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
https://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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I’ve finally gotten some time to put up a rough outline of the
presentation I presented at the OSBA Capital Conference in November.
Most of the material is there except for the actual audio. I’m working
right now at editing in the slides into the audio. It’s slow going but I
hope to have it finished soon!

The page is titled OSBA Capital Conference 2009 Presentation.

[]: http://cc.osba-ohio.org/

Codeweavers is offering two of their products for Mac and Linux free
today only. I’ve only played around with Crossover when it was still
in Beta, but this is some exciting news. I’m hoping it can run VMWare’s
console application so I don’t have to start up VMware Fusion on my
MacBook.

Showing off the WordPress app for the iPod.

This is a test, posting from my iPod Touch.

According to a recent study, [names really do make a difference][]:

> Parents are being warned to think long and hard when choosing names
> for their babies as research has discovered that girls who are given
> very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely
> to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has
> found.
>

Fascinating research. They even examined twin girls and found that what
they were named could put them on two entirely different career paths.
Also, naming a child with a ‘lower-status’ name, spelled in an unusual
way or including punctuation, lowered exam scores by 3-5%.

One more thing for new parents to worry about. 🙂

Encyclopedia Britannica, through their Encyclopedia Britannica
Webshare program allows web publishers free online access to the
encyclopedia and the ability to give their readers free access to an
article in its entirety.

A special program for web publishers, including bloggers, webmasters,
and anyone who writes for the Internet. You get complimentary access
to the Encyclopaedia Britannica online and, if you like, an easy way
to give your readers background of the topics you write about with
links to complete Britannica articles.

I don’t see anything in the FAQ about limiting access to educational
institutions, but they do check any who is applying to see if they
really have a blog and publish regularly (left up to them whether you
qualify).

This free access is in no doubt related to the popularity of Wikipedia
(for every page view on EB online, 184 pages are viewed on Wikipedia). I
applaud their effort to stay relevant and to offer this ability to
Internet users.

And what a great motivational tool to get teachers blogging!

[][]

![Creative Commons License][] credit: javYliz

In the technology world it seems we’re continually confronted with new
products, services, software, hardware, etc. And for those of us who
have a tough time focusing on one thing at a time, this dizzying array
of choices can easily distract us or keep us from finishing previous
tasks.

In The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz it
describes why this is a problem:

“We normally assume in America that more options (“easy fit” or
“relaxed fit”?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite
is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as
to erode our psychological well-being.”

As a technology coordinator, I’m constantly trying out new things, and
it’s very hard to decide whether to actually implement something. Will
this new product be easy enough for staff and students to use? Is the
learning curve mild enough that my users will learn this product and use
it?

When you ask others in the educational technology community what’s the
best wiki, blogging software, operating system, etc. you’ll get a ton of
choices. So many choices may ultimately lead you to either never be
satisfied with your final choice, or worse, never make a decision.

In this blog I am going to try to only give one or two choices for
solutions to specific problems. They may not be the best choice, but in
the long run, they will be good enough to be of use (I hope).

[]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8104466@N08/2339107459/
“day 65”

This is an eight station computer setup in one of our middle school
classrooms. Five of the machines are Linux terminals, booting over the
network.

(* I’m also trying a test post of a picture sent from my phone to
Flickr. *)

[]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/15076398@N00/2363091899/
“photo sharing”

I was thinking about my blog post from last week, contemplating on
how I should be more positive. People using technology in schools are
already facing enough of an uphill battle without me picking on them.
🙂

Stealing Alvin’s Efficiency Tips idea, I want to post little tips,
tricks, ideas to help the technology support staff in the education
sector. Some of my ideas may seem to be esoteric (such as learning vi),
but others should have more common appeal (imaging machings). There are
conversations that happen on the Technology Coordinator’s listserv that
also need to be condensed and posted.

Does this seem like a good idea? What about also creating handout sheets
to help with professional development?

Tags: RCTips