L. Suzanne Shanks's Blog (59)

Pruning Again

I’ve come to the conclusion that I spend way too much time online. Some of it’s for work, some of it’s for fun, and some of it is for professional development. Some of it is very valuable, some not so much. It’s starting become like the TV or the phone were in the past - another way to stay over-busy, distract myself, avoid other things. It doesn’t keep me in the house, now that I have a great laptop, but it keeps me unavailable for other important activities that could engage me in a more… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on March 28, 2008 at 3:59pm — No Comments

Blogging 101

Here’s a middle-school-friendly presentation on blogging that I use with my students prior to their first post. I gathered the resources from several places and have noted those within the show. I hope it will be helpful to someone out there.

http://thetechtrainer.edublogs.org/files/2007/12/blogging-101.ppt

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on March 28, 2008 at 3:58pm — No Comments

More About Transparency and Online Presence

Since my last post I've come across so many articles and blogs about our online image, appropriate levels of disclosure, and unintended perceptions that I realize I have nothing novel to say about these issues. All I have is questions. (This happens more often than not and it’s the reason I didn’t start blogging until a few months ago.) This morning in my aggregator Miguel Ghulin brought the issue up again. You should stop over to his blog, Around the Corner, and check out his post,… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on March 28, 2008 at 3:56pm — No Comments

Who is Your Audience and How Much Will You Tell Them?

This question has been simmering in my head the last several days because of some news and blogs I’ve read recently. Consider these recent headlines:



Teachers Should Blog, Tweet and Flirt Online Like the Rest of Us



Fired! EFL teacher loses his job after employer finds out about his blog.



Florida teacher may lose job over MySpace



Thinking about Audience Matters



Marquette Dental Student Suspended Over Blog Posts



Students, officials… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on March 28, 2008 at 3:53pm — No Comments

I Guess This Figures

The 11 to 14-year-old crowd I teach is wearing off on me.

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on November 18, 2007 at 3:30pm — No Comments

Where Have You Been?

I feel I should have posted many many days ago, and I really wanted to blog while I was at the Oracle 21st Century Learning Institute in San Francisco, yet I ended up spending my free time there writing back and forth to my students. They were so sweet to IM and email me all week. W needed that more than usual because of a tragedy that happened while I was gone. (Two of my former students were shot in a murder-suicide, so our whole community was in a lot of pain. Please pray for the families if… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on November 11, 2007 at 3:30pm — No Comments

How's This for a Short Copyright Review for My Students?

Here's what I am giving to my students next week. What do you think? I want it simple enough for them to pay attention, remember, and follow.





" Let's all check our sites and make sure we aren't violating copyright laws. We need to be absolutely sure we are not illegally posting pictures, lyrics, songs, games, artwork, graphics, text, etc. I'm pretty sure I will find… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on October 25, 2007 at 4:54pm — No Comments

Teaching is an Art

I’ve now begun the book study I’m doing with my two inductees; The Art and Science of Teaching by Robert

J. Marzano. The book study and attendant assignments, reflections, and journal

articles are structured to cover some important topics early in the year, like

goal-setting, instruction and assessment. However, it leaves…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 22, 2007 at 11:00pm — No Comments

9/20/07 Someone Is Listening.</</body>

This will need to be a short post because between supervisory duties, mentoring, extracurricular sports obligations, clubs, and the like, I hardly have time to breath lately. However, I wanted to at least share that a family member who is one of my best friends took the time to write me an email about my blog. She actually read the whole thing! How wonderful to have my first reader from among my close circle. I've had some far-off readers whom I didn't know add comments; I've made new…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 20, 2007 at 6:48pm — No Comments

Serendipitous!

I just love it when something pops into my life right when I need it. Seems I have Someone looking out for me who believes in Just-In-Time delivery.

