No Apologies for My Email

In the age of COVID-19, I'm struggling with keeping up with email. (I mean, I'm struggling with other things too, but this is one specific and tangible struggle.) I have some strategies that I use for managing my inbox, but they aren't always working these days. I'll share a few of my strategies here, but also a nugget of truth that I think I've finally settled on for not feeling guilty about struggling to keep up.

I rarely achieve inbox zero, but because I use my email inbox as a key part of my workflow, I do generally try to keep my inbox to fewer than 30 items whenever possible. I use folders to sort messages I need to hang on to--"department business," and "academic affairs," and "church stuff," and "IMPORTANT" are all folders I use regularly, in addition to a dedicated folder for each course I'm teaching. And I'm learning to delete with abandon--how did I get on so many mailing lists that are only tangentially related to me and my interests anyway? If it's not something I am going to need to keep, into the trash it goes. All of this helps remove the clutter.

I learned in grad school that I had to compartmentalize my day, or I would wind up ping-ponging back and forth between things and losing productive work time. One strategy I practiced then--and have recently reinstated--is closing my email for big chunks of the day. That little pinging email icon with the numerical counter of unread messages is designed to grab our attention. Closing the program and only opening it when I have the time to dedicate to answering messages helps manage this distraction.

My general rule is that I plan to respond to messages within 24 hours, and I almost always am able to do this. I will say that I prioritize: if it's a message from a current student or from a colleague about something time-sensitive, I do try to answer those ones as soon as possible. If it's from someone outside the institution, or something that is less time critical...I try to hold off on those ones if possible.

Setting up a few times a day to read and respond to email does help. One approach I've tried to practice in the past and still mostly successfully achieve is the 2-minute rule: when I'm "doing email," if I can respond to a message in less than 2 minutes, I will do it right now and not put it off until later. This helps free up space in the inbox, and thus in my mental workflow as well.

As useful as these strategies have been, however, I still am finding that I struggle to keep up with the email avalanche from time to time. There are still some messages that get lost in the shuffle, and then I find them days later--far longer than my normal 24-hour window. I hate this feeling, and my first impulse it to send an apologetic email in response.

But here's the nugget of truth, and the associated strategy I've been using lately. Instead of an "I am SO sorry...!" opening to my tardy email in response, I've changed up my language a bit. I am now starting those emails with, "Thanks for your patience with my slower-than-normal response." 

Because this is the truth: I think we are all up to our eyebrows in keeping up, and I am finding it relatively easy to extend grace to other people who don't get back to me as quickly as I would like...because I'm so grateful when they extend this grace to me as well. Opening with a "thanks!" message instead of an apology is my way of signaling this.

I hope that we all can normalize this. Certainly there is a sense of professionalism and responsibility in getting back to people as soon as possible. But in the age of COVID? Let's make it "no apologies needed."

Image by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.uk.com via Unsplash

A Tech Tool (Toy?): paperplanes.world

File this under the "how could I use this for a lesson" file... (with thanks to my twitterfriend, Kyle Calderwood, for sharing...)

1. Grab your phone and head over to paperplanes.world. (Seriously, you should do this right now...)

Seven More Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

One of my most-viewed posts to date is titled "Eight Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography." I'm glad this was--apparently--such a valuable collection of teaching ideas, because I think we (American educators) need to do a better job of teaching geographic awareness, frankly. So it's in that spirit that I've collected another seven resources that might prove beneficial for teaching geography...

Image by Kenneth Lu [CC BY 2.0]

Tech Tool: SafeShare.TV

Imagine the scene: you've found this excellent video on YouTube that is perfect for illustrating a concept for your students. You decide to show it in class...and it's a great lesson! Except...one of your students points out the slightly inappropriate (or wildly inappropriate!) video being suggested on the sidebar next to the main video window.

Ugh. How embarrassing!

Wouldn't it be great if you could turn off those recommended videos? Or even the recommended videos that pop up after your video plays? Or remove those annoying ads? Or select just the clip you would like to use from a longer video?

Check out SafeShare.TV, an online tool designed to do all of these things, for free!

Here's how it works:

Visualizing the Internet in Real-Time

The internet has changed almost everything about almost everything.

