Tool #6

Wikis are a great tool for going paperless in lots of our work as administrators and teachers. Usually, we share copies of school supplies lists, agendas for meetings, checklists, rubrics, etc. and we can share them through this tool. I can envision putting the handbook on the google site and sharing it with the assistant principals and ILT before publishing. This would save lots of time and effort in editing the script. We could add the textbook and guided reading inventories to this and make them accessible to teachers. I looked at the educational origami wiki and liked the Lego Robotics activities described. We're always looking for interesting problem solving activities which can be included in our after school program. This could be a possibility.

Tool #5

It's taken me a long time to get around to posting this and now I'm in a rush to finish all my tools. I had too much fun playing around with delicious and spent a little bit of time with diigo. I mostly used the "education" tag and found some interesting websites. I joined the Khan Academy site as Mallory Shaddix had mentioned this site to me and had recommended I look into it. It popped up in the education search under the "learning" tag. Very interesting work done through this technology oriented academy. It has been featured on PBS and NPR. You can access it at http://www.khanacademy.org/. Another interesting website is Mashable. I found this under the technology tag for social media 2.0. I was able to add this to my google reader list to get new articles as posted. There are several articles already posted that I want to read. The link for Mashable is http://mashable.com/. Mashable also includes a diigo link if you prefer to see it with a different online service. I think this tool will serve in sharing sites with the staff and other principals.

Tool #4

I've been playing with this tool for several days and decided I'd better start posting and finish the 11 tools while on vacation (today is my last day) so I can get to work tomorrow. I see lots of uses for google docs and I'm excited to use it. I'm currently sharing an interview form with the Assistant Principals and see where we can share documents on a regular basis which we all need to view and edit before sharing with faculty and staff (i.e. teacher handbook documents). I've decided to follow other principals' blogs and so far have been able to add 3 principals. Unfortunately, there aren't others with blogs yet. I've picked a couple of teachers to follow for now and will probably add all HBE teachers later. Whew, that's a lot of following.