Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

Software should be viewed holistically, in my opinion. I know that in 4 years most of my students will not be using the same version of any software I teach. I do want them to have deep knowledge of many different programs, however, I want them to know that no matter what software or "apps" come their way that they are able to take the app, understand the app's purpose, an utilize it in a functional way in a very short period of time. Instead of the standard 4 software application program 2 semester program that I ran 10 years a go when I started this job, we start off with a bootcamp using software that I know they do not know. After learning a method of how to intuitively learn new software and viewing a video that introduces them to the concept of building a PLN, we embark on our "software exploration" project. I thought I'd share that with you today. Software Exploration in a Nutshell After introducing the ClickSmart method of learning new softwar...

Join us Monday for "Meet the Flat Classroom." I'm so happy to say that after our struggles with a potential hacker on our blogs/ google docs , etc. of the past few days (as I blogged yesterday ), we've worked through the issues and our application forms are back up and running. THANK YOU to all of our friends who let us know about the problem and our friends at Google and my fellow Google Certified Teachers who helped us with the problems. We're excited to share where global collaboration is heading in our corner of this beautiful educational global collaborative landscape. Feel free to join us and learn more about this and our book and how you can access free resource and information as well as join our projects or learn about our book. Julie and I will be there together for this action packed hour on Monday, so join us. The official announcement is printed below. Dear all We are delighted to invite you to an online 'Meet the Flat Classroom®' ...

Update: We are not sure why or how this happened, but we are back up. Tons of passwords changed. Thank goodness for Backupify - the service we use to back up our Google docs.   I will share about this later. Thank you to the Google Certified Teachers, Google employees and others who helped us with this problem and thank you especially to Lisa Durff , our Flat Classroom coordinator who really helps us keep things running. Have we been hacked? What has happened? Right now, Julie Lindsay in China and I communicate through Google. Our forms, etc. are through Google. She is in China and has to use a firewall to use Google. Has she been hacked or is so much traffic out of China being hackers that they think she is a hacker? Who knows, but either way, our forms our down and much of what we do with Flat Classroom is DOWN. We're working to restore our application forms. I'm also getting this notice SOMETIMES on my blog which makes me think that perhaps something I'm li...

Today I demonstrated Google plus to my students as we compared and contrasted Google Hangouts with Skype and Oovoo . As I went into Google plus, I just happened to be there as Stephen Downes pointed out a grammatical mistake I made on my Leadership post yesterday. My students said: "Hey, Mrs. Vicki, is that guy talking about you?" Oops. He was. I had made a grammatical mistake (again.) Stephen Downes ' Google plus post about my mistake. I don't want to debate my mistake here. I made one. Period. I aim for zero grammatical mistakes and this mistake wasn't in the original post but came when I went back and tweaked the post this morning - as I often do when I think I've written something I like. I didn't proofread after I made the correction and thus embarrassed myself greatly, especially because someone of the stature of Stephen Downes caught it and let everyone know. I totally goofed up. Quite a debate with those who know more than I do ab...

Great leaders  hire people smarter, more innovative, and better than themselves. Poor leaders want to be the smartest one in the room. They always make sure they are. Great leaders care about those who work for and with them... their life stories, their hobbies, their interests. They know that personal lives can effect professional careers and realize that to know an employee and care is the key to unleashing their potential at work. Poor leaders only care about themselves. They will tell their grand heroic story of their own life ad nauseum. Great leaders give others credit for good things even when a lot of the credit goes to him or her. If bad things happen, the great leader steps out front to take the blame. Poor leaders are eager to take credit for everything, even those things that they had little or nothing to do with. Great leaders have a great staff and tell everyone. Poor leaders are surrounded by idiots and let everyone know it. Great leaders focus a...

