"Creativity is contagious, pass it on." ~Albert Einstein

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

I really wasn't planning on unplugging during our vacation.  It just happened.  Last week, the Badura colony ventured down to St. Petersburg, Florida for a little vacation before the ole Brain Factory cranks back up in a couple of weeks.  I would consider myself a fairly (if not too much) "connected" educator.  I enjoy using Twitter to connect, learn and share with educators from all over the world.  I love taking pictures, so Instagram became one of my favorite new apps.   I even created a hashtag (#colonyb) to catalog and recall our family adventures.  At times my devices (laptop, iPad, iPhone, iPad mini) seem like an extra appendage to me.

So while on the plane to Florida, I made the decision that I was going to ENJOY my vacation WITHOUT my extra appendages. Scary, I know! It seemed pretty plausible.  After all, I have been on vacations in the "PreDevice Era."  I started slow.  I wasn't going to check my phone after breakfast.  I chose to avoid seeing all of the great ideas/conversations being shared on Twitter.  I resisted the temptation to check my email.  I wasn't going to take a bunch of pictures and share them via Twitter and Instagram (I confess, I did share six total because the Gulf sunsets were just breathtaking).   I didn't engage with my devices and man did it ever feel good!

Yes, I  missed some great photo opportunities and great articles by leaving my phone in the room, but you know what?  I survived! I turned into an observer instead of a producer and consumer.  I did notice that a majority of people on the beach chose to remain connected.  Checking emails, chatting on the phone, posting to Facebook, taking selfies for Instagram and even "nocializing." All while oblivious to the beauty that surrounded them.

Yes, I did check my device periodically, but I limited it to two times a day at first.  After a couple of days I didn't even turn my phone on until the evening as I wanted to capture some of the amazing sunsets on the Gulf of Mexico.

Don't get me wrong.  I love being connected.  Being connected is a major part of my job.   But I think it would be good for us all to do a little Digital Detox every now and then.  Shut off your phone when you get home.  Leave the laptop in your bag until your kids are in bed.  That email can wait until tomorrow morning. Yes, that article you read was really good, but it's okay not to share it.

That's all.  My adventure into Digital Detox.  Try it sometime.  You just might enjoy it.




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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Image source: http://mrg.bz/q6hA2t
Think for a second how many photos are actually taken during the course of the school year by your journalism staff.  Our English teacher/yearbook editor, Mr. Vrana said that his students took well over 6,000 photos this year!

Now think of how few photos are actually published in the annual yearbook. Not very many.   All the credit for this idea/blog post goes to Mr. Vrana.  He approached me at the end of the school year about possibly storing all the unpublished photos somewhere digitally, creating a QR Code that links to all of those photos and then placing the QR Code on the cover of the next yearbook.  Inevitably, anyone could access those photos in the future via the QR code as long as we maintain the Flickr account.  What a great way to "store" those photos that never made the cut for final publishing!


So, my adventure to figure out a solution began.  I thought about Dropbox, but realized we wouldn't have enough storage for the number of pictures that we wanted to upload/store.   I played with Google Picassa a bit but didn't find it very user friendly.  I settled on Flickr.  I had seen a tweet about their new update in which each user gets a Terabyte of storage.  Done!  I created a Flickr account and began the task of uploading around 2,500 photos.  Yes, it was time consuming, but next year I plan on having students upload their journalism photos as they take them throughout the year to eliminate a major upload at the end of the year.

Thanks for the great idea, Mr. Vrana and to @wmchamberlain for the encouragement to blog about this idea.  Thanks, William!




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Thursday, July 18, 2013

.....YOU!  You are awesome at what you do! Don't get me wrong, I am an app lover. Apps are a huge part of my job.  My district went 1:1 in grades 6-12 this year (iPads) and I am continually asked by teachers and administrators that are thinking of going 1:1 about the "must have" apps that they should purchase.
 I have my favorites like iMovie, ShowMe, PicCollage, Comic Life, Evernote, etc.  The list goes on and on.  I have even provided our teachers with resources for apps and I try to encourage them to find the app that best fits their student/lesson needs.

BUT, in my experience as an Integration Specialist I have found that apps have a hard time competing with a teacher that...

  • engages
  • inspires
  • tells great stories
  • is passionate
  • takes student thinking to the "next level"
  • is passionate about their subject
  • is continually looking to improve
  • leads by example
  • teaches us things that we can't learn in books
Remember, YOU are awesome at what you do!  Best of luck to you this school year!
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