http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vveES-FCHbM

Cross posted to Tech4Practice

• Internet Explorer – Click on “My Computer” then on “Local Disk (C:)”. Once that folder is open, find “Documents and Settings” and open that folder and then find the folder with your username (in my case I look for “wbass”) and open that up. In this folder you’ll find a star icon labeled “Favorites”. Copy that file to your flashdrive to back up your favorites.
• Firefox – With Firefox open, click on the “Bookmarks” menu at the top of your screen. Select “Show all Bookmarks” from the dropdown menu. This will open up another screen where you can manage your bookmarks. Click on the “Import and Backup” button at the top of that window and select “Backup”. Save this file to your flashdrive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file.
• Chrome – With Chrome open, click on the icon of the wrench in the top right hand corner of the screen and select “Bookmarks” and then “Bookmarks Manager”. This will open up a new tab with all your bookmarks listed. Click on “Organize” at the top of the screen and select “Export bookmarks”. Save the file to your flashdrive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file.

Restoring your favorites

• Internet Explorer – Click on “My Computer” then on “Local Disk (C:)”. Once that folder is open, find “Documents and Settings” and open that folder and then find the folder with your username (in my case I look for “wbass”) and open that up. In this folder you’ll find a star icon labeled “Favorites”. Open up the flash drive or server drive where you backed up your favorites and find the folder called “Favorites”. Replace the “Favorites” on your new computer with the one you backed up. It will give you a message asking if you want to replace the folder. Click “Yes” and after it’s copied, you’ll see your favorites on your new computer.
• Firefox – With Firefox open, click on the “Bookmarks” menu at the top of your screen. Select “Show all Bookmarks” from the dropdown menu. This will open up another screen where you can manage your bookmarks. Click on the “Import and Backup” button at the top of that window and select “Restore” and then “From file”. Navigate to the file that is saved on your flashdrive, server or external hard drive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file now in your browser.
• Chrome – With Chrome open, click on the icon of the wrench in the top right hand corner of the screen and select “Bookmarks” and then “Bookmarks Manager”. This will open up a new tab with all your bookmarks listed. Click on “Organize” at the top of the screen and select “Import bookmarks from HTML file”. Navigate to the file that is saved on your flashdrive, server or external hard drive and you’ll have all your bookmarks in that file now in your browser.

With all that video, sometimes it’s hard to manage and navigate the YouTube environment. Here are some thing you may know that you could do with YouTube.

1. Create your own playlists – Just like with music services and software, you can create a playlist of YouTube videos that you want to save to watch later. To do that, you need to create an account with Google. (Watch this video for instructions.) If you’re logged into YouTube, under each video you’ll see an “+ Add to” button that will allow you to add it to a playlist.

   
   This playlist can then be accessed clicking on your username in the upper right hand corner and then selecting “Videos” in the dropdown. On that page you’ll see any videos that you’ve uploaded, tagged to watch later or added to a playlist.

2. Share a video- Sharing videos on YouTube may not be new to you, but there are a couple of options that you may not know about. When you click the “Share” button below a video, you’ll see a link to a video where you can email that link to someone or you can click “Embed” and get a code to post that on your website. Those are common features that are readily used but in that same window, you’ll see a “show options” link. One of the features that I like best here is that you can check the “Start at” box and select the point in the video where you want it to start. Then when you share that link with someone, the video starts exactly where you wanted it to without the recipient having to watch the irrelevant parts.

   
   

3. Subscribing to video channels- There have been many times where I have found a set of videos that were uploaded by someone that I really liked and wanted to know when they uploaded more. At one point, I would have to continually go back to that person or organization’s channel to see if they have something new. Now I just subscribe to their channel and receive an email every time they upload a new video. To subscribe to a video channel, click on the “Subscribe” button on the top of the video and you’ve just subscribed yourself. On the popup find the checkbox beside “Also email me for each new upload” and you’ll start getting emails whenever new content is available.

   

4. Show videos without the comments or recommendations – YouTube has lots of busyness on every page with a video. There are comments and suggested videos that may or may not be appropriate as well as ads on the site. Sometimes that can be very distracting. Using a site like Quietube can allow you to focus only on the video by removing all the extras. Go to the Quietube website for directions on how to use it. (See an example here and watch a tutorial here.)

