?  Think again!  It is a *great* way to get girls involved in computers!  Girl Tech Power!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Google Classroom - First Look!

I posted a BLOG at the beginning of August about Google giving us a drop date for Classroom.  I've had some time now to play with it and get a solid impression of the product... here are my thoughts!

Google's new LMS (Learning Management System) would, on the surface, look to be an entree into the market in which products like Blackboard, FinalSite and Moodle have been the traditional heavyweights.  If you think that, you'd be wrong.  It plays much more in the space of something like Haiku or Edmodo when it comes to overall functionality... but let's talk about that a little.

For those educational institutions that are using Google Apps for Education (And if you aren't, you should ask yourself WHY... and have a reason).  But, if you are, you can request to have the App added to your suite and then it's easy to hop right into Classroom just like any other Google App.

Once you are inside Google Classroom and classes have been set up, the interface should be very familiar to you.  It is a similar clean, organized look and feel to other Google Apps.  It works via a class stream of information very similar to Google+, and everything that happens within the class will show up in the stream.  When something is assigned, turned in, graded, comments added etc -- it all shows up in the stream for the teachers.  The student view is slightly different and carries a little less information in it.

You can set up your class with information about it, upload a syllabus and post announcements just like you'd expect in any kind of system that hopes to help you organize your classes.  You can grade based on just about any scale you'd like, as long as it is a whole number.  No 89.5's here.  It is easy to take an assignment and grade it, and have it show up to the student as a newly graded assignment.  However, this is largely where the grading features stop.  A number of grading features are missing out of the box including timed-release of assignments, take-home exams, online assignments and several others that you'd expect to see in a full featured LMS such as Blackboard, Moodle or FinalSite.  But... keep in mind this is just the initial release!

The current layout of the stream and how it works contains all the information a student would need, but it is very much like Twitter or Facebook... if something is a few hours old you may have to hunt for it!  FinalSite has a similar issue with their FinalSite Social plug-in.  A student gets assigned something first period, doesn't check their stream until sixth period and ends up having to scroll through assignments, returned work and sporting event updates to find it.  It is imperfect -- and I'd expect will be refined over time in all products.  One thing to note is that there is a great deal of integration between Google Classroom and Google Drive.  This is a boon for teachers who need that little bit extra to help keeping the classes they have running on Google Drive working smoothly!

This pretty much sums up Google Classroom.  Quick, right?  I know.  It is a product still growing... it looks good and clean, but lacks a lot of features found even in Haiku.  If you are currently using something like FinalSite LMS, Moodle or even Whipple Hill you might not want to make the switch to Google Classroom.  But, for a school that is using Google Apps for Education and does not currently have a standardized LMS -- Google Classroom is something worth looking into!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Saving Classes from Year to Year in Haiku Learning Management System

Learning Management System is a big buzzword in educational technology these days.  And there are certainly a lot of ways to go if you are considering implementing one.  One of the best "bang for your buck" solutions is the Haiku Learning Management System.  One of the beautiful things about this system is that it allows teachers to sign up and run their classes for free on an individual basis, but Haiku also has a really affordable school wide licensing model -- as low as $5 per teacher.

But, even with a great learning management system like Haiku, there are always questions about how to do certain things... and one of the biggest I see from year-to-year (in any system) is "Can I save my classes from last year or do I have to re-do everything next year?"

More often than not these days, the answer is: you can save it!  And here's how you do that in Haiku!

1. Wait until the next year's classes appear in Haiku.

• Last year's classes display in Inactive Classes.

• At the end of the year, these classes may be accessed in My Classes > select: Jump to Inactive

• When your new classes arrive from PowerSchool, you may copy the content from your inactive classes to your new classes.

2. Save as Templates

• You can save current class content to templates

• Select a class

• Click on: Manage Class > and select: Save As  > select: Template, and follow the instructions

• When your new classes arrive in Haiku, you may copy the content from your inactive classes to your new classes.

• Go to: My Classes  > select: Jump to Inactive Classes  > click on: Templates tab, and select: Share Class...

3. Share Class to the Library (where you and other teachers may copy it later)

• Select a class

• Click on: Manage Class > and select: Share Class

• Select: Library, and check the following: Grade level, subject, and add any tags

• Click: Copy  (you may then close the screen)

I hope this helps alleviate some of that "End of Year Stress"!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 17 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  He also has a new novel coming out in June 2014, The Kill Commission.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!