I have been getting more and more into sharing information via Twitter recently. With 1,300 RSS subscribers, and only 850 Twitter followers, I know that not all of my readers are getting all of the links that I share. I thought it might be fun to share with you some of the links that I came across last month and shared on Twitter. If you aren’t following me on Twitter yet, you should start: @sywtt

Also, if you’re on Google Wave and would like to add me, feel free! My address is soyouwanttoteach.com@googlewave.com

• 5 great resources to find out about Google Wave
• 5 Reasons Google Wave Is Not Ready
• 5 Step Change Strategy
• Five Technology Lessons Every Teacher Can

…

I got my Google Wave invitation the day the first set of invites came out. Today on Twitter, a friend asked me if Google Wave was as amazing as he’s heard it is. My response was something along the lines of:

The potential of Google Wave is still pretty amazing, but the implementation of it so far is not there.

That being said, I have to keep in mind that it is still in alpha testing phases right now, and thought it has been unresponsive at times, it has not yet crashed on me. These two facts are pretty solid for the infrastructure so far!

What is the potential? Well, clearly it has some pretty far-reaching possibilities in the use…

Today is the day. Thousands of new users will be presented with the opportunity to get their hands on Google Wave.

What is Google Wave?
Google Wave is a brand new technology that positions itself  as the way Email would have been made if it were invented today. (Watch the 1:20:12 long video clip)

Imagine a combination between Email, IM, Twitter, Facebook, and Skype all bundled into one. Now imagine it being drag-and-drop easy, live-updated, and being constantly improved. Then throw on top of that an eager community of developers seeking ways to make it even easier to use and more powerful.

Cool, but what does it look like?
I haven’t gotten my…

I don’t use a whole lot of social media outlets, but I know a lot of my readers do. Over the last few months, I have added a few things to make sharing SYWTT articles easier. I’ve also added some rating type things where you can tell me how bad (or good) an article is. I find that Facebook and Twitter are by far the websites I spend most of my time on when I’m online. In fact, I mostly use Facebook at home and Twitter on my iPhone while I’m out.

Up to this point, I have used them mostly for personal things. I have also noticed, however, that my use of Google Reader and other RSS type things…

I recently got my Google Voice invitation and decided to set it up. In playing around with the settings this afternoon, I realized that I could set up a widget to connect my readers directly to my voicemail. I don’t know how many people are interested in connecting to me this way, but I thought it might be a nice way to provide some opportunities for increased communication.

Who knows, this may open up a way for me to get some questions from readers. If the response is positive, I might even post the phone number so maybe some of you could share the number with friends who don’t do the whole blogging thing, but have questions about teaching problems….

This is a guest post by Karen Schweitzer who writes about online colleges for OnlineCollege.org.

Teachers who are interested in implementing technology in the classroom and in their own personal lives can find plenty of free resources online. Here are 20 websites worth visiting today:

1. Shmoop – Shmoop is a great new site that is becoming very popular among teachers. The beta site dedicates itself to making reading and writing more fun for both students and teachers.
2. ClassMarker – Teachers can create professional looking online quizzes on this website. The quizzes can be taken and graded online.
3. LectureTools.org – This site can be used to create student-friendly slide presentations and lectures. Other interesting features include the ability to check

…

I have gotten questions from time to time about what plugins I use on my blog. I’ve posted some plugin lists in the past, but sometimes plugins are no longer supported by their author or else the functionality is duplicated in later WordPress versions. So here are 20 WordPress 2.7 Plugins You Can’t Live Without.

1. Advanced Excerpt
   Excerpts allow more articles to show up on the home page, while still not allowing too many links (Search Engines don’t like more than 100 links on a page) or too much clutter. Advanced Excerpt lets me customize how many words or characters appear before the cut as well as letting me choose which HTML elements to strip from the code

…

When I first started out, I was living by myself far away from home. I didn’t have any friends in the community outside of the school. And those were either other band directors or band parents. I didn’t do anything to really try to keep in contact with college friends, I sort of had the Lone Ranger type approach.

That was way back in 2002. My how things have changed!  Now, education prep programs all over seem to be requiring students to read and comment on blogs as part of their education. With that being said, I have seen quite a rise in the number of educational blogs out there since I started blogging two years ago.

I have seen…

Think back 5 years. March 2004. It feels like an eternity ago! For me, that was when I really hit the wall. That was when my head director told me that my contract would not be renewed. I resigned in lieu of nonrenewal. I spent the remainder of the semester learning like crazy. In fact, that is the experience that eventually formed the inspiration to begin this blog (read more here). But that’s really not the point of this email, the thought just struck me and I realized how quickly time passes and how much I’ve grown since then.