I’m teaching my 8th Graders about primary sources next week in anticipation of doing a R.A.P. reading response on some Revolutionary War primary sources. There are some excellent sites on the web on this

topic. (You can find my links under the tags “…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 15, 2007 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Mentoring New Teaching Professionals

This week I attended the first District meeting of mentors and their progeny, a room full of brand new educators. It was exciting and humbling. I’ve been a mentor several times before yet every time I am

asked to do it, I feel surprised and honored. I’m looking forward to

the growth that mentoring always brings into my own practice. I hope to

share some of my experiences and reflections about the process here

with you. For now I am just enjoying the fact that my very shy…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 14, 2007 at 6:00pm — No Comments

9/10/07 Can We Talk?

TOTALLY WIRED by Anastasia Goodstein had a recent post titled “The Importance Of Connecting IRL (In Real Life).” She brings up an interesting question for teens, parents of teens, and really, all of us:…
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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 10, 2007 at 10:56am — No Comments

9/9/07 LOLcats (otherwise known as Kitty Kaptchas)

LOLcats according to Wikipedia. Love 'em or hate 'em? I think they're pretty funny and addicting. What do you think? Every so often you might run across a crude one or a bad word in a caption, so be careful and always browse under adult supervision! The best collection seems to be at I Can Has Cheezburger? Some say LOLcats really originated from…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 9, 2007 at 10:30am — No Comments

9/8/07 Teachable Moments In & Out of the Classroom

This week found me teaching blogging and internet safety. It was my first attempt to blog with kids; I'll see as I grade their posts this weekend how it really went. Maybe it was boring to introduce themselves and what they learned this

week about blogs and blogging; I'm still learning myself. My hope was that--minimum--they got some good practice writing strong paragraphs to a prompt so I can justify the activity to my Web 1.0 administrators. I don't want to keep giving… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 8, 2007 at 9:30am — No Comments

Do You Twitter?

I've been experimenting for about three weeks with a microblogging tool called Twitter.You've probably already heard of it, or maybe you're even using it. What are your experiences with Twitter? Do you use a different microblogging tool? What do you think of it? I've heard great things about how educators are tweeting for much more than "What are you doing now?" -- the web site's motto. Teachers and tech professionals all over the world are sharing…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 8, 2007 at 8:29am — 2 Comments

Nothing Like A Little Rest and Recreation to Cure What Ails Ya

My goals this week are to review internet safety with my older students and begin it with the younger ones. We will be posting our first blogs on Think.com, along with our "4 Slides" slide shows introducing ourselves.



I'm going to ask again why the District hasn't secured and allowed my wifi so we can actually use it! My tablet PC is itching to… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on September 1, 2007 at 8:00am — No Comments

After 2+ Weeks With Students, A Month in the Building

Oh, my. It’s hard to get back up to full speed! Maybe I’m wiped out because we start almost an hour earlier each day now, and we finish teaching 10 minutes later each day than last

year. It was a 65+ hour week. At least my students and I are finally

finished with our goal setting, skills checklists, beginning

keyboarding tests, introducing ourselves, and have started registering

students on…

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Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on August 30, 2007 at 9:00am — 3 Comments

Eclipse + Moonset = Wow!

I took the photos with my mobile from the car -- sorry they are blurry. Over here in the Western half of the US, in Colorado, we would have had to get up at around 3 in the morning to see the entire lunar eclipse. However, I was on my way to work and was lucky enough to see it about halfway finished. During the short drive more and more of the moon quickly shone, and then just as the light was coming up in the eastern sky, the moon quickly set behind our 14,000 foot mountain, Pikes Peak. I feel… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on August 28, 2007 at 6:44am — 1 Comment

The Adventure Begins...

As I've said on Twitter lately, I've been hanging around in the tech and education blogospheres so long that I finally feel really to participate and contribute rather than just lurk and learn. I've been hesitant because A) I don't have lots of free time (I'm sure none of you out there have that issue?!) and B) I am not convinced I have anything new to add or say. It's a waste of time and space to blog about nothing, right? I have a long way to grow.



Well, this year I am teaching my… Continue

Added by L. Suzanne Shanks on August 26, 2007 at 3:04pm — 1 Comment

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