Monday 27 October 2014

Help! I am a Connected Educator

Technology for teaching -  I love it - but it is not alway the easiest solution for educators (or anyone struggling with online resources for that matter!) For weeks I've been toying with the idea to create a new blog for our class, to keep the parents in my class informed. Informed parents are happy parents who tend to stay out of your hair. Well, generally - you will always have the odd know-it-all-and-aren't-teachers-just-the-laziest-and-stupidest-people-on-earth-parent. But I'm digressing. The idea was to create a password-protected website, so that I could post all the pictures and videos I wanted without worrying over privacy issues. Password-protection turns out to be a premium feature on Weebly, you have to pay to keep those kiddies safe online, so that was step 1. I got my credit card and filled out the details; then it turned out I already had a website under this particular email address. What was it?? I spent 20 minutes trying different usernames and passwords, then asked for a password reset. For this I had a message sent to my phone. As the battery had just gone flat, i had to first charge it. Where was that cable again? After having retrieved the info, I could continue with the sign-up process for the premium service. The classroom blog was a reality shortly after that. Well - in theory. Now all I had to do was build it. As all my classroom and project photos are on my phone, I wanted to send them to my Google email account, so I could access them from the iPad I was working on. It appeared that I could only access one of my google accounts, not my school email account. Why? No idea, one of those online mysteries. I thought Chrome would be a better browser, as I use so many Google products, and so went to get the Chrome app. After signing into the App store, Chrome was downloaded onto my iPad. By now I spent 90 minutes online without having written one single word on the shiny new classroom website yet. I guess I will send another traditional email update to the class community next. But first publish this text on my Blogger account... Who said that connected educators are saving time?

1 comment:

  1. At least you don't give up! (This story is very typical of me. .. )

    ReplyDelete

21st Century Learning

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Teacher, trainer, Head of IT, mum of three online teens, into social networks, open educational resources and visual learning. Head in the Global Cloud and feet in the Dutch clay.