I've been challenged! My wife, Andrea, has challenged me to get back to blogging. Since I've joined the "dark side" (see - school administration), I've struggled to find time to reflect and share my thoughts. I've had a list started about topics to write about, so I'll start at the top of my list.
This isn't a great philosophical post, or world changing. However, it will be I hope useful.
I consume information in multiple modes. I have my iPhone that I consume a majority of my information on. This is the device I use for a majority of social media consumption Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Voxer. Some of this is personal, see catching up with family, following along with my children's classroom Twitter feeds [son's Kindergarten feed] [daughter's 4th grade classroom]. I also use Flipboard to consume blogs and other written content. I follow quite a few magazines, including ASCD In-service, Leadership, and Productivity. I don't always check Flipboard regularly, so I many times as I'm checking in on a magazine I want to save items to be read later. A tool that I've found most useful for saving content to read later on multiple devices, both app and web based is Pocket.
Pocket is very intuitive and works with almost all the apps that I use. I use Tweetbot for Twitter and there is an easy connection from sharing in Tweetbot and saving in Pocket. Flipboard has the same ease of connection to Pocket. By saving an item into Pocket, I can access the article from the IOS app or the Pocket website. One area that I'm totally happy about is trying to get a good connection to Facebook. What I've gotten figured out is using IFTTT (if this then that). I've found a recipe in IFTTT that when I share an article in Facebook it will save the article to Pocket. What I would like to do is as I save an article in 'read it later' on Facebook to save to Pocket. If you know of a way to do this, please let me know!!
As a building Principal, I try to model technology leadership with our staff and keep a clear line of communication with our team. Each week, I send our staff an update. This includes an update of my week, including when I am planning to be out of the building for district meetings or professional learning. I've also including an article that I've come across that connects to our current work, is inspirational, or motivational. These articles mostly come from things that I've saved and read through Pocket. This small amount of time, has allowed our team to continue our learning and continue our growth as professionals.
