When we create a Facebook "fan page," we naturally assume that when someone "Likes" the page, the content posted to that page will show up in their news feed. Right?
As it turns out, that's actually not true. I am not sure about the actual algorithm, but it seems that it requires people not only clicking "Like," but also interacting with the content, commenting on it, sharing it, etc. All of these factors seem to play into whether or not the content from that particular page shows up automatically in the news feed.
If you currently like my page (Facebook.com/DrFrankBuck), but are not seeing its content in your news feed, here is what to do:
Hover over the "Liked" button. Hopefully, you will see a drop-down menu.
One of the options is "Show in News Feed." Select that one.
I am not sure if taking that action will bring all of the content to your news feed. It seems this is one of those "moving targets" social media brings our way.
By the way, if you have not already "Liked" the page, why not do so now? The content you will find there consists of quotes I have collected over the years, notices about new blog posts, and links to other content I think readers would like.
I was invited to contribute to School Leadership Briefing, an audio journal providing professional development to administrators. Click on the image below to listen to the short podcast.
If you are visiting here as a result of yesterday's workshop, welcome! I hope you will check back often.
One of the afternoon topics was iGoogle, and I gave you a quick overview of the "gadgets" I have on my iGoogle page. Earlier in the summer, I devoted a post to those gadgets. With a click on each one, you will be taken to the page where you can select it to appear on your iGoogle page.
Thanks to Bob Howe for inviting me to present at the Michigan Elementary & Middle School Principals Association Summer Leadership Institute! I was met at the airport by Rachel Turner, a delightful first-year elementary principal. Talking with her reminds me of the challenges of leadership at the school level, especially the challenges of beginning leadership.
Time management is a challenge for any school leader, and that is the reason for my invitation. We will be conducting a full-day workshop. I have refined some points in the workshop and will going into more detail about the use of the BlackBerry as a time management tool. This should be fun experience for all of us, and I hope that it provides principals with some tools that will increase their productivity and decrease stress for years to come.
Folks must have known I was coming, because at check-in, I was given just-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. In my room was a tin of cookies and a nice note from Bob.
The hospitality is great, as evidenced by this gathering.
The accommodations are first-class, the Double Tree in Bay City.
Every good thing we do for our students, our families, our communities, or ourselves is accomplished through the dimension of time. Learn to manage your time and organize your surroundings, and you open the potential for accomplishment in many areas.
This session provides a total system for organizing your surroundings and effectively managing your time. Time management is an essential, yet often missing, skill in the development of classroom teachers and school administrators.
In this session, you will learn:
* The essential four habits that eliminate forgetting and reduce stress. * How to keep your desktop clear and have papers reappear at just the right time. * How to use a paper or digital “signature tool” to organize your life. * How to effortlessly handle tasks which repeat. * How to document quickly, completely, and easily. * How to organize your computer. * How do get your e-mail Inbox empty every day.
This session is very “nuts-and-bolts.” The tools and techniques can be implemented immediately and will save you an estimate of one to two hours a day. You will accomplish more and experience less stress.
The workshop will be held August 12 from 8:30-11:30. Registration is free! Registration is being opened to anyone in the state regardless of inservice center region. To register, go to STIPD and search for "umin09" in the PD Title Number field.
Everyone who attends the workshop receives a copy of the book Get Organized! Time Management for School Leadersfor free!
Direction to the inservice center, located in Pelham, are found here.
There are still plenty of seats left for the Get Organized! workshop offered through the Jacksonville State University Inservice Center on June 23. The time is 8:30-4:00.
The inservice is providing a free copy of the book to all participants! Registration is limited to those in the JSU Inservice Center Region.
Thanks to everyone who attend one of my breakout sessions at the North Alabama Administrators Conference yesterday.
We did run out of the handout that gave you a screen shot of a sample "My Documents" folder. The great thing about being able to refer to this blog is that we can get that information to you. You can download a copy of that handout by clicking here. You can also view it below.
This post is written for those who participated in "Your Own Blog in 10 Minutes or Less" through VAETC (Virtual Alabama Educational Technology Conference).
The site we used to create customized title banners and other images is www.Imagechef.com
For instructions on how to remove the Blogger navigation bar, click here.
Do you know of other examples that would benefit teachers who are interested in using a blog in their classes? If you do, please leave a comment.
This Friday, I am offering "Managing Digital Data With Ease" from 11:00-12:00 through VAETC. Search the PD Catalog for VAETC09002.
If you are in the Jacksonville State University Regional In-Service Center area, there are still seats left for "Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders." Click here for free registration. The in-service center is providing copies of the book free to all participants!
For those in the University of Montevallo Regional In-Service Center area, join me for "Your Own Blog in 10 Minutes or Less," a half-day version of "Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders" and a half-day session on "Get Organized With Your BlackBerry." Further information is located here.
There are still plenty of seats left for the Get Organized! workshop offered through the Jacksonville State University Inservice Center on June 23. The time is 8:30-4:00.
The inservice is providing a free copy of the book to all participants! Registration is limited to those in the JSU Inservice Center Region.
This past Halloween was spent at the National Middle School Association Convention in Denver. I presented a one-hour version of Get Organized! to a large and receptive audience.
Yesterday, I received notification that I have been selected to present a three-hour ticketed session at this year's event. The tentative date is Thursday, November 5 from 8:30-11:30. The convention is being held in Indianapolis.