5 years ago, there was no MySpace (until August 2003), no Twitter, no Facebook. Nada. Blogs were beginning to take off…

I have an admission. If you’ve emailed me in the last year or so, you may have caught on. The thing is…I am behind. On like everything.

With work, church, and mariachi, I tend to remain pretty busy. But when I’m home, often I will sit here looking at blogs, playing catchup in Google Reader or my email, checking my blog stats, checking out Facebook, chatting with friends, and doing all sorts of time-wasting things. These things are all right in and of themselves, but when combined, they lead to me neglecting things such as basic housekeeping, laundry, filing my bills, cooking, and even sleeping.

Then I find a burst of energy, sit down, start sorting through my emails, and…

1. Salvation by grace alone, through faith (Ephesians 2:8)
2. Heaven
3. Opportunities to preach
4. Playing music
5. Writing music
6. Creating music
7. My pastor
8. My church
9. Having the best job in the world
10. My students
11. My students’ parents
12. My hearing
13. My intellect
14. Air conditioning
15. Heaters
16. Running water
17. Health
18. Health insurance
19. Life insurance
20. Paychecks
21. Freedom from discrimination
22. Freedom from starvation
23. Freedom from religious persecution
24. Freedom from torture
25. The Declaration of Independence
26. The Constitution
27. The United States of America
28. Gospel For Asia
29. Waking up this morning
30. Stars
31. Mountains
32. Flowers
33. Sunlight
34. Moonlight
35. Birds singing
36. Silence
37. Tacos tapatios
38. Making salsa
39. Breakfast tacos
40. Oatmeal raisin cookies
41. Pineapple empanadas
42. Singing at the top of my lungs when nobody is looking or listening
43. Google Calendar
44. Google Reader
45. My readers
46. Comments

…

This is a guest post by Tracey, aka The Head Monkey at Middle School Monkeys www.mrsbowes.edublogs.org aka Trixie at TrashyTvTalk at www.trashytvtalk.blogspot.org

My apologies to Robert Palmer for stealing his little ditty from the 80’s, but it seemed so appropriate! (I refuse to dress like the zombies in the video, though.)

Now that school is out and I have waaaay more free time, I really thought I would be a “good wife/mother” and dedicate myself to domestic responsibilities. Well, the jury is still out, but I’m pretty sure I lost the “Mother of the Year Award” already and Better Homes and Garden is not returning my calls for the 4 page spread. I hired a cleaning lady to do the spring cleaning I never did…

There come times in life when we need to find something to do. There come times in life when we need a break. There come times in life when we need to cut back some things so we can find that perfect place.

This is one of those times for me.

With the end of the year approaching, I am so busy with school and concerts and trips and contests and planning and everything else that goes along with it. In addition, I am playing trumpet in a mariachi now, so that is starting to require individual practice time as well as rehearsals and gigs. Plus, I have been doing quite a bit of preaching in church lately too.

So…

As we continue the Blog Revolution Project, we come to day two of our focus on writing. Today will not really focus on one specific writing project, but an overall vision for your blog.

Most traffic that comes to blogs comes as a result of search engines. The vast majority of searches happen on Google. If we can optimize our Google search result ranking, we can greatly increase the flow of traffic through our site. The more visitors your site gets, the higher in the results you can go.

So how do we optimize our Google search ranking?

Keywords are the key
Everyone who comes to a site through a search engine types in keywords to get to your…

I found this article that I wrote back in November but never got around to posting on the blog.

Do I really want to teach?
In my first two years of teaching, not a week went by when I didn’t ask myself that very question. Many people face it every day. Without question, the most popular search terms that brings visitors to my blog are “quit teaching” and “do I want to teach?” I wonder how many Google searches are done each day on the subject. I wonder how many young teachers decide each day that this will be their last semester to teach. It’s tragic, really.

At the same time, the greater tragedy is the number of people who…

Wow, it has been over five months since I have done this kind of thing. I’ve written some informal blog updates from time to time, but nothing formalized like this. I have noticed that So You Want To Teach? seems to be entering a new phase of its life and want to ask you for some help. There’s also a completely unrelated video at the end. But first, the latest blogging news from SYWTT.

• I revamped my Links page today and only put those blogs that had commented or emailed me back in January. Keep reading for info on how to get your link added there.
• We reached 100 subscribers for the first time on November 15th.
• We reached

…