My Diigo Links of the Week (weekly)

• Why You Need to Fail - by Derek Sivers - YouTube

  The importance of failure - for effective learning, growth mindset, and quality through experimentation.

  tags: fail mindset

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Can't find something...you should've put it in your POCKET!

Using twitter has been a great professional learning experience.  Twitter has helped build relationships over wide geographic distances and within the mighty PDSB.  I get to share ideas and resouces with people who's paths I might not have crossed without twitter.  This post is a result of these connections and relationships.  It is part of the first #peel21st blog hop.  Please check out the other blogs listed at the bottom of this post.  Enjoy!

So we have all been there, we have been with a colleague who tells us about a great teaching tool or we have found resources online and we want to save them so we can read and use them later.  This is long after we have finished marking, writing report cards and then we have performed our parental/family duties when we are finally at home.

So what do you do with these finds?  Do you write them on a piece of paper? Put them on a sticky note that gets stuck to your monitor? Email yourself the link or bookmark the resource on the computer your are using?

We all know how successful these methods are; the piece of paper gets washed, the sticky note falls off and gets stuck to something else, you suck as an email ninja and your hopes of inbox zero had officially faded with email number, 3000 in your inbox.  The bookmark idea almost works, but then when you try to find it you discover your were logged in under someone else's username, or you cannot access the bookmark because you are on a different device.  

I know your frustration, I have been there myself, or should a say, used to be there.  My advice to you, you should just put it in your Pocket!

So, what is Pocket?

Pocket is a cross platform, cross device, visual bookmarking service that will help turn you into an Web 2.0 ninja.  Pocket can be used on almost any device, using almost any operating system that will allow you to easily save, but more importantly retrieve articles when you have more time, or when you actually need them.

How do I put things into my Pocket?

In most cases things can be put into your pocket with one click, touch and swipe using extensions in Chrome or by using bookmarklets on iOS.  Once these are setup, it is one touch on the tool bar, or one touch on the share icon and you can automatically send things to your pocket for when you have time to read them later.

What does Pocket do with my finds?

Pocket will parse the articles and remove unwanted adds and distractions that will help you read items at a quicker pace.  Pocket also archives the articles so you can have offline access to blog posts or articles and this even allows access to the content when the host site is down, the article has been move, or even worse, the article has been deleted.  Pocket lets you view your items in either the streamed lined list view or the graphically stunning thumbnail view.  As a visual person, I enjoy using thumbnail view the most, but when I am in a hurry I revert to list view.  Pocket even has different colour themes for you viewing pleasure.   I like to use the dark theme so I can easily read articles at night without the bright glaring screen of my tablet.  Further to this, videos can be played directly from within your Pocket. Talk about time saving.

What do I do with articles once they are in my Pocket?

You read them!  Besides this obvious remark, there are some great functions within Pocket that allow you to sort, filter and organize items to make finding them easier when you need them.  The most powerful tool in Pocket is the tagging feature, this allows for quick searching later.  You can add tags as you find and read articles.  If you have made a mistake, you can delete tags as well.   Actually if you made a mistake in saving an article, you can simply delete it from your pocket as well.  You can also search your pocket by keyword, article title and resource title. Once you have reviewed an item, you can check it off as read and it will send it to your archive for access later. This saves some room in your pocket for even more great discoveries.  You can also favourite articles you have read, for easy access to your top finds.

What else can I do with Pocket?

Pocket is integrated with over 500 different apps, which makes it uber easy to send items to your pocket and share items from your pocket.  Pocket integrates with Twitter, Zite, Feedly, and Evernote to name a few.  In most cases you can once again use pocket to share with one click, touch or swipe to many of your favourite networks like Facebook or share to public booking sites like Diigo (my fav) or Delicious.   Adding the Web 2.0 service IFTTT automates many things and makes both the finding and sharing of items even easier from Pocket.  You can even use IFTTT to automatically send new posts or articles from your favourite bloggers or news sites, so you never miss anything.   I have also started to further archive my Pocket by integrating with Evernote.  I can send items, along with their tags for always and ever access in Evernote.

What doesn't Pocket do?

I wish I could say it does everything, but I am still waiting for Hootsuite integration to come.  

In the end...

So do yourself a favour, leave the paper, the sticky notes, the emails and the browser bookmarks behind.  

Just start putting things in your Pocket.  You can find your Pocket at: https://getpocket.com/welcome.php

Get pocket and start taking a drink, at your own pace, from the waterfall of information on the web!

Don’t forget to check out the other blog posts in our Blog Hop!

