Totally Wired: Get the Conversation Going
Anastasia Goodstein is an award-winning blogger and expert on how American tweens and use technology. She is also the creative genius behind the Ypulse blog and Ypulse Mashup conferences. In July 2007, Yahoo! For Teachers was honored to be invited to the first ever YPulse Mashup conference where we also co-presented the Totally Wired Teacher Award.
In her book, Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online, Anastasia explores and demystifies what Gen Y is doing on the web with social media and mobile technology. She also delves into the issues around cyberbullying, MySpace (and other social networks), as well as how all this technology is impacting schools and educators.
In addition to being incredibly knowledgeable in how teens are using technology, she is also keenly aware of how technology is being (or not) integrated in the classroom to support these burgeoning digital learning styles.
In Fall 2007, Anastasia embarked on a national Totally Wired Book Tour where she had the opportunity to educate both parents and teachers about the online lives of Gen Y. When Anastasia returned home from her book tour, she decided to write a discussion guide so that parents, teachers and students would have a starting point for their own conversations.
Anastasia has graciously agreed to allow us to post a copy of her Totally Wired Discussion Guide over in our Yahoo! For Teachers Group (look in the Files section). If you haven’t already, grab a copy of Totally Wired, download the discussion guide and get the conversation going with your peers, students or own kids.
Instead of fearing MySpace and other online communities, learn why they are important to teens and the steps you can take to keep kids safe in these virtual worlds.
Thanks again to Anastasia for sharing her Totally Wired Discussion Guide with the Yahoo! For Teachers community.
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Related Resources
Yahoo! For Teachers @ Classroom 2.0 Live SF
On February 1, the Yahoo! For Teachers team will be joining our colleagues from the del.icio.us team at the Classroom 2.0 Live meet up in San Francisco. For those of you who are unable to attend, here’s a copy of the del.icio.us 101 handout.
Classroom 2.0 Live SF is being organized by Steve Hargadon and will feature workshop sessions on using Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom.
We’ll also have some spiffy Yahoo! For Teachers schwag too, so be sure to step up and introduce yourself! We’re really looking forward to attending this event and meeting all of you.
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Yahoo! For Teachers 101: Project Points
Did you know that when you search for a project in Explore, the project(s) with the highest number of points are displayed at the top of your search results? Yes, it’s true. But you may be asking yourself: What are these points? And where do they come from?
Here’s the scoop…
The number next to the star is the project rating. The number equals the total number of teachers who have copied the project or left feedback for the author.
These project points will help you gauge both the reputation and quality of a project and/or author. This built in system of “peer review” helps push the highest rated projects to the top of the Yahoo! For Teachers Explore results.
Here’s how to leave feedback on a Yahoo! For Teachers Project:
- Click > “I like this project” button
- Write > Use the default message, or leave your own feedback, tips or suggestions
- Click > “Send My Comment”
You can view comments left by your colleagues by scrolling to the bottom of the project page and hovering your mouse over your icon. To learn more about the colleague who left a comment, click on their name and see what resources and projects they have in their portfolio.
So go ahead and copy projects or leave feedback on your colleagues’ projects! Doing so will help make the Explore results more relevant, save you time, and help build a vibrant and robust community for teachers, by teachers!
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to post your question over in our Yahoo! For Teachers group.
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
New Release Notes
Last night we pushed a new release of Yahoo! For Teachers Beta. In addition to fixing several bugs, we also added the following new features:
+ You can now publish Yahoo! Teacher Documents outside the closed beta so that you can share them with your colleagues.
+ When you drag images, text or web sites into a Yahoo! Teacher Document, a “Sources” list for the Gobbled assets will automatically be generated and displayed at the bottom of the page.
+ On the Explore page, the Top Rated, Most Copied, and Most Recent project box now displays the author’s name and provides a link to their portfolio. This improvement will help you discover new projects as well as new colleagues to add to My Community.
+ When a colleague leaves feedback on your project page, you can click on their name to view their Yahoo! For Teachers ePortfolio and see what projects they are sharing with the community. You can then add them as a colleague, copy a project or project asset.
Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs and continuing to provide us with suggestions on how we can make Yahoo! For Teachers even better. We really appreciate your feedback–keep it coming!
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Downtime Notice
This morning we discovered a wee little bug that is preventing new users from registering with Yahoo! For Teachers. Please know that our crack engineering team is working to resolve the issue and I’ll be posting updates here to keep you all in the loop.
In the meantime, why not check out our Yahoo! For Teachers community outposts on Flickr, Yahoo! Groups or Jumpcut?
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers Team
Update, Monday January 14
6:32 PST: The bug is squished! Our brilliant engineering team has fixed the registration glitch. If you’ve received an invite to join Yahoo! For Teachers and were unable to register, you’re all set to have another go at it. If you experience any problems, be sure to let us know.
Twitter + Yahoo! For Teachers: Who Let the Owl Out?
It appears that Earl, our Yahoo! For Teachers spokesowl, has discovered the joys of Twitter. And even though he would much rather “hoo” than “tweet“– he still thinks Twitter is pretty slick.
He’s agreed use Twitter as a way to keep everyone up-to-date with breaking community news, links to useful resources along a few random bits of information.
You can follow Earl by clicking here:
http://twitter.com/yahooteachers
Related Resources
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
Yahoo! For Teachers: Something to talk about
Last week it seemed like everytime we turned around, someone was saying something nice about Yahoo! For Teachers.
We couldn’t be more thrilled to read all the nice things people are saying about us and we are working hard to get Yahoo! For Teachers into the hands of as many educators as soon as possible.
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, be sure to sign up for an invite, put yourself on the Peer Network Map, and join our official Yahoo! For Teachers group.
