Day 1: Self-Audit–

• How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week? UMMM-Honestly- it is slim to none!
  

• Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?I just recently learned you could track your comments, SO How? I am taking suggestions…an sure I will end up using coComment, and would take any suggestions or reasoning for why or how I should use this information once I have access to it! Can you see why now, I feel as if I need some personal PD in this area!

• Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week? If I do comment on blogs is is on those that are just starting out like me, because I do know that it is powerful when and a nice feeling when you do get comments.After reading Gina Trapani’s Guide to Blog Comments, I plan to focus on first adding comments that add to the discussion and lend specifically a new “piece” to the puzzle/conversation.

Day 2- Comment on a New Blog! -

The task today is to comment on a new blog! Well, I have to decided to post a comment I read often but dare not leave a comment. Since I have not been an active commenter I feel I have a lot to make up for…so it will be important to return to those blogs that have inspired me the most to create my own blog and comment, comment,comment.

Day3- Sign Up for a Comment Service Tracking Service–

I have to say that Day 3 has been a challenge for me due to technical issues. I tried to install coComment an then had a complete meltdown of Firefox, but I finally got it working but have chosen to use the bookmarklet instead! It seems to working much better for my situation! I am absolutely thrilled with the widget that allows the most current comments to be viewed from the sidebar. Since my primary target audience is the teachers I service within my district, maybe as they see others comment they too will want to add their words of wisdom! I am finishing this post on Monday afternoon due to the technical difficulties I had last night and will continue to work to catch up on my daily tasks!

R.I.P Greenfield Server

I would like to express my deepest condolences to the teachers and staff of Greenfield Elementary in regards to your recent loss. For those of you who do not know, yesterday at about 12:00 the official word came down that the server was officially dead and all data was irretrievable. All documents that were saved in teachers’ home files (the Z Drive) & in the Classes 07-08 folder were lost. As you can imagine this was devastating news. While the cause of the death is inconclusive, it is believed that it may have been caused by an electrical surge during one of our recent storms. Teachers at RMMS know just how they feel! The also have suffered through a similar situation, and lost all of their data earlier in the year. Click on the above link to view another perspective on similar events. The events leading to the demise of this server could not have been predicted or avoided, and just like other “natural” disasters no one is to blame. But I ask you to take time to reflect and ask , “What can we learn from these events?

As I talked to Leah about the events of the day, we recalled a blog entry that seemed to sum it up, “Never Rely on Any Single Point of Failure” . A single point of failure is anything that, if it fails, then whatever you are doing is dramatically or fatally hindered. Here is my advice. Our servers are on most days very reliable and relatively safe place to store documents. But if you choose to only save to the server and something happens to the data then you have relied on a single point of failure. It is good practice to back up your files to another location in addition to the server. Some possible alternative locations are flash drives, CDs, or the D drive on one machine in your room. I have to admit that this is something that I need to work on also! In the next few weeks, try to get in the habit at the end of each day or week to back up the files to an additional location. I know how hard each and everyone of you work on your documents and projects and would hate to see these items vanish into thin air.

Back up… so you don’t crack up!

Imagine- you are on your commute home and you think of an email you should have sent out to your colleagues. You hope you remember to do it when you get home later on in the evening. You think to yourself, “Well, it sure would be nice if I could use my cell phone to record my voice and have it sent in text form to my email account” Well you can and you do not even need to have Internet on your phone!

Jott is just too cool 4 school! And it is free! This post is for anyone who wishes they could transcribe their voice into text. ADMINISTRATORS this could be a cool tool for you too! Once you have a free account, Jott allows the account user to call a specific phone number (Add it on speed dial, I did!) and leave a message for yourself, anyone of your contacts, even a group. Or maybe you want to add to a “to do list” and have it emailed to you! It then transcribes your message into text via an email. It even has the option of sending text messages…but I have not had much luck with that, but you Verizon users might have more luck! It also allows those of us who use Twitter to post an entry via our phone!

TGIF!