Classroomtech.org.uk

One of the best features of web browsers when they first became popular with start of the mass use of the Internet back in the 90s was the ability to save, or bookmark, favourite web sites. Making it easy to find them again. Bookmarks are still a major feature of all browsers and there have been various advances and additions that make them easier to use and more useful. The problem with the bookmarks in your browser, on your computer is that if you go to another computer or even use a different browser on your computer then you don’t have access to them.

Over the past few years services that solve this problem have sprung up on the Internet. They are websites where you can register and then bookmark web sites from any computer and access them from any computer. These services are called social bookmarking services. The name suggests one of their major features, the ability to share your bookmarks with other people (if you want to) and collaborate in building lists of useful web sites.

The biggest and probably best known of these sites is called Delicious.com (formally Del.icio.us). (Read the rest of this entry…)

As teachers we have to manage large amounts of data. There are lots of different ways to organise lesson planning and record keeping from paper based planners and mark books to computer based solutions. As more and more of us have a laptop on our desks all the time it becomes more practical to have our data stored electronically.

Some teachers use tools such as Google Calendar to organise their planning and spreadsheets (e.g. Excel) are popular for registers and marks. These are good solutions and have benefits like the ability to access your planning from anywhere if you use web based tools like Google Calendar. The down side is that while these are good solutions, they are separate and it is difficult to connect the different bits of data together.

A few years ago I went looking for a better solution for organising my planning and marking and came across a program called Teachers Personal Information Manager (TPIM) and I (and several of my colleagues) have been using it ever since. This program is written by a teacher and is based very much around the sort of information that teachers need to have to hand every day in the classroom.

(Read the rest of this entry…)