Changing Your Habits

We are in the midst of a great change in education. Change can be uncomfortable. Many of us resist change. But without change there can be no growth. For the year 2012, what habit would you like to change to help yourself transition to meet the trends in education? Consider the 21st learning skill of collaboration. How can you change the teaching and learning paradigm in your classroom away from the transmission of information to students that is then processed and returned to something more collaborative where students learn from each other with the teacher as facilitator?

Backing Up Documents and Favorites in the Cloud

Have you ever lost a vital document? Have you ever been devastated to learn that your laptop will be re-cloned and you will lose everything? Have you ever stopped breathing for a moment when the "blue screen of death" appeared on your computer? There are 2 tools that I recommend for my colleagues to use to avoid these problems.

The first is Dropbox.com. Simply install the software on your computer (Use this link: http://db.tt/TTffWHuc) and you get 2gb of space free. Whatever you save into the My Dropbox folder in your My Documents folder gets automatically synched in the cloud. In addition to backing up without thinking, you have access to your files from any machine anywhere. You can also share documents here.

The second tool is Delicious.com. It is a free social bookmarking website. Simply follow their directions to export your Internet favorites and import them to delicious.com. You can make them public or private. You can also tag the links making them easier to find. You will not only never lose your favorites, but they are also accessible from any machine anywhere.