Online Lesson Planner

PlanBookEdu is an online lesson planner. Since it’s online, you can create, edit, view, and print your plans from various devices with Internet access. You can attach files to your entry, include hyperlinks, and tag it with standards. With just a click you can share your plans with a colleague or a substitute.

Signing Up and Creating a Planbook

After clicking the Signup button and creating an account, you will set up your planbook choosing from a variety of customization options, which can be edited later if needed.

Entering Plans

Once the Calendar page is displayed click a day to start making entries.

I like the option to bump lessons to the next day (thinking snow day). The drag button makes it easy to move or copy entries. They provide several layouts to choose from when printing your plans, as well as some tips on how to make it all fit on one page.

When editing an entry, you can choose a standard(s), attach a file(s), and include hyperlinks. This would be very helpful if you have resources in Google Docs or Evernote that you would like to reference, or even just a website to use during the lesson. The toolbar offers sufficient editing features to make a lengthy entry easy to read with a numbered list, highlights, etc. The “This entry should appear” menu allows to you to set entries to repeat, or create a template.

Managing Your Planbooks

By clicking Planbooks in the top blue bar you can choose to create, delete, or copy a planbook. For each of your planbooks you can edit the settings and enter off days.

Standards

Some Common Core and Missouri Standards are included, as well as the option to enter custom standards. The Standards link shows a list of the standards with options to view which ones you’ve taught, and add or search standards.

Sharing

Anyone can view a shared planbook, no account required. When sharing a planbook (view access only, no editing rights) you can set the start and end dates, choose an expiration period, and set an access option:

• Restricted: Only those people you list can view it. You enter the email address and send a notification. This person will receive an email message with a link to click to view your planbook, or a section of the planbook. They will need to enter their email address to access the planbook.
• Open: Anyone can view it. You enter the email address and send a notification. This person will receive an email message with a link to click to view your planbook, or a section of the planbook. You will be also be provided with code to embed the planbook in a webpage.

On this Share page will also be listed any planbooks published by other teachers that have been shared with you.

Accounts

• Free Basic Service: limited features; you can NOT: attach files, share, export to Word/PDF, print from browser, tag with standards, embed planbook, or use the spell check.
• 14-day Premium Trial: Try all the features of the Premium Account for free for 14 days.
  
• Premium Account: $25 per year, group discounts available

This online planner can free you from the file cabinet and 3 ring binders lining your shelves. You can scan any papers for which you don’t have digital copies to create a digital library of your resources. It provides anywhere, anytime access to your lesson plans, allowing you to easily communicate your plans with others. I wish it offered a way to password protect certain attached files (tests), or have a teacher and student view. Then you could embed your planbook or link to it on a webpage to post your assignment for students and parents to access, still attaching all the files a teacher would need, but not allowing any previews of tests for students. I wish the sharing feature included rights to allow editing to facilitate teacher collaboration in the creation of lesson plans.

What are your thoughts?

Did You Know That You Could…With Your Kindle?

Kindle is my ebook reader app of choice. I like my professional development, cooking, and other nonfiction books in a digital text format so that I can make annotations that are easily accessible for use in other contexts (blog posts, Evernote, etc). I do own a Kindle, but actually use the Kindle app on my iPad more frequently. When it comes to stories, those fiction books that I read for enjoyment, I typically enjoy those in a digital audio format to give my eyes a break. But that’s another post.

Annotations

Kindle includes a wonderful feature that allows you to access on your computer the highlights and notes you’ve made while reading Kindle ebooks (only works with books purchased from Amazon), either on your Kindle or when using the Kindle App on another mobile device. I like that I can get my notes/thoughts out of Kindle where I can further process, utilize, and share them. I also like that I can add notes to my highlights on my computer via the Your Highlights webpage. This is one of the reasons I prefer the Kindle app over iBooks.

Kindle Networking

Sharing annotations: You can choose to make your highlights and notes public for a particular book, which means other people who follow you can see them. Currently our team of instructional specialists is doing a book study of Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning. I’ve chosen to share my notes for this book publicly. This means anyone “following me” on Kindle can see my annotations, if they so choose, while reading the book on a Kindle device. Since I read mostly on the iPad, I’m disappointed that this features is limited only to actual Kindle devices.

Sharing Books Read: In addition, at the kindle.amazon.com site, I can see the books (purchased at Amazon) being reading (if they’ve set them to public) by the people that I follow. My followers can see the books that I’m reading which I’ve set to public. I’m just getting started with the following of people on Kindle. I can see that it could be a great way to get book recommendations.

