Infographic flyer: What's your digital footprint?

This infographic flyer was created to put important digital footprint information in one place in a graphically pleasing format.  Take a look and let me know what you think. 

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The hottest posts that everyone's reading

Here’s the roundup of what's been popular on The Innovative Educator blog. Below you’ll see the top posts along with the number of page views. I hope there's something that looks of interest to you.  If it does, check it out. If you’re inspired use one of those icons below the post to share it with others and/or leave a comment.

Article	Page Views
How connected is your school? Take this quiz... Jun 2, 2013,	2152
How well does your school meet student expectations... May 26, 2013,	1819
5 ways to spice up your LinkedIn profile... Jun 9, 2013,	1406
Could PBL be the Solution to Education Reform? May 14, 2013,	1405
3 ways to decrease the teacher dropout crisis Jun 4, 2013,	1179

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5 tips to help students write for career success

Here is how most of my writing starts.

The unspoken truth about teaching writing in schools is that few people doing so are published writers themselves. What's worse, the message that students get is that in school they don't focus on writing for real. Let's be honest, how often do you read a book in the real world and think, "Oh! I want to write a book report!" How often do we take two texts to analyze and write a paper that we hand into someone. How often do we research something, then write up a research paper for no one?  

Why aren't schools helping students write for real? Why aren't those who teach writing, publishing their work and helping their students to write for real audiences? 

In her article, How to teach kids to write effectively, Author Penelope Trunk, tells us that however you're teaching your kid to write, it's the wrong way. She advises that lessons in passion-finding skills are way more important than any writing curriculum you've dreamed up.

Below are five tips she suggests for helping kids write in ways to support them in being successful in careers. 

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3 ways to use the old-school phone to enrich learning

One of the oldest forms of mobile social networking is the old-school phone call. Innovative educators like Will Richardson and Marc Prensky have said, “Life is an open phone test.” Except at school. Why is it that in the real world we are valued for our ability to address and use connections to solve our problems, but in school we call that cheating? In its most primitive form, the cell phone is a great tool to just reach out to someone who may know and answer or be an expert on a topic of interest.

Who's doing this?
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The hottest posts that everyone's reading

Here’s the roundup of what's been popular on The Innovative Educator. Below you’ll see the top posts along with the number of pageviews. I hope there's something that looks of interest to you.  If it does, check it out. If you’re inspired, share it with others and/or leave a comment.

Post	Pageviews
How connected is your school? Take this quiz ... Jun 2, 2013,	2136
How well does your school meet student expectations... May 26, 2013,	1820
8 Real Ways Facebook Enriched 1st grade... Jul 15, 2010,	1786
5 ways innovative educators can spice up their LinkedIn... Jun 9, 2013,	1610
3 ways to decrease the teacher dropout crisis Jun 4, 2013,	1156
The packet-driven classroom May 19, 2013,	981
Use social media to shine on school quality reviews... May 29, 2013,	973

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Common Core practice tests now available online

From eSchool News "Site of the Week:"View more Sites of the Week

The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, one of two collections of states that are designing online tests aligned with the Common Core standards, has released online practice tests in both ELA and math for students in grades 3-8 and 11.

The tests will help schools prepare for implementation of the Smarter Balanced Assessment System in the 2014-15 school year, the organization says.

The practice tests allow teachers, students, parents, and other stakeholders to experience the features of online testing and gain insight into how Smarter Balanced will assess students’ mastery of the Common Core. However, they don’t encompass the full range of content that students will encounter on the spring 2014 Field Test and should not be used to guide instructional decisions, the consortium warns.

The practice tests include constructed-response, selected-response, and technology-enhanced questions. Performance tasks, which are longer activities that ask students to apply their knowledge to solving “real-world” problems, are available for ELA and will be added for math by this fall. Scoring keys will be available July 1.

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Google Voice simplifies and enhances the work of innovative educators

Google Voice is a terrific tool for educators. Google Voice gives you one phone number that is tied to you. You can chose to have that phone number ring any phone you’d like. As a result, you can pick just one phone to take with you and all your phones will ring into it. You will never again need to carry multiple phones or swap phones. Another feature that teachers will love is that it gives every teacher their personal secretary as all voicemails are transcribed. You'll never need to transcribe a message, or sort through 4 voicemails to get to the one you were trying to listen to. Just read or click on the message you want to hear and skip over the rest.  Another way Google Voice is like the built in teacher secretary is that it asks callers to announce themselves. No more being concerned about unknown numbers. You'll always know who is on the phone before you pick it up or, you can choose to just send the call to voicemail.
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