geek.teacher

Before I kick off my 2011 in earnest, I figured I’d take a moment to just sit back and look at the holy crap, I can’t believe how awesome this year was.

So here’s a very random summation of my favorite things from the past year. No, you do not get a new car.

Favorite new job: Technology Integration Specialist at Pine Glen School. I really can’t believe I get paid to work with a bunch of teachers who really care about kids and are willing to try new stuff with their students. It’s not been without its challenges, but I really love this job.

Favorite city to move to: I still miss Philadelphia, but Boston is a great place to live. Great public transportation system takes me to work and frequently downtown into the city, which is an eminently walkable place.

Favorite conference to organize: You already know the answer to this is Edcamp Philly. Look for the sequel this year, as well as Edcamp Boston in May!

Favorite personal triumph: My photo hanging in an art gallery.

Favorite thing to find out I’m good at: I’m not terrible at providing meaningful professional development sessions.

Favorite city I visited: Washington, DC. I went twice, on the coldest days and the hottest days of the year there. I had a good time on both occasions.

Favorite new piece of technology: The iPad. I had access to one for a few months, and it took up almost all of the time I previously spent on my computer. I think that if the new version this year comes through with the hoped-for built-in cameras, it’s going to make for an incredibly strong learning device for the classroom that’s going to be hard to match at the price Apple’s selling it for.

Favorite books: For fiction, it would have to be the book that I just finished on New Year’s Eve, Cast of Shadows by Kevin Guifoile, a meticulously written near-future science fiction murder mystery about cloning and online gaming that repeatedly blew my mind. For nonfiction, Dark Tide by Stephen Puleo is actually both fascinating and has very strong writing. It tells the tale of the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919, and Puleo smartly weaves the strands of American life in World War I throughout the story. I came for the molasses, I stayed for the tales of immigrants and anarchists. Special consideration goes to Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter by Seth-Grahame Smith for deftly blending fiction and non-fiction in the funniest thing I read all year. For children’s books, the best thing I read was Savvy by Ingrid Law, a book that reads like the X-Men meets typical Young Adult coming-of-age story, but with probably the most unique verbal style out of anything that I read all year.

Favorite movie: Other movies may have been better, but I most enjoyed Scott Pilgrim vs. the World out of any of the new movies I saw in 2010. It was just pure fun.

Favorite TV shows: Community is the funniest thing on television right now, and The Walking Dead smartly surprises even people who have read the comics by changing things up in smart ways.

Favorite album: Florence and the Machine’s Lungs is pretty much designed with me in mind. Female vocals, orchestral strings, unique percussion, and it rocks? This album grabbed me from the first listen and still hasn’t let go.

Favorite video game: Mass Effect 2. Pretty much every change they made from the first one was for the better.

My Ten Favorite Photos I Took: Click here to view the set on Flickr.

I’m kind of almost starting to get into the groove with this new job thing.

I’m now in week two as the Technology Specialist for a K-5 school after leaving my job of eight years as a Special Education teacher in Pennsylvania for the colder climes of Massachusetts. Major change? Understatement. Almost no aspect of my job here remotely resembles my previous one.

Me before: teaching the same group of 10 students for 5 hours a day. Responsible for all of their IEPs. Placating parents. Ignored by administrators.

Me now: Supporting teachers and their 400 students. Coordinating tasks with them. Frequent e-mails and meetings with administrators. Adjusting to the idea that I’m essential to the workings of the place.

Needless to say, I knew going in to the Summer that I would have to bring a serious upgrade to my organization skills. Here’s a rundown of the software I’m using to keep myself in check so I don’t collapse into a black hole of missed deadlines and forgotten information:

1. Spanning Sync*: Here’s everywhere I need to have my calendar as up to date as possible:

Spanning Sync ties all of my iCals into my Google Calendars, making sure everything stays current. It’s pretty awesome, because otherwise, there’s no way I could make sure that this stays all in one piece (never mind the calendars I’ve hidden from view for this screenshot):

If you don’t believe me, ask Harold Shaw. I told him about this a couple weeks ago, and now he’s a believer.

