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Coursera to offer K-12 Teacher Professional Development MOOCs

May 2nd, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
1 comment

An interesting move : Coursera Announces Professional Development Courses to Facilitate Lifelong Learning for Teachers

learn

photo credit: opensourceway via photopin cc

“Today we are extremely pleased to announce the launch of a teacher professional development category on Coursera. We believe that helping teachers improve their skills is an important contribution that we can make to the education of students everywhere. We are truly excited about the possibilities that having these courses available for free online, to be used independently or in a blended learning capacity, (more…)

Posted in: Schools.
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Marketing Genius from Gwyneth Jones

May 1st, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
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Love the tips for marketing your library in this presentation by Gwyneth Jones, The Daring Librarian. Practice your Lady Gaga moves and market your library.

 

(via: Who Needs a Librarian When You Have Google?)

Posted in: Marketing, School Libraries.
Tagged: · · · · ·

WordPress Brute Force Attacks

Apr 15th, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
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Just in case you haven’t heard about this in the news, there’s a nasty flare of attacks on WordPress and Joomla sites going on.

Things you can do:

  • If your login password is admin – CHANGE IT NOW!
  • Likewise, beef up your password. Really, make it un-guessable.
  • Install something to slow down a hacker trying to guess their way into your site. Limit Login Attempts is a handy security plugin that does just what it says. (though this isn’t totally foolproof)
  • Keep your WP install up to date.
  • Find out if your hosting company is doing anything to help prevent attacks.
  • Read and follow the advice in the Hardening WordPress documentation.

I’ve been lucky so far, despite some attacks, no one has managed to get into my sites.  Colleagues with sites that get far more traffic than mine have also reported attacks, but have been safe so far.

 

Posted in: WordPress.

Cool Tools for Schools 2013/14 – Interested?

Apr 14th, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
1 comment

evaluationI’ve had several requests to run another round of the Cool Tools for Schools project starting in October 2013.  It would be great to get a few more BOCES SLS regions involved as well.

If you’re not familiar with the project, it’s an online learning program based on the original 23 Things  Learning 2.0 program developed by Helene Blowers. Participants read through an online lesson, explore tools and examples, then do a learning activity to gain experience with the tools covered in each lesson.

Goals for the program are:

  • Gain familiarity with a variety of technology tools and explore how they can be used in K12 settings.
  • Opportunities to make connections with other educators and develop collaborations.
  • Increased confidence in exploring technology tools.

The two Cool Tools programs that have just finished running are:

Past Programs:

If you want to hear more about whether the program was valuable to the participants, the SLS Directors of the participating regions will be happy to share their experience with you.

And I’ll be happy to provide you with additional information about fees and how the programs are structured.

 

Posted in: Learning, Schools.

23 Things and Learning 2.0 in Schools

Apr 12th, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
No comments yet

This past week I had the pleasure of presenting with Sarah Ludwig and Sara Kelley-Mudie during the Internet@Schools sessions at Computers in Libraries in Washington DC. Our session focused on Learning 2.0 and 23 Things in Schools. My slides are available below and on the conference presentations page, along with lots of great presentations from other sessions.

Bloggers who have shared notes from our session include:

Posted in: Learning, Schools.
Tagged: · · · ·

edshelf

Mar 7th, 2013
by Polly-Alida Farrington.
Comments are off for this post

Edshelf

This directory of education oriented apps and tools includes ratings and reviews from the members of the Edshelf community. Many reviews include great tips on how to use the tools in educational settings.  Easy to search/browse for specific types of tools and filter by cost, age, subject area and more.

Create collections of your favorite tools to share with others. Collections can be shared as an embedded widget or printed out with QR codes to give easy access to the apps. Handy for a classroom setting. This looks like a great resource to add to your list of go-to sites for keeping up with useful tools and organizing your own favorites. Free to join.

Here’s my first collection. I think I’ll use this for organizing tools for some of my workshops. Looks much more appealing than a boring bulleted list!

Posted in: education, Technology.

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