A bold claim? Perhaps. But think about the mission statements of some of the best-known entities on the web today:

• Wikipedia, a massive (free!) online encyclopedia "dedicated to expanding access to the sum of human knowledge."
• Amazon, the digital shopping mecca, exists "to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online."
• Facebook, that social media behemoth, has ambitions "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected." 
• Google, the king of search (in the Western world, at least) intends "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." 

And, (with the exception of Wikipedia), these are companies, looking to make a profit on the information--or access to information--that they provide, channel, control, and shape.

On the internet, facts are (generally) free. Information flows--channeled, perhaps--but flows in an unrelenting stream.

When I start to really reflect on this, I start to wonder. I wonder how much information travels the internet each day? And what kind of information?

Digital Citizenship and Netiquette

Hey, it's Digital Citizenship Week! (Yeah, I didn't know that either, but Twitter told me. I checked...it is!)

As an EdTech fanatic, this is something near and dear to my heart. Schools have always had a role in socialization and teaching citizenship. In the 21st Century, that definitely has to include teaching students how to be good citizens in online interactions as well--because online life is "real life" for our students today...nothing "virtual" about it. (And honestly, online life is "real life" for all of us who use the internet for any part of our personal or professional life.)

I love CommonSense Media; I used their materials quite a bit for teaching digital citizenship when I was Technology Coordinator at a K-8 school. They have great stuff for parents and teachers and a lot of it is designed for use directly with the kiddos. I recommend you check out their ideas and resources for Digital Citizenship Week.

I also came across this great infographic this morning for helping to teach netiquette. What do you think? Does this seem like it covers everything?

Graphic shared by Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.

Using Social Networks as a Learning Tool

I love Twitter. If I had to pick one tool as the linchpin of my PLE, it would have to be Twitter. It's such a great way to learn about topics you find personally or professionally interesting--as long as you can find a hashtag to follow. It's also a great way to connect with other educators who share your interests. I--like many thousands of other educators--use Twitter for my own learning. But how can social networks be used as a teaching tool? Twitter seems ideal for informal, self-directed learning. But how well does it work as a formal, teacher-directed learning tool?

 Since I love learning via Twitter, I put this question to my PLN:

Hey PLN, do you have specific examples of how you’ve used Twitter (or other social networks) for your students’ learning?Thanks in advance! — Dave Mulder (@d_mulder) July 17, 2014

I also tweeted the request specifically to some thought leaders in EdTech and innovative education whom I thought might have some ideas and resources for me, including Scott McLeod, Kevin Honeycutt, George Couros, Wesley Fryer, Alice Keeler, Rick Wormeli, and Eric Sheninger. Some of these wonderful people had specific examples off the top of their heads and shared links. Others referred me to colleagues on Twitter who had stories they could share. Most retweeted my request to their own huge followings. What happened next was fantastic.

Managing Your Digital Footprint

I've been thinking lately about digital footprints, and I'm thinking about how to manage mine. (You could safely say that the class I'm taking on social network learning has been productive as food for thought.)

The Internet has a long, long memory. The things you say and do online are virtually impossible to eradicate. This may be a case where the best defense is a strong offense. How can you create a positive digital footprint?

Sometimes, the wisest course of action is to walk away from the keyboard.
Image by Steve Ransom [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

As an assignment for class, we were asked to research strategies for maintaining a positive digital footprint, and then share our findings with the class. I decided to create a PowToon to illustrate:

What do you think? Are there other strategies you would propose?

Footprints

Think with me for a moment about footprints.

Footprints in the sand wash away when the tide comes in. We sometimes place handprints or footprints in wet concrete to leave our mark for the future. And an old adage for those who love the outdoors is, "Take only pictures, leave only footprints."

Footprints are evidence of where we have been, what we have done. I think it makes sense then that we sometimes describe the trail we live through the online realm as our "digital footprint." But unlike footprints in the sand, your digital footprint is more like footprints left in concrete. Indelible. Hard to remove.

When I used to serve as Technology Coordinator at a K-8 school, I taught a unit on digital citizenship unit for middle schoolers. One of the ideas I shared with the kids was "the Internet has a long memory." Digital footprints, set in concrete.

Perpetual walking [Image by pulpolox CC BY-NC 2.0]

Shaping Digital Citizens

I came across this graphic today--might be a good one for the elementary teachers especially? (If you can get beyond the cutesiness, I think it's actually great advice for all of us...not just kids.)

