Social Media Update: Become A Facebook Fan Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - September 5, 2009June 30, 20101 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
SYWTT Voicemail Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - July 19, 2009June 30, 20102 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.
20 Great Websites for Teachers Blogging & Technology by Karen Schweitzer - June 14, 2009June 30, 201010 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: 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. ClassMarker - Teachers can create professional looking online quizzes on this website. The quizzes can be taken and graded online. LectureTools.org - This site can be used to create student-friendly slide presentations and lectures. Other interesting features include the ability to check
20 WordPress 2.7 Plugins You Can’t Live Without Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - June 6, 2009June 30, 20105 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. 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 entirely.
20 Blogs I Wish Were Around When I Started Teaching Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - April 5, 2009June 30, 201040 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
Information Overloaded? 10 Quick Tips To Tame The Tide Stress Reduction by Joel Wagner - March 16, 2009June 30, 20102 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
Falling Behind Personal by Joel Wagner - January 25, 2009June 30, 20105 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
101 Reasons To Be Thankful Personal by Joel Wagner - November 27, 2008July 1, 20100 Salvation by grace alone, through faith (Ephesians 2:8) Heaven Opportunities to preach Playing music Writing music Creating music My pastor My church Having the best job in the world My students My students' parents My hearing My intellect Air conditioning Heaters Running water Health Health insurance Life insurance Paychecks Freedom from discrimination Freedom from starvation Freedom from religious persecution Freedom from torture The Declaration of Independence The Constitution The United States of America Gospel For Asia Waking up this morning Stars Mountains Flowers Sunlight Moonlight Birds singing Silence Tacos tapatios Making salsa Breakfast tacos Oatmeal raisin cookies Pineapple empanadas Singing at the top of my lungs when nobody is looking or listening Google Calendar Google Reader My readers Comments
Might As Well Face It-I’m Addicted to Blogs! (and listservs and podcasts…) General by Head Monkey - July 23, 2008July 1, 20101 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 and my
5 Things To Do While Taking A Break General by Joel Wagner - May 19, 2008July 1, 20103 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
The Blog Revolution: Day 2 – Keywords Are The Key Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - May 6, 2008July 2, 20102 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 page.
Do I Really Want To Teach? Reader Appreciation by Joel Wagner - March 31, 2008July 2, 20106 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
The State of the Blog 03/30/08 Blogging & Technology by Joel Wagner - March 30, 2008July 2, 20105 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
Around The Blogosphere: No Child Left Behind General by Joel Wagner - March 9, 2008July 2, 20105 Everyone's talking about it. It seems that everyone has been talking about it for nearly seven years now. So I thought it would be kind of interesting to see what various bloggers are saying about the "No Child Left Behind" Act of 2001 (NCLB). My personal opinion is that the law has good intentions, but they go about it entirely the wrong way. My preference would be for children to be educated by their own families rather than the state, but California courts seem interested in doing their part to see that it doesn't happen. Besides, too many homes have two incomes to make it reasonable for everyone (even if one income merely is there to support child care, an
February 2007 Personal by Joel Wagner - February 26, 2008July 2, 20103 On February 11th, 2007 I wrote the first blog post that is included in the archives of So You Want To Teach? I didn 't actually set up the blog on this domain until June, but I thought that since the blog was now over a year old (at least as far as some of the content), I'd go back and take a look at some of the old stuff. By the way, none of them have any comments at this point... If you have a blog, you can direct some of that traffic your way simply by writing a good, thought-provoking comment 5 Keys To Educating People February 11, 2007 Classroom Management: The Key To Your Success