Teachers, I need your help. The project I am working on is a second book, one geared specifically to the classroom teacher. Get Organized! Time Management for School Leaders seems to be finding a niche with school administrators more than any other group, although the strategies are applicable to anyone. This second book will serve as a guide for the teacher who is new to the profession, the teacher new to a school who may have inherited a mess, or the teacher for whom organization and time management have never been strengths and wishes to “turn over a new leaf.” I hope the book also finds an audience with the teacher who is well-organized and a good manager of time, yet wants to get even better. The book is intended to be a manual that begins with organizing the newly-inherited classroom and continues through structuring a signature tool, taming technology, and staying afloat in a profession that throws far too many tasks our way. Of special interest is how the teacher can help students with their own organizational struggles.
Here is where I need your help: Does anyone out there have a really good reference filing system set up in your classroom (forms, instructional materials, correspondence, etc.)? If so, I would like to hear about it and credit your ideas in the book. Ideally, I would like to hear from both elementary and secondary teachers. Input from “specialty” areas such as physical education or music would also be welcome. If you are interested in contributing, e-mail me at Frank.Buck@centurytel.net and we can talk from there.
Thanks to the audience of well over 100 who came to the session and to those who came up to me at some point during the conference to let me know how they intend to implement what they heard. During the one hour and fifteen minutes, we were able to give at least an introduction to the following ideas:
Mastering paperwork with tickler files
Organizing it all with your "signature tool"
Handling repeating tasks
Documenting made easy enough you will actually do it
Getting e-mail from "in" to "empty"
I am beginning to hear the same comments with regularity:
This makes so much sense.
I had no idea it was so easy.
Why hasn't anybody told me this before?
I needed this!
Special thanks to Kerry Palmer for being my facilitator for the session. Kerry is principal at Trinity Middle School in Montgomery, Alabama and doing an outstanding job as a first-year principal. His blogs serve as just one example of the professional, positive approach he takes. You can view his faculty blog by clicking here or his parent blog by clicking here.
If you are visiting this blog for the first time as a result of coming to the session in Denver, thanks for stopping by. You are the reason I created this blog in the first place! We can cover just so much in 75 minutes. Web 2.0 allows us to continue the discussion.
This next weekend, I will be sending out the next e-mail newsletter, so by November 10, you should receive it. Be sure to check your spam folder and in case it gets caught there.
I demonstrated how the process works by sending a Jott to a friend. One of the questions about Jott was how accurate the text translation is. My response was that it was about as accurate as my English. If I pronounce words distinctly, the translation is accurate. If I let my lay Southern drawl slip in, it shows up in the spelling of the text translation.
Printed below is the how the message was translated:
I am having a wonderful workshop here with some of our educational leaders, future superintendents, a whole room full of them, so as you are reading your email now, you will be reading the words that I am speaking right now. I'll talk to you later. Bye.
During this full-day workshop, we were able to cover a great deal of ground. The morning was spent examining "all things paper" while we devoted the afternoon to "all things digital." The ability to back up files is an essential skill if we are ever going to able to trust that what we have saved is not suddenly going to be lost. There is no substitute for peace of mind!
iGoogle is my homepage on my office computer, home computer, and laptop. I can go to any computer which has Internet access and pull up my own homepage, complete with my favorite links, access to driving directions, my own GoogleDocs, and any other information I like to have at my fingertips.
Del.icio.us lets me have access to my Bookmarks from any computer in the world. It also allows me to share Bookmarks with anyone in the world.
The "Digital Resource Sheet" is a tool I am still trying to perfect. What if a teacher could gather in one place all of the digital resources he/she wants to use for all subjects for an entire year?
What if the teacher could look across the spreadsheet and see all of the resources that would be used that week and look down the sheets to see all of the resources that would be used in that subject? What if each one of those resources was hyperlinked so that a click of the mouse who bring that resource to the screen (and if the computer is hooked to a projector, bring the image to the screen)?
The resources we are talking about consist of the following:
Any document saved to the computer
Any PowerPoint presentation saved to the computer
Any video saved to the computer
Any document available on the Internet
Any PowerPoint on the Internet
Any video on the Internet
Any website
We live in a time where resources are abundant. Finding resources is easy. Downloading them is easy. Remembering what you have and being able to put your hands on what you want when you want it...that's really hard...or at least it can be. "Overwhelmed" is a term that accurately describes the feeling of so many teachers today.
We have three solutions available to us. The first is to spend countless hours on a daily basis gathering resources for the coming day and continue this insanity until we burn out. The second option is to throw up a wall and block out all of those outside resources. Let the textbook be the be-all-end-all. We preserve our sanity, yet we rob ourselves and our students of a rich education.
A third option exists, and that option is use technology to solve the problem of being overwhelmed by technology. I am a firm believer that we are never given a problem without also being given the tools the solve it, although we may have to use some ingenuity to find it. This Digital Resource Sheet is something I think has the potential to let us "have our cake and eat it too." We can have the simplicity that organization gives us and the richness that being alive in an ultra-connected world provides for us.
What if this tool was something which could be built and shared amongst multiple teachers? Those are the thoughts going through my mind at this moment.
When you come to the edge of all the light you know, and you are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: There will be something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.
The room was packed Monday afternoon. The number of people who are very interested in how to use this program to organize their lives is encouraging. The greatest interest seemed to be as we discussed "drag and drop" to get the e-mail Inbox empty each day.
A short book-signing session followed the workshop. Out of the two large stacks which were in the NAESP bookstore (at least 50 copies), a mere three copies of the book remained.
As it turns out, that's actually not true. I am not sure about the actual algorithm, but it seems that it requires people not only clicking "Like," but also interacting with the content, commenting on it, sharing it, etc. All of these factors seem to play into whether or not the content from that particular page shows up automatically in the news feed.