Image from Global Education Database. Check out the full-size image here.

This is a great reminder for us all that our students--while perhaps having a higher level of comfort working with technology than some of their teachers--are not "digital natives" as they have been painted. Research bears out that students don't think about technology more natively than their teachers. The supposed digital natives and digital immigrants actually adopt technologies in very similar ways.

That said, all of us--students and teachers alike--can continue to develop as digital citizens.

How Can We Expect Our Students to Cite Sources if We Don't?

A couple weeks ago I was doing an EdTech workshop with some 4th grade teachers and the topic of teaching kids to cite sources came up. How should we do this at the 4th grade level? How should we do this at any grade level?

While it is important to have explicit instruction in how to cite sources, I'm convinced that we have to model this. All. The. Time. This will make it a "normal" part of kids' culture--an expectation that they have to give credit for the work of others.

Thank you, someecards.com for
allowing me create things like this...

And--honestly, teacher--you can't in good conscience admonish your students to cite sources without also doing so yourself!

---

Let's be real about this: we are busy people. Most of the time we want to do the right thing, but we are in a rush and figure, "what harm can it do?"

It's not that skipping citing one source is the end of the world. But a pattern of not citing your sources is a terrible model for your students. Getting yourself in the habit can be a great chance to point it out to your students later when you are teaching them (and requiring them) to cite sources themselves.

Web 2.0 as a Platform for Formal Learning?

Image by Gavin Llewellyn CC BY 2.0

Do you remember the first time you were on the World Wide Web? I do. It was 1995, and I was a sophomore. A friend at the University of Michigan emailed me, “Hey, check out my webpage!” And I responded, “What’s a webpage?” (It was 1995, okay? The WWW was basically brand new...) He gave me some instructions, and after finding a suitable computer, and typing in a ridiculously long URL, I was greeted by a picture of my friend Jon in a tie-dyed shirt (as always), playing his guitar. I was totally enamored with this new technology! I can say with some honesty that I spent a lot of time "surfing"--as we called it then--from one page to another.

Of course, this was Web 1.0. In 1995 the World Wide Web was still in its infancy. There was no such thing as Google. (Can you imagine?) "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was only recently renamed "Yahoo!" and was still being managed by hand. (Can you imagine?) Mark Zuckerberg may have been dreaming about Facebook, but he was only 11 years old. The World Wide Web was a very different place.

The Internet Changed Everything about Education

I recently came across this site, and I was pretty amazed by the perspective shown here. It's worth taking 30 seconds to check it out: One Second on the Internet.

It got me thinking about how much the Internet has changed education. I've been teaching for 15 years. In my first classroom, the extent of educational technology at my disposal was an overhead projector and a chalkboard. (CHALK! The kind that got my pants all dusty--remember that?)

I think about how much my teaching practice has evolved over the years; I recognize that I rely heavily on my computer for lesson planning and preparation and so many of the other "behind the scenes" tasks of teaching. Could I still teach without a computer? Yes...I think so. But the habits of mind I've adopted for my planning and prep have been fundamentally altered by the technology available to me. And it isn't really about the computer itself anymore.

It's about the connections to all the other computers out there. More than that...connections with all the other people using all the other computers out there.

Ah, network cables and switches. This is the Internet, people.
Image via jerryjohn CC BY-ND 2.0

Eight Helpful Resources for Teaching Geography

I love geography. I was that weird kid in 7th grade who would not be reading along with the class because he was looking in the back of his social studies book to find the fun place names on the maps...

Map via CIA World Factbook

Ouagadougou.

Surinam.

Ulan Bator.

Lago Titicaca.

French Lick. (Yes, for real. Check it out...)

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. (Google it!)

Sometimes I think I should have been a geography teacher. And I suppose I am, after a fashion, because I can't help but talk about people and places and politics...which are all parts of understanding the geography of this world.

Over the past couple of weeks I started cataloging some interesting geography resources I've stumbled across via Twitter. Here are eight good ones you might find helpful in your own teaching practice:

Hooray for Trivia!

I love trivia. Random facts are just good fun!

If you feel the same way, may I suggest you check out Mental_Floss? I've been getting their magazine for about a year now (it is amazing) and I follow them on Twitter (@mental_floss) for the fun facts, quizzes, and odd lists they share regularly.

