Group items tagged

A good post on getting volunteers involved. Some good points of like telling people why the tasks are important, and to give them a chance to try before they commit. We do this with our AV Team, asking people to just come by on a Sunday to the back of church to watch what happens and to ask questions after.

Shared by Cindy Krueger I've been following Jenn's Trends on Facebook for social media hints and tips. I'm sharing her recent blog post about protecting and recovering hacked social media accounts. One item of note is the LogDog tool to help protect your accounts. This topic is of special concern because I know a couple people with high profile accounts that have been hacked recently. Fortunately each was able to work with the social media company to get the account restored. Maybe less of a concern for churches and schools that have in person contact with followers but still something people will want to avoid if possible.

Link shared by Julia Wagenknecht - GCFLearnFree.org® creates and provides quality, innovative online learning opportunities to anyone who wants to improve the technology, literacy and math skills needed to be successful in both work and life. By delivering over 750 different lessons to millions of people in over 200 countries and territories ABSOLUTELY FREE, GCFLearnFree.org is a worldwide leader in online education.

list of chrome extensions and apps and how people may use them

With cloud storage continuing to make progress as broadband continues to make inroads to more people and speeds increase, I hope features and transparency in using them grows. I have and use to various degrees iCloud, SkyDrive, DropBox, and Google Drive (used Insync for a while). My favorite is still DropBox and the space limitations are not an issue for most people. Speeds of Cloud storage will never be the same as LAN or WLAN speeds for large file storage, so frequent access to large files in the cloud is not a realistic possibility yet (ever?). While an argument could be made for backup, well I think CrashPlan, Mozy or Carbonite (as well as others) have that market covered. While I like the Arstechnica brief pros and cons (http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/04/cloud-storage-a-pricing-and-feature-guide-for-consumers.ars), I would love to see more in depth pros and cons from long term usage. iCloud for instance while great for iOS backup for our families 2 iPhones and 1 iPad, there is no transparent way to mount the iCloud volume for direct or cached data storage. On the other hand, the Shared folder on the Dropbox volume is nice for my wife and I to share working files across our two or three computers for work. Awesome. SkyDrive has a hook in MS Office which I have tested and works nicely, but it is limited in device support. GoogleDrive is really new, so I am still working through using it. I suspect this will continue to evolve over time.

Use this tool to allow people to book times on your Google Calendar.

Great tool - maybe a way to schedule conferences? I'll try it this fall and let you know how it goes!

Take a look at PicKATime for conference scheduling. Ours is up right now so you could look at it on our site - emanuelnl.org/school Works great and parents love it; not free through. $50 a conference. We think it is worth it. The secretary sets it all up and teachers have access and see their own scheduled conference times. I find youcanbook me works well for teachers setting up individual conference tmes with me for purposes of their tech growth planning throughout the year.

A fun way to teach reluctant people how to do basic tasks with computers.

Yesterday, I wrote about the power of newsletters, but how can you ensure that people actually read your newsletter? Here ...

Create a professional looking site in minutes.  "So simple it's silly." Check out the sample Education site. Many times I talk with people who don't want a blog but a web site. Here's a free an easy option for setting up a web site.

All images on this site are public domain.  Copyright details here: http://kenthomas.us/?page_id=220

Big changes in the way Facebook allows people to see your posts on your pages. Now only 10% may see it unless you pay!

He makes an excellent point, to consider who our audience is when we reach out. ""I have to explain (to church leaders) that there aren't thousands and thousands of Episcopalians out there looking" for a place to worship, Dell said. Instead, congregations must focus on "outsiders," people who weren't raised in a faith community or who are hoping to explore a new denomination, and who are likely to turn to the Internet in their search."

Use Dropbox? This tool is AWESOME! Drop files into your dropbox from any user with an Internet connection. Password protection means that only files you want people to upload make it into your box. Super cool! (can you tell I'm excited?)

I investigating adding some ipads to our collection of one. Important for people to note that the new ipad2 can project anything on the ipad to your screen - mirror imaging.