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How many first-year teachers have the benefit of being in one room all day?\u00a0 If you are a middle or high school teacher, the odds are you will be using more than one computer every day because you will be moving from room to room.<\/p>\nHow many first-year teachers have the benefit of being in one room all day?\u00a0 If you are a middle or high school teacher, the odds are you will be using more than one computer every day because you will be moving from room to room.<\/p>\n
Here are a few things you can do to make sure you have your technical tools with you wherever you are.<\/p>\n
1 – Setup a Protopage<\/a><\/p>\n Protopage is a very customizable web page.\u00a0 Access requires only a browser.\u00a0 Every computer I\u00a0use has the browser configured to go to my Protopage as the start page.\u00a0 Protopage has all the links I use over and over along with my RSS feeds, notes to myself, local weather and just about anything else that deals with using a computer on the Internet.\u00a0\u00a0I can\u00a0use my home desktop and create a new note on my Protopage.\u00a0 When I go to my laptop that note is there too.\u00a0 It is\u00a0also\u00a0automatically on\u00a0my university desktop and my tablet computer because those computers start at my Protopage.<\/p>\n If I run across something interesting and I want to review it later, I copy and paste the link into my “To Be Reviewed” list on my Protopage.\u00a0 As I have time to look at these sites, I remove them from this list.\u00a0 The good ones move to my second tool.<\/p>\n There are other “start page” tools out there: Pageflakes, Netvibes, iGoogle, etc.\u00a0 I have tried them all and Protopage is the most customizable.<\/p>\n 2 – del.icio.us<\/a><\/p>\n When I run across a site that I know I will reference in the future, I add that site to my del.icio.us<\/a> links.\u00a0 My links have good descriptions and tags so I can usually find something quickly.\u00a0 Since del.icio.us needs only a browser, I can get to my links from any computer.\u00a0 Note that links to the sites I use multiple times daily (webmail, Blackboard, calendar, etc) are on my Protopage.\u00a0 This is because Protopage permits me to\u00a0permanently place those links in the top left corner of the page.\u00a0 Links in del.icio.us are sorted in reverse chronological order (last one\u00a0entered is at the top).\u00a0 That makes those links I use every day a little harder to get to in del.icio.us.<\/p>\n 3 – USB Flash Drive<\/p>\n I carry one of these all the time.\u00a0 Actually I have a couple with me most days.\u00a0 If I have files I need throughout the day (Word documents, spreadsheets, PowerPoint files) the USB drive is an easy way to get them from one computer to another computer.\u00a0 This is especially true when getting files from home to work.<\/p>\n I also have Hamachi<\/a> running on my home and office computers.\u00a0 This creates a VPN between my home computer and my office computer.\u00a0 I can actually get to my home computer’s hard drive while I am at the office.\u00a0 That can be handy, but it is probably more than most people will bother with.<\/p>\n 4 – My Blog<\/p>\n I noticed this when I was getting ready for the eTech conference.\u00a0 I have written about so many different\u00a0topics in my blog, I end up going back and looking at those things when I need a refresher.\u00a0 I talked with John<\/a> about this a couple of years ago.\u00a0 When I put it in my blog, it is a permanent record that I can easily refer to in the future.\u00a0 This source doesn’t necessarily have to be a blog, but you need somewhere to write your extended thoughts so you can\u00a0find them later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How many first-year teachers have the benefit of being in one room all day?\u00a0 If you are a middle or high school teacher, the odds are you will be using more than one computer every day because you will be … Continue reading