To set up, you download the client, install it, and log into your Google account or accounts. It lets you sync multiple Google accounts at the same time, so I can use it with my work Google account, my professional Google account, and my personal Google account. Insync creates a folder in your home directory called Insync, and creates a folder for each one of your accounts inside of it. Google Docs files show up as their Microsoft Office equivilents.

It works really well, just as well as Dropbox. There are a few annoyances, such as the inability to pause syncing (for example, if you’re on slow connection), but for the price it’s hard for Dropbox to beat.

One tip I would recommend is to create a folder inside your Google account folder and use that like you would use a Dropbox account. If your Google Docs account is anything like mine, you have a ton of files and very little organization. Since I’m using this basically as a Dropbox replacement, I created a folder called DesktopSync, and I use that like I would use my Dropbox.

If you are in a Google Apps for Education school district, your Google accounts work fine with Insync. I haven’t tested it on our client computers that students use yet. If it works there, it would be a very nice solution to file access outside of the district.

My problem was when I wanted to post the current page I’m reading to either account. Ping.fm offers a bookmarklet, but it uses the current logged in ping.fm account, so I would have to continually log in and log out. I decided to put together my own bookmarklet that starts up a new mail message in my default email client addressed to the correct Ping.fm account. To get started, drag the following link to your bookmark bar:

Ping.fm

Once there, right click on the link, select edit and replace YOURPRIVATEPINGADDRESS with your private Ping.fm email address (just the part to the left of the @). Would you like to do it with GMail? Drag this link:

Ping.fm

And once again, right click on the link, select edit, and replace YOURPRIVATEPINGADDRESS with your private Ping.fm email address.

You can drag the links multiple times, editing the email address and the name of the link so you can associate each one with a different Ping.fm account.

Unfortunately, your created page has a very unwieldy url. Mine is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Collins/181385642299. What I’ve done is setup a redirect from my website to point ryancollins.org/facebook to my Facebook Page. Be sure to become a friend when you visit!

One common question I see asked all the time is whether or not teachers should friend students on Facebook. Although you can set your privacy settings on Facebook to hide certain aspects of your life from groups of friends, this isn’t fool proof. Friending everyone including students and parents simply begins breaking down yet another wall between your professional life and personal life.

What you can do is create a Facebook Page for yourself. This gives you a presence on Facebook that can be used professionally which is totally separated from your person life.

“A Facebook Page is a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users. Create one in a few minutes with our simple interface.”

Unfortunately, your created page has a very unwieldy url. Mine is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Ryan-Collins/181385642299. What I’ve done is setup a redirect from my website to point http://ryancollins.org/facebook to my Facebook Page. Be sure to become a friend when you visit!

Facebook Pages are not limited to people either, you could also create a Page for each class you teacher or other departments within your organization.

More information about creating a Facebook Page:

• How to: Create a Facebook Fan Page
• 5 Elements of a Successful Facebook Fan Page
• How To Create and Promote Your Facebook Fan Page

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They also offer a private hosted version, but there isn’t any pricing available on the website.

Although some school districts will be wary of using a product that would allow their students to chat throughout the district, I think the advantages would outweigh these concerns.

Uses in the school include after hour editing assistance, a student could send the link to a document they’re working on to their teacher, and both can work on the document. Also, any group projects could use it for notes, planning, todo lists, etc., available to all the members of the group.

The easiest email could possibly be.

As more and more everyday communication takes place over email, lots of people have complained about how hard it is to read and respond to every message. This is because they actually read and respond to all their messages.

With Gmail autopilot no longer do you have to worry about actually creating a response. Using technology from Eliza and the CADIE project, Google will craft automated responses in your style. You can adjust for capitalization, typos, brevity and emoticon use.

To get started, log into Google Docs and under the New button, one of the options is Form.

From there you can create your form. I only needed two pieces of information, their name and which class. For the user to enter their name I created the first item as a text field in which they would enter their name (and Google makes this easy for you since that’s what the first item defaults to. I did set it to be a required field though. For the class list I used a dropdown field. Each choice I labeled with the date of the class, the class title, and the time of the class. I didn’t go into great depths like a description of the class since that is emailed to the staff and available on the Technology Staff Development site in Moodle. Now the staff can easily sign up for classes, I can quickly find out how many people are in each class, and I can remove the class when the sign up deadline is past or when the class is full. The spreadsheet can also be used to take attendance.

• education
• ed tech
• ipod touch
• educational technology

I then see any tweet posted with those terms. It’s a great way to find sites that you didn’t even know you needed. Just this week I found Glossy – MoLeNet:

“The Glossy project will undertake a large-scale development and implementation of mobile learning across Gloucestershire College utilising the mobile devices that learners already own. A comparative study will be made by providing a range of mobile devices for learners in excluded groups at Gloucestershire College and learners with learning difficulties and disabilities at National Star College. The project will put in place an infrastructure that will allow learners using devices which they already own to access learning activities and content through a mobile learning portal in conjunction with the college VLE.”

This is a very interesting project, to utilize mobile devices that students already have. I plan on following their blog and am very interested in their findings.

Tags: twitter, mobile devices, education

Does anyone know what the differences are? Why can’t I get the nice icon to add to my home screen with the second address?

Thanks to a tip from my friend and colleague Nancy Sharoff, I am pleased to tell you about these VERY cool and FREE of course services offering fast and easy creation of professional looking newsletters, brochures, photo albums and postcards Who needs Microsoft Publisher??

• http://www.mynewslettermaker.com/
• http://www.mybrochuremaker.com/
• http://www.myalbummaker.com/
• http://www.mycardmaker.com/