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More detailed advice on settings and use of the post-Google Blogger interface. Tompics include stats, ads, handling and arranging widgets, setting privacy for comments, customizing the basic templates, etc. By Russell Stannard.

This blog discusses a tool that allows you to collect data on your personal use of email, and helps you understand all the controversy over government collection of data. "They have created a new program called Immersion. It works by signing you into your Gmail account and collecting only the meta-data from your account usage history. From there you can get a picture of your emailing habits from that single account, and you will be shocked at what you see. "According to the three creators, there are four purposes to the program: self-reflection, artistic representation, privacy revelations and the ability to develop a strategy in your communications on a professional level."

"Most people don't think about the useful editing tools that are built into YouTube. The YouTube video editor has some useful features for teachers and students." The tools R. Byrne's describes are photo slideshow creation, slow-motion, annotation to link videos, blurring faces, stabilizing footage, and adding color/light filters. You can also add captions, music track, and select privacy options. This blog entry alo links to several more ways to improve your videos and add interactive elements.

Video comment/message Widget. Can be embedded on your Facebook or blog page so that anyone can leave you a video message. (Is this going over the edge of privacy?) Might be fun to trade messages among your students for listening-speaking practice with the added edge of a face.

"Now you can embed a forum just like a YouTube video. * No account registration neededYour forum will be integrated with Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other services so members can skip registration." Looks like this might be a nice tool to have on a school website, where it could ensure students' privacy.

Google Sites is a free and easy way to create and share webpages. Looks easy to use (wiki-type) and has privacy controls.

R. Stannard shows how to use this marvelous tool. You can create notes and link them to specific portions of a video on YouTube. If you have a personal account at YouTube, your students will have privacy in watching the video and using the notes for a flipped class, for example. Connect your account with your Google Drive account so everything is accessible from one place and easily revised.

""Most early-childhood classrooms in the United States," writes Paul Tough in his new book How Children Succeed, "are designed to develop in children a set of pre-academic skills, mostly related to deciphering text and manipulating numbers." Nevertheless, research conducted in the last few years suggests that stuffing this kind of information into a child's head is not the most important task in those early years. "What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence." How Children Succeed describes the new discoveries and reports on the ways innovative educators are developing techniques to help children develop these traits. The interview lasts about 30 minutes. "

What does a friend of a friend of a friend know about you?

Explains how innocuous-looking agreements to accept cookies lead to the revelatiion and storing of personal data. We are asking our students to use platforms that build a profile and ad-track them -- without their really being aware or giving informed consent. What is the solution?