But none of this prepared me for the Most Interesting and Amazing Fact Generator! You must go check this out right now. Please.

Manners Matter! (Even Online...)

The topic of helping students develop good citizenship (especially online) came up in one of the discussions in a class I'm taking. I've thought quite a lot about this--especially when I was teaching middle schoolers how to be safe online, how to conduct research online, etc. Somehow, many students--even well-mannered, well-behaved kids--simply don't act nice when working and playing online. Kids need to learn that manners matter--even online!

In general, I think schools need to do a better job of this, but I also think some of the burden lies with parents. In the same way that parents should influence their children's citizenship habits in face-to-face settings, parents have a responsibility to foster good online citizenship habits as well.

I came across the infographic below the other day. It's from Know the Net, a pretty fantastic group in the UK with lots of resources to support parents and teachers in helping kids learn to conduct themselves well online. I hope you will give them a look, and consider using their resources for your own children or students.

Here's a great summary of what kids should learn about being well-mannered online. What do you think? Are there things they missed? What would you add?

Image from educatorstechnology.com

Connecting with Other Educators

Teaching can be a lonely profession. That sounds odd, doesn't it? We spend all day with other people! But there is often an isolation that can form unless we are deliberate about making connections with other educators.

In my opinion, connecting with others is where the most growth, the most professional development occurs.

So how do you connect with other educators?

Check out this video from my Twitterfriend and fellow graduate student, Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler). She's as much a Twitter geek as I am (and probably more so, if I dare to characterize her that way...)

You Can Fix Your Computer! (part II)

I recently posted a helpful graphic for fixing your own computer.

I admit, I'm geeky, and I love technology, and people often comment on my supposed ability to magically solve their computer problems.

It actually happened in a meeting last week--tech problems for the presenter, and I knew what the issue was. So I "wave my hand over the spot" and it magically works, and everyone applauds. A friend said afterward he thinks I'm a cyborg.

I really do like to help people out with their tech woes, but one of my shortcomings when I used to serve as a Technology Coordinator was that I was too quick to just do things for people. It would have been better if I would have taken the time to teach them how to solve problems themselves.

Four Stages of "Getting" Twitter

My good friend @DanBeerens asked me to tag-team a presentation in his Issues in Education course last week. We shared some of our ideas about educational technology and trends we see and a little future-casting for where education is heading. Both Dan and I are fans of Twitter for free, personalized professional development, so of course we talked about Twitter.

I've blogged about this several times before--a visual introduction to Twitter, some introduction to Twitterchats, and ideas of how to use Twitter for professional development.  I've come around to the idea that Twitter might not be for everyone, but I really do think educators should consider signing up for an account.

In our session last week, Dan shared the infographic below. I'd seen it before, but it maps out my own Twitter experience pretty perfectly--maybe you feel the same way? If you have joined Twitter and aren't "getting it" yet, hang in there. You might be surprised in six months to see how much Twitter is benefiting you!

Credit where credit is due: This infographic came from andfaraway.net
Please pardon the language on that page, should you visit.

Free Rice: Do Some Good in the World

I want to encourage you to check out FreeRice.com sometime soon.

This site has been around for quite a while (since 2007, I believe), but that doesn't diminish it's importance or value. At it's simplest, it's a question-and-answer game: the website asks you questions, and you select the correct answer from among the ones listed. But here's the kicker: every question you get right donates "10 grains of rice" to help feed the hungry.

The United Nations World Food Programme sponsors the site. FreeRice.com seems to be largely about building awareness of the problem of hunger around the world, as the WFP is funded by donations. The group does tremendous good in the world, and I think this sort of site is a great entry point for conversations with kids about the enormity of the problem of world hunger.

The game was originally set up to be a vocabulary practice game: an English word is listed, and you choose the best meaning of that word. This is still the default mode when you visit the site, but there are many other subject areas you can play as well: multiplication facts, identifying famous paintings, world geography, vocabulary in other languages, and human anatomy, to name a few. (Click the "Subjects" button at the top of the site to select a different topic.)

I'm thinking this might be a good summer review game for kids? Something that will keep them connected to content and reviewing things they've learned...while doing some good in the world at the same time! Maybe set a challenge: donate 1000 grains of rice a day?

I hope you'll take a few minutes to check it out.