Technology for Teachers

Our school year has yet to start (with students) so in my role as a Dean of Students I’ve yet to fully implement my iPhone in that role.  As far as my role as Activities Director (also known as Athletic Director) I’ve begun to use a handful of apps to increase my productivity.  One of the main group of items is from Google as I use Google Docs, gMail, picasasa, Google Calendar, etc.  I recently added an app called MiGhtyDocs which lets me access my Google Docs quicker.  I have a doc set with all of the officials and game workers still needed so as people call back I can quicky pull up an up to date list (the Google Doc also lets me make it viewable to people as a webpage).  I still use Evernote off and on.  I’ve also recently added WhitePages which works pretty slick as an iPhone phone book.  I also have the WordPress App installed but I’m waiting for our seasons to get in full swing to see if I use it to post mobily to wordpress blogs for our Activities Department.  I added Adventure to see what the pre-k style apps are starting to look like, a bit too simple for my daughter though.  So all in all I’m increasing my productivity through the use of this phone.  I’ve been able to import all of the contacts from around our state that are using the same program for their Activities Departments and I await a list of all the ADs in our state.  Pretty sweet phone.

• Google iPhone Apps: http://www.google.com/mobile/apple/
• MiGhtyDocs: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10012949-2.html
• WordPress: http://iphone.wordpress.org/
• EverNote: http://evernote.com/about/download/iphone/
  
• WhitePages: http://www.whitepages.com/
• Preschool Adventure: http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/08/18/review-preschool-adventure-for-iphone

Here are a few more (with their iTunes link, clicking on the link will attempt to open it in iTunes for you to subscribe):

• NAASP, National Association of Secondary School Principals
• National Middle School Association
• Voice of MN Education

Podcasts you’d have to download and add:

• TASA Midwinter Conference

Sites to look around:

• http://www.speedofcreativity.org
• http://leadertalk.org/
• http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/

So what’s the iPhone camera quality like?

Recommended resources for administrators: http://www.speedofcreativity.org/resources/administrator-essentials/

This site was shared with my through a "Twitter" contact.  http://c4lpt.co.uk/iTouchLearning/

Sean

Thought I’d pass along some ideas that I’m using with my iPhone.  If it doesn’t  pertain to you feel free to ignore this…. 

I’m adding podcasts to my phone that are related to ed leadership, not to surprising but I’m not finding many podcasts that solely fit this need… so I’m finding and subscribing to podcasts but I’ve changed the iTunes settings to look for updates but not to download them….  this way I can select the episodes I want, I used to just download everything and put it on my iPod (a little bit pickier with less space on the iPhone, I should have done this anyway).

If you don’t have any podcasts yet you can start with one by Wes Fryer to find a few good items.

First of all to add "Podcasts" open iTunes and click the "Podcast" button in the left hand column:

This will bring you to your library of podcasts, if it’s your first time it will ask you to go to the iTunes Podcast Directory.  If it doesn’t ask you to go to the iTunes store, look in the lower right hand corner and click on "Podcast Directory".

This will bring you to the iTunes store where you can search for podcasts and subscribe to them (podcasts are free).  Once you find one of interest click the "Subscribe" button.   I searched in the upper right for "Wes Fryer".

(if not reinforcement, here’s some repetition)  I’ve changed the settings in my iTunes installation to only make note of new episodes but not to download them.  This is mainly because there are not many podcasts soley dedicated to educational leadership.  This way I can pick what my computer downloads, kind of like only picking up the issues of the paper you want instead of getting every one that’s printed.

Here’s how I changed my settings to do this (on a PC you’ll start from either the FILE or EDIT menu but I can’t remember, you should probably just buy a Mac!!!).

Go to the iTunes prefererences (under FILE or EDIT for PC users):

Click the "Podcasts" tab:

Change your settings to reflect this:

Then in my podcast library I manually select the ones I want to "Get".  So I see all the episodes, but I have to manually "get" them.

I hope this helps other out there!

Sincerely,

Sean M. Martinson
Dean of Students & Activities Director – Deer River High School

M.S. Educational Leadership
Licensed K-12 Principal

smartinson@deerriver.k12.mn.us
(218) 259-3129

www.isd317.org