To get started, in your browser navigate to kindle.amazon.com. Click the Guest link at the top and log in with the Amazon account associated with your Kindle/Kindle App.

Finding Readers to Follow: I choose to link my Twitter account because that helped me find people that I can follow at Kindle. (Be aware that it also automatically posts to your Twitter account new books being read which are set to public.) You don’t have to link either of these accounts.

You can also use the search field to locate other Kindle users to follow.  It’s been my experience that if they’ve just recently set up their Kindle Profile it may take 24 hours or so before they will show up in search results.

Setting Books and Annotations to Public: You can set book to public by clicking the Your Books link and choosing which books you want to go public by checking the appropriate boxes.

Shopping for Books

From the iPad Kindle App I can not access the Kindle store to purchase more books. So I was glad when Amazon published the Kindle Store for iPad, not an app but a webpage formatted for access on the ipad to be used for purchasing Kindle books. I accessed this webpage in Safari and used Send to>Add to Home Screen to create a button on one of my screens for quick access. I can click the Buy button and choose to read the book in the browser or in the Kindle App. I especially like the option to download  a sample of a book before I purchase.

Sending Documents to Kindle

Occasionally I have a free PDF book or lengthy article that was not purchased from Amazon that I want to read and annotate. I prefer to access this document via Kindle so that I can read the document on various devices, syncing bookmarks, annotations, etc. between each. Below are 3 methods you can use to add documents to your Kindle or Kindle App.

Send to Kindle: This free Windows software allows you to send a document from your computer to your Kindle, or any of your devices running a Kindle app, with just one click. From Windows Explorer, right click on one or more documents and choose “Send to Kindle.” Or, from any application that can print, select Print and choose “Send to Kindle” as your printer (documents are delivered in PDF format). If the document is a supported file type, your furthest page read, bookmarks, notes and annotations, and highlights will be synced.

Email Attachments: Amazon provides you with email addresses for each of your registered devices to use to send documents to your Kindle or a device with the Kindle app. For example, if I want to send a document to my Kindle Fire, I address an email to jgarton_19@Kindle.com and attach the document. If I want to send a document to the Kindle app on my iPad, I address an email to jgarton_84@Kindle.com and attach the document. To find the Kindle email addresses for your devices, go to Amazon’s “Manage Your Kindle” page and click “Personal Documents” in the list on the left. Kindle will accept documents only from the email addresses you’ve authorized. At the bottom of this same webpage you can edit your authorized email addresses. There are limitations on file size, number of attachments, supported file tips, etc which you can read about on the Kindle Personal Documents Service Help webpage.

USB Transfer: You can also transfer personal documents from your computer to your Kindle by connecting it with a USB cable. The Kindle Personal Documents Service Help webpage has directions for how to do this.

Lending Your Books

You can lend a book you’ve purchased from Amazon one time, for a 14 day period. You will not be able to read that book during those 14 days. Product details will show if a book provides lending rights (Lending: Enabled.) You can loan books to someone without a Kindle because they can use the free Kindle Reading Apps to access the book on a computer, tablet, or smart phone. See Amazon’s Lending Kindle Books help webpage for the details. I have not tried out this feature yet.

Free Books

There is a wide selection of free books available for the Kindle. If you are a member of Amazon Prime and own a Kindle device you have access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library from which you can borrow 1 book a month for free with no due date. There are other numerous sites where you can get additional ebooks for free.

Have a good Kindle tips to share?

Fast and Fabulous Firefox

Firefox is currently my browser of choice for several reasons, foremost being speed, personalization, and compatibility with various Web 2.0 tools. Sometimes Google Apps doesn’t play well with Internet Explorer resulting in jiggling/jumping screens or buttons that don’t work. I also like that I can personalize this browser and have some settings sync across multiple devices. I spend hours in my browser each day, so these two features are a real time saver and increase my efficiency quotient.

Default Browser

You can use more than one web browser on your computer at the same time. So you can easily give Firefox and try and still have Internet Explorer available. When you install Firefox it will ask if you want it to be your default browser. I would recommend choosing NO at first. Once you’ve used it long enough to know that it will work for you, then you can choose to make it your default browser (Options>Advanced>General>Click the Check Now button in System Defaults).