2) Evernote: Everything I need to keep in mind for my job goes into my Evernote account now. I’ve got a system worked out where it all goes into a central inbox, and then I periodically review the inbox to determine which tags and folders the item belongs to. This way I see things twice, which helps me remember them, and I can be sure to find things faster later. I scan anything important, and this is where I keep all of my notes from meetings from now on.

3) Dropbox**: When I need to make sure a file exists on all my computers, iPhone, and iPad, Dropbox is my solution. Once it’s installed, it’s pretty much as simple as save file to dropbox folder, magical tubes bring it to other computers.

4) E-mail: Inbox zero. It’s not quite a reality, but a livable aspiration. If I don’t need to look at something any more, it gets archived. I’ve been doing this for a while now at home, now I do it at work too.

Have any awesome organization strategies? Trying anything new? I’d love to hear about them.

*disclaimer: If you use that link, you save $5, which is awesome. i will also receive $5, which is, to me, even more awesome.
**double disclaimer: if you use that link, we each get an extra 250MB in our accounts.

Due to a lack of funds (hey, I’m moving!), going to ISTE this year was just not going to happen. Fortunately for me, a confluence of factors turned this weekend into a conference weekend anyway, complete with networking with Twitter friends.

My wife was out of town for the weekend, and a good friend of mine just so happened to be going to DC for the annual American Library Association conference. He had an extra bed in his paid-for by work hotel room and invited me to join him. One bus trip later, and I’m in DC.

Something many people don’t know about me: I was a teenage librarian. In high school I spent a year working after school in my high school’s library, and then two years working in my town’s public library in their children’s department. It was a formative experience that definitely helped set me on my future career path as an educator. Given that, I spent the $25 for the exhibits floor pass.

In a lucky coincidence, I saw that Melissa Techman was going to be in DC on Saturday for the conference. A year ago at NECC, I went down for a day and had lunch with a bunch of special educators and a few other “friends of sped,” Melissa being one of said friends. In some nice symmetry, this year I got to go out to lunch as a friend of libraries with Melissa, Diane Cordell (a long-time Twitter friend that I finally got to meet in person), Gretchen Caserotti, Cathy Jo Nelson, and Kathy Ishizuka. We had plenty of good food and better conversation, as was the case last year.

Kathy is the Technology Editor for the School Library Journal, and later wrote me an e-mail asking for my impressions of the conference. Here’s what I wrote in reply:

It’s funny, this is the second year in a row that I’ve been to the Washington Convention Center and only been able to see the exhibits floor for a conference. The floor is pretty much like the floor of any other large convention: it’s heavy on the free stuff and phony marketing interactions. On the plus side for ALA, this convention didn’t seem to have any strange cult-like booths like the SMART booth at NECC last year.

As a special educator,I was really disappointed on the floor by the assistive technology pavilion, which didn’t seem to really have much in the way of assistive technology at all that I could see. I’d imagine that people with reading difficulties are one of those underserved populations that could stand to have more opportunities for access, and there wasn’t much of that there.

I noticed a definite trend toward making friendlier spaces for the visiting public. Lots of furniture and shelves that look cozy and inviting. I noticed in one booth they were featuring gaming stations to try and get the teenage demographic back into libraries. In the same tone, it was nice to see a good-sized presence of companies that produce comic books and graphic novels there.

On a side note: I’m somewhat surprised by the number of companies that specialize in moving libraries.

Just from the bits and pieces I picked up on from talking to some people and listening in on some others, it’s interesting to see many of the same shared anxieties that teachers and librarians share right now. Increasing technology and decreasing tax revenues are big stressors on both groups, and I very much get the feeling that we’re in the midst of a major reordering of the way the world works for all of us. I think the concern for both groups at the moment is to get out in front of the changes to help guide them in a positive fashion.

I’m honestly surprised they don’t have “cell phones” on there.