You can also check out what people are saying about us:
- SF Chronicle: Yahoo! Teachers enables teachers to share lesson plans, ideas and more
- Ars Technia: Hacking Education with Yahoo! Teachers
- WebProNews: Yahoo! Teachers shaping up nicely
Derek
Yahoo! For Teachers
Yahoo! Teachers + del.icio.us: Share What You Know
We’ve created an official Yahoo! Teachers account on del.icio.us where we’ll be sharing resources and links that you might find useful.
If you find links that might be of interest, share them with us via del.icio.us and we’ll add them to the Yahoo! Teachers collection. So be sure to add us as a contact!
Here’s the link to the Yahoo! Teachers account:
http://del.icio.us/yahoo.teachers
If you don’t already have an account, you can get one by going here: https://secure.del.icio.us/register
Need help getting started? Watch this excellent del.icio.us tutorial over on TeacherTube.
Thanks!
Derek, Community Manager
Yahoo! For Teachers
Road Report: Yahoo! For Teachers Workshops
I just thought I’d give you an update on what the Yahoo! Teachers team has been up to the last few hectic weeks!
June 17: We held a Yahoo! Teachers workshop for teachers in the San Jose/Evergreen School District. This was a great event and they were really impressed with Yahoo! Teachers and the Gobbler.
June 22: The entire Yahoo! Teachers team headed to Atlanta to attend NECC 2007! This is the largest educational computing conference in the country and we met teachers from all over the country.
Our booth was jammed packed with teachers wanting to see the Gobbler in action! This was a great week and our first big showing of Yahoo! For Teachers!
We had a great time in Atlanta. Bill’s edict is that we “eat local” when we travel. One of the highlights of the trip was our team dinner at Gladys Knight Chicken and Waffles. We were a little tired and slap happy, so this made it even more fun.
We had a great bounty of Southern goodness on our table: fried chicken, waffles, collard greens, mac and cheese, fried corn, oh fresh lima beans and of course sweet tea! Being Yahoos, the moment our food arrived we whipped out our cameras so we could Flickr our food before we ate it!
July 2: Off to the windy city! Our Yahoo! Teachers Chicago workshop was held at the University of Chicago. We had a wonderful group of teachers from around Illinois attend the workshop. We also had several teachers from NECC come to the workshop.
One of the most amazing new Yahoo! Teachers drove all the way from Alabama to attend the workshop. Karon and I were floored and honored that she would make that long drive to learn more about Yahoo! for Teachers. Again, we had some terrific projects come out of this workshop.
July 11: The Big Apple welcomed Yahoo! Teachers and we held two workshops at the NYC Yahoo! HQ. This was an amazing cadre of educators from all over the region. Teachers came from Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
We met several educators who are blogging about technology in the classroom and using social media in interesting and innovative ways to support learning in the classroom.
We were also thrilled to have Sue Wright and Greg Crum join us at our NYC workshops. They were great advocates for Yahoo! Teachers and they had a great time meeting colleagues from the other side of the country! Thanks Greg and Sue!
July 13: After a whirlwind couple of days in NYC, Karon and I headed off to Washington D.C. to present Yahoo! for Teachers to the American Federation of Teachers. Our group of teachers hailed from Minnesota, Montana, DC, Virginia and New York.
In fact, we had standing room only and left with a long list of teachers who want to sign up as alpha teachers. We were thrilled to have such a positive reception from the AFT community.
Speaking of the AFT, they have a lot of great resources on their site, including resources to help educators teach about the crisis in Darfur.
July 16: Karon and I headed to San Francisco to attend the YPulse Mashup. This is a conference that focuses around how tweens and teens use technology.
We were thrilled to share Yahoo! Teachers with the Mashup crowd and show how educators can use Yahoo! Teachers to connect with other teachers and gain the skills and confidence they need to use 21st century tools in their classrooms.
We had the honor to meet with Lisa and Pearl from the Schwab Learning Foundation. This is a wonderful organization that provides information and resources to teachers/kids/parents on learning difficulties (LD).
They have a wonderful site, including an online library, full of articles, research and other information to help students with learning difficulties. They have a special site for kids called, SparkTop , where kids with LD can come and connect with other kids
We also presented Ben Wilkoff, a teacher from Denver, Colorado, with the first Yahoo! Teachers/Edutopia Totally Wired Teacher Award. Congrats to Ben!
July 17: Hey Austin! Here we come…….Wendy Heller, Karon and I headed off to Austin to hold a workshop at the University of Texas @ Austin. Wow. Talk about totally wired! The teachers at the Austin workshop were very tech savvy and caught the vision of Yahoo! Teachers in a big, big way.
Then again, everything–including vision–is big in Texas!
All work and no play? No way. While in Austin we checked out the Story of Texas state history museum and tracked down the best BBQ join in Austin. Where? That would be Iron Works. Yum. Yum. Yum.
Where next? That would be San Diego! On Saturday we will be holding our final summer workshop at the Joan Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego.
We come off this workshop and conference tour with a newfound appreciation for all the wonderful educators out there who are striving every day in the classroom to help their students acquire the knowledge and skills they will need to be contributing members of society.
Stay tuned, we are just getting started…….
Cheers!
Derek, Karon and the entire Yahoo! Teachers team
Related Resources
Yahoo! Teachers Workshops: Scenes from the Road
Karon and I are having a great time meeting teachers from all over the country at our Yahoo! For Teachers workshops.We have met a lot of really fantastic, inspiring teachers.
They have given us a lot of great feedback on Yahoo! For Teachers and are rapidly learning how to bring 21st Century skills into their classrooms.