Setting Your Homepage

You can set multiple tabs to open on start up by first opening all the tabs you wish to open when you start Firefox and then following these steps:

Using Pinned App Tabs

I prefer to open four sites (Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, and Tasks) as App Tabs. Every time I start Firefox, each of these tabs opens with a small footprint having only an icon displayed. I like that you can’t accidentally close these tabs as there is no close button on the tabs. If I get a new email message, the Gmail icon glows. When you click a link in one of these sites it will open in a new window so that your App Tab remains available. To set a site to open as an App Tab, right click on the tab and choose Pin as App Tab.

Load Your Toolbars

You can choose to hide/show most of the toolbars. You can also choose which buttons to display and in what order by using the Customize Toolbar window. I view only the Navigation and Bookmarks Toolbar to keep the interface clean. In the Navigation toolbar I’ve added the buttons for some of my Extensions (Evernote, LastPass). The Bookmarks Toolbar has those websites that I access on daily as well as some bookmarklets (Diigolet, Pin it!, and Convert with Zamzar).

Sync Between Your Devices

I use Firefox Sync to sync my links in the Bookmarks toolbar with the Firefox browsers that I run on my desktop, laptop and phone. This means if I add a link to the Bookmarks toolbar on my desktop computer, that same link will appear in the Bookmarks toolbar on my phone.  Firefox Sync can automatically sync book​mark​s, history, pass​word​s and ​open​ tabs. I choose to sync just bookmarks. For an iPhone or iPad you can install the free Firefox Home app to access your synced bookmarks, history, and open tabs.

Customize for Your Work Flow

Add-ons can be installed to add additional features to your browser. Two types of Add-ons are Extensions and Plugins. Extensions add new features or modify existing ones (block ads, download videos). Plugins provide support for Internet content (Flash, Quicktime, Silverlight). The more Add-ons you have the slower Firefox may start. Because of this, I’m careful to keep my Add-ons to a minimum.

The Extensions I use are: Last Pass, Boomerang for Gmail, Evernote Web Clipper, Google Shortcuts (I especially like that I can open Google Tasks in a full browser window. I have a lot of tasks.), and IE Tab 2. IE Tab 2 allows me to open SISK12 and DESE’s Web Applications in an Internet Explorer tab within Firefox. It’s been my experience that these 2 sites don’t fully function in Firefox, but will work fine for what I do using the IE Tab 2 extension. I don’t do grades in SISK12, so I can’t speak to the functionality of that component. After you install IE Tab 2, in the Add-ons Manager, click its Options button. Paste in the web addresses for the sites that you want to open with Internet Explorer. You will need Internet Explorer installed on your station for this to work extension to work. If this extension doesn’t allow you to do all that you need to in SISK12, then you should continue to access SISK12 in Internet Explorer.

For security and functionality you need to keep your Add-ons updated. Usually Extensions do a good job of updating automatically. Plugins do not always update automatically (even though I’ve indicated in the settings that I want them to) so I occasionally click the link in the Add-ons Manager to check for updates. Also, when installing or updating plugins or add-ons, watch for additional software that it may offer to install. Usually the box to install the additional software is checked by default and you should uncheck it.

Find It Quick

• Awesome Bar: I like that I can start typing a website title or address in the location bar, and the autocomplete drop-down will show matching sites from my browsing history.
• Search Bar: Enter keywords here to use a variety of search engines without accessing their websites. Of course you can customize the search bar choosing a default search engine, adding additional search engines, and more.

Choose Your Flavor

Click the Appearance link in the Add-on Manager to change the colors, buttons, and images by choosing a Personas or a Themes.

• Personas: Change the color scheme and add background image to the toolbars.
• Themes: more customizable than Personas, as it changes the look of buttons and menus.

Additional Settings

• Security Settings: You can several security options including remembering passwords and setting a master password. Since I use LastPass, I do not use the password features.
• Do Not Track: Tracking refers to the methods used by various sites to learn about your web browsing behavior and use that information to show you ads. You can turn on the Do Not Track feature to notify sites that you do not want your browsing behavior tracked. However, they are not required to honor this request.
• Site Identity Button: In the Location bar, the left of the web address is the Site Identity Button. The color of this button indicates the level of available security information (Gray= none, Blue=Basic, Green=Complete.) Click to display security information about a site.

Side Notes

• SpeedyFox: Every couple of weeks I run SpeedyFox, a free little program that keeps my Firefox fast.
• Chrome: Yes, I’ve tried it and yes it’s fast. However, when using Chrome it’s been my experience that if you visit a secure page that isn’t trusted by Chrome, but that you know is trustworthy, Chrome will display an error page with no options to access the webpage. It also lacks some of the customization features that Firefox offers.
• A “Firefox” is another name for the red panda.