• Code.org by Erica Armstrong
• Puppet Pals by Debbie Axiak
• Scratch Jr. by James Cash
• Educreations by Matthew Oldridge
• Pocket by Greg Pearson
• IFTTT by Jason Richea
• NFB StopMo by Graham Whisen
• Notability by Phil Young

My Diigo Links of the Week (weekly)

• How to Be Relevant in Our Students’ Lives | ASCD Inservice

  As teachers, we all too often hear students asking, “When are we ever going to use this?” Unfortunately, there is sometimes little immediate connection between content and the real world, leading to students opting out and not paying attention.

• Professor Says College Students Should Be Taught How To Tweet - Business Insider

  While this idea might not be entirely novel, it's coming from an interesting person. Lunsford is highly respected as an academic, and is also incredibly hip. She's blogged about the modern linguistic uses of the word "like." She has also taught at...

• Seriously. How Much Sleep Do You Really Need? | Edudemic

  As most teachers are heading back to the classroom for the start of another school year, many are bemoaning the loss of something they’ve grown accustomed to over the summer: more sleep.

• How Open Badges Could Really Work In Education | Edudemic

  Higher education institutions are abuzz with the concept of Open Badges. Defined as a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest, Open Badges are not only a hot topic as of late, but are also debated by some critics as th...

• I'm a Teaching Veteran -- Not a Dinosaur | Nancy Barile

  A flipped learning guru from the west coast recently visited my school for an afternoon professional development session. He started his presentation by remarking about how impressed he was during his walk around our school building because "the f...

• How Emotional Connections Can Trigger Creativity and Learning | MindShift

  Scientists are always uncovering new ways into how people learn best, and some of the most recent neuroscience research has shown connections between basic survival functions, social and emotional reactions to the world, and creative impulses.

• Are Hashtags Dead? Do Tweets with Images Get More Followers? Twitter Growth Factors (and Some Excel Tips) - Moz

  What factors go into determining how many Twitter followers you gain (and lose) each day? I was driven in part by Rand Fishkin's recent "mad scientist" experimentation that he touched on at MozCon. There, he noted that his tweets with images resul...

• Ten Medieval Inventions that Changed the World

     Ten Inventions from the Middle Ages that have had lasting importance, even to the present-day. Learn more: Time and Clocks in the Middle Ages The Printing Press: As An Agent of Social Change The civil uses of gunpowder: demolishing, quarrying, ...

• The Top-10 Characteristics of Lousy Leaders - Michael Hyatt

  If you look at the major news stories in business, politics, diplomacy, whatever, it’s pretty hard to miss that most of the crises we face are crises of leadership. I once worked for a man who couldn’t pull the trigger on a project, ever.

  tags: leadership

• The 3 C’s of Educational Leadership | Evolving Educators

  The changing face of education means there is a change in educational leadership.  To keep up with these changes, educational leaders need to engage in the 3 C’s of Educational Leadership:  Connect, Contribute, Collaborate.

  tags: leadership

• Leaders are Learners | LeadToday

  Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. – John F. Kennedy A leadership position is not a destination. No one should “arrive” at a leadership position and just sit tight. A leadership position does not make you a leader, it merely ...

  tags: leadership

• How Does the Brain Learn Best? Smart Studying Strategies | MindShift

  In his new book, “How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens,” author Benedict Carey informs us that “most of our instincts about learning are misplaced, incomplete, or flat wrong” and “rooted more in superstition tha...

  tags: brain

• 27 Ways To Respond When Students Don't Pay Attention

  Our initial reaction when seeing the following infographic from Mia MacMeekin was to think about instructional design rather than classroom management.

• Beyond Knowing Facts, How Do We Get to a Deeper Level of Learning? | MindShift

  As educators across the country continue to examine the best ways of teaching and learning, a new lexicon is beginning to emerge that describes one particular approach — deeper learning.

• From Distraction to Learning Tool: Mobile Devices in the Classroom -- Campus Technology

  Once banned in the classroom, mobile devices are becoming more accepted as a teaching and learning tool.

• PRINCIPALLY SPEAKING: Demand Different

• What Every Student Needs

  There is no perfect lesson, unit, or school any more than their can be a perfect song, flavor, or shade of blue. Every student is different.

• www.coolcatteacher.com

• The Stages Of Education Technology

  What’s Wrong With Education Technology? Mobile applications–or apps–have served an important role in the evolution of what’s possible in a classroom. Libraries and textbooks and teachers have been the traditional portals to information in education.

• Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom: Making Curation Easier With @IFTTT

  There is simply no end to the flow of information available on the Internet. When it comes to trying to organize it and do something with it you may run into some challenges. I know I regularly am looking for ways to make that process better. Than...

• We need to start talking about digital overload for our children - The Globe and Mail

  Out at a restaurant the other night, it happened again. I sat with two young parents who tugged an iPad out of their diaper bag and placed it before their fussing toddler. Angry Birds = Happy Child. Pouring some more wine, I silently disapproved, ...

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.