There is good teaching and there is great teaching. Teaching is more than just "in front" of the class. It is proper planning, preparation, timely assessment, classroom organization. In fact, I've often found that the "little things" become the big things more often than not. It is about your habits. 2011 has been the "year of the habit" for me where I've focused on one question: "What are the habits that are going to help me be the kind of person I want to be in this life?" As I've shared with you before, if you shape your habits, you shape your destiny . Brian Tracy says that "95% of what we accomplish is a result of our habits" and I believe him. You don't have one really great workout and lose 30 pounds. In fact, I can attest to the fact that you can have 300 mediocre workouts and lose 30 pounds! Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first. You don't write one amazing blog post and build a...

Little Lily Polka Dot www.littlelillypolkadot.com has a narrated picture book that teaches kids that going to the doctor is not so scary. Interactive site to use with kids tags: education health health_teacher elementary_teacher Home | Teacher Leaders Network There is a friends of Teaching 2030 on the Teacher Leaders Network. This is a national initiative of the center for teaching quality. tags: education social networking pln educational bestpractices Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Zite and Flipboard are two must-have new apps for the iPad. Each is different and an important part of my media diet. The rumor mill is churning up that CNN and Zite are chummy on a deal to sell Zite for $20million+. Mainstream media hasn't really gotten social media or apps- until now? They gotta buy it. Not sure I am happy about this one. Is it Nite Nite Zite? Related posts: 15 Fantastic Ways to Use Flipboard IPad Productivity:Pareto Your Home Screen - Posted using BlogPress from Vicki's iPad

Kidblog.org - Blogs for Teachers and Students I found that quite a few teachers in the technology forum in Edmodo are using this site for blogging with kids. tags: Education blogging writing literacy Posted from Diigo . The rest of my favorite links are here .

Adobe Forms Central You can use this online service to create forms and then collect responses online. It is from adobe so the forms look professional. tags: education adobe productivity forms Adobe Send Now A free service from Adobe that lets you send large files. It also integrates with some of their products. I'm still learning. If you're an adobe user, you'll want to sign up for a free account. tags: education adobe adobeair productivity graphicdesign Drop It To Me Lets you create an email to send files security to your dropbox account. tags: education productivity dropbox paperl...

This is a great service for those of you who want to sort of go paperless and need a virtual place to turn in files. Although the teacher should have dropbox you DO NOT have to have dropbox installed. You can then have them upload files with your secret password that are delivered right to your dropbox inbox in a folder called "Dropittome" Here's how: 1 - Sign up for Dropbox The teacher should set up a dropbox account. www.dropbox.com 2.  Sign up for Dropitto.me Go to www.dropitto.me and sign up for an account. Remember that your USERNAME will be your link so make it simple. Of course, mine is coolcatteacher but you can make yours whatever you wish. Don't use the same password as Dropbox although you can use the same email. Pick an email so it will let you know when a student has submitted work. 3. Connect the Two Remember to allow it to connect with Dropbox as the screen shows below.   4. Get students ready to share. Come up with a na...

Cybraryman Internet Catalogue My Moodle page: http://tinyurl.com/y6454wb #mootnz11 tags: mootnz11 twitter Leadership Lessons from Heroes, the Bravest of Men | C-Level Strategies - Visionary Leadership Leadership Lessons from Heroes, the Bravest of Men http://twrt.me/v2g01 via @LisaPetrilli tags: twitter Cooperative Cooperative Learning projects build community if done properly. My Cooperative Learning page: http://tinyurl.com/y8odpfu #sschat tags: sschat twitter Landing Page Best Practices La perfecta "Landing Page" http://t.co/8iux2H9 tags: twitter ...

I love my students. Today I will show it. I want my class to be interesting. Today I will be interested in my students. I want my students to learn a lot. Today I will explain where we are going with all this and why. I want to be excellent in what I do. Today I will find one thing each student in my class does excellently well. I want the support of parents. Today I will communicate with them about how their child can succeed and encourage them that parenting is worth it. I want to learn useful things from my PLN. Today I will share useful things to others through my networks. I want to be noticed and encouraged. Today I will go out of my way to notice and encourage others. I want to be an excellent author of books that help people. Today I will share books from other authors that have helped me and help others live their dreams. When I see that what I want can best be gotten by unselfishly focusing on others then TODAY has new meaning. You reap what you sow, if you plant watermelons ...