Online video is a part of our lives and it’s not going away anytime soon. Students like my daughter are becoming very adept at using and working with online video but it’s not “just for kids” and it’s not “just for entertainment”. More and more it can be used as a tool for education and for learning. Hopefully these tips can help you navigate the world of YouTube a little more smoothly. If you’d like to talk more about the role online video can play in your classroom, contact me. I’d love to hear from you.

Sites referenced:

Google Docs
Etherpad
Mind Meister
Bubbl.us

Handout for creating Groupwise rules.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYDtOdaKp_U

Enter Google’s Picasa. Picasa is a free piece of photo editing software that you can download at http://picasa.google.com. It’s not on the approved list of software for district computers, but install it on your home computer and see what you think. There’s a little setup at the very beginning where you indicate where on your computer your pictures live. It will do a search of your hard drive and create collections of your pictures based on date taken and folder they were in. Additionally, it has facial recognition software the at is built in that learns who people are so you can search for picutre not only by date, name and folder, but by person as well. The video below will introduce Picasa 3 to you (it’s a YouTube video) and walk you through some of the features.

So, no longer are my pictures quite the unweildy mess that they once were. Now, I just need them to create a filter that will find all the pictures of feet that my daughter takes as we walk.

1. Schedule your backup – Actually put a reoccurring reminder on your calendar to backup your computer. One Friday a month I get an email, text message and popup on my Google Calendar reminding me that it’s time to backup my work computer. If I ignore all three, it’s my own fault.
2. Backup multiple places – Experts in the field of storage say that you should have three copies of your data, one on the computer, a backup on site and an offsite storage system as well. Here’s my methods.
   • In the district we all have server space. I’ve found that I fill that up pretty quickly so, truly, I only use that for files that I might want to access on a different computer in the district. So that’s one place I put files.
   • I also have an external hard drive that I hook up to my computer once a month and copy everything to. That’s great, but there’s still a hard drive inside there that, at some point will crash. But, it is an extra copy. A flash drive works as well.
   • I also put many of my file in online storage services like Dropbox (which I’ve written about before), Box.net, Google Docs and Microsoft’s Skydrive. Each of these gives me various amounts of storage but it does allow me to keep multiple copies of my files.
   • On my home computer I subscribe to Carbonite so that everything is automatically backed up and I don’t have to think about it… ever. You do have to pay for it, but I find it’s well worth it for me.
3. Remember that you don’t have to backup everything – Many programs create folders inside your My Documents folder to house settings and such. Backing up those files is not as important as your pictures and documents. These cannot be replaced. The program files can and will be when that software is reinstalled.

Regardless of how you do it, make backing up your files part of your computing routine. Remember, your hard drive will die someday, be sure you’re ready and create your own backup strategy.

Soon the first day of school rolled around and in rolled the kids. No longer was anything perfect. Suddenly I had 150 students that I would be instructing, all of them seemingly put in my classroom to challenge the new 21 year old teacher. I got through my first hour without incident and then, during passing time, my principal came to tell me that there would be a change. I would also be teaching a senior English class as well as a 10th grade class. Suddenly, on the first day or school, as a brand new teacher, I went from having one prep to three with students ranging from 7th grade to 12 grade (one of which was 20 years old, 8 months younger than me). Needless to say, I don’t think I was a very good teacher that year. I spent most of my time trying to stay one step ahead and rise above the chaos of my life.

One of the things that I took to doing that year was making lists. It’s the only way I could keep anything straight. My strategy was to have a folder for each of my classes where I would make a list of things I had to do that day. It’s been quite a few years since that first day in the classroom and my needs are quite a bit different now, but I’m still a listmaker. Instead of folders and paper, I’ve turned to the internet and the myriad of tools available there.

Here are some where I’ve found success.

• RememberTheMilk.com
• Google Tasks – part of Gmail.
• Toodledo
• Ta-Da List

There are many more task list creators out there. Some, like the ones above, are completely online (which I prefer), but there are also plenty of programs that could be downloaded.

There are so many facets to our daily lives that sometimes it helps to force a little order into the chaos. I have found that lists help me do that. If you have other strategies that you’d like to share, email me. I’m always interested in conversations around getting more done faster.

Cross posted at Tech4Practice.