iCanHelpLine Update

It’s been a very exciting time promoting and spreading the word on the iCanHelpLine. At the time of this post, we passed the $10,000 mark in money raised for this important cause. Your support means that we can make sure our website is up and running with great content. We will be able to launch our phone service in the fall and Anne and I get to make our trip to the UK this summer….

Speaking of which, Anne and I will be traveling to the UK to learn about their very successful helpline for schools, which has been in place for the past several years. This helpline is our model because it’s the only other one in the world specifically for school staff and other professionals. This training will give us valuable insights and experience that will keep us from having to reinvent the wheel. [the perspective and insight that will make this helpline work for schools.]

In addition, we recently met with Technology Information Center for Administrative Leadership (TICAL) and the will be listing the helpline as a resource in their Social Media Handbook for Administrators. We really appreciate what TICAL does for technology and Administrative Leadership.

In the news, we had a great write up in the San Francisco Examiner by Laura Dudnick. She really get’s what we are about and how we will help schools.

We also had a great write up by Amy Jussel of Shaping Youth who wrote an incredible blog post about the impact a social media helpline will have for the United States.

That’s all for now, thanks for keeping up with our efforts and please keep spreading the word.

Internet Data and resources the iCanHelpline has to offer.

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Achieving Zen with Social Media

If you live in the world of social media, you too have felt the sting of living in multiple worlds: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Pinterest, PearlTrees, Evernote, LinkedIn, Dropbox, Podcasts, Google Reader or any RSS feed. You have all of this great content and you need to get it out to people, but who wants to visit all of those sites and publish multiple times. In comes If This Then That. This is a great service that will allow you to stream line your social media networks.

Roll Away Your Stone

Having just returned from CADA (California Association of Directors of Activities), I want to recap one of the more important themes I try to drive home with technology: social and emotional intelligence is one of the most important things we can teach. It’s not new, as activity directors we address this every day through our project planning, group communication/interaction, and mass communication with the campus. Jamie Casap – Google Education Evangelist – said it best last year during his keynote when he said, “If kids are getting hit by cars, we don’t ban automobiles. We teach kids how to cross the street.” With technology, we do the opposite, constantly banning that which wold make a great teaching tool.

Video Time Machine

Living in a media drive age, it would make sense that we, as educators, have access to videos and clips that feature some of the great moments in our history: movies, music, tv, news, sports, games and ads.  To truly understand history in any context is to know what is going on in that time period. There are many ways to set the scene, YouTube is one, though researching all of that video footage takes time; the Library of Congress has some great videos to download via iTunes if you have the time; or how about the vidoes and DVD’s which are delivered with our textbooks (in my case, laser discs and reel to reel – totally up to date on technology here).  Even better, how about a device that let’s kids research or identify the videos that best describe the time period? Enger Video Time Machine, a new app available for the iPhone and iPad that carefully selects videos that best represent the time period they were made. As the site claims, “You can watch over 10,000 handpicked videos from 1860-2011.”