PJsPD Snow Day resources

These snow days are becoming to much of a habit for my taste, but I do still love the weather in Ohio! Here are some activities for PD in your PJs.

Beginner

Pocket (http://getpocket.com/): Pocket is a service that captures web pages for reading later. You know how it is, you stumble upon a great story from The Atlantic, but you either don’t have time to read it now, you want to save it as a resource for later, or both. Pocket adds a button to your browser which allows you to save the page with one click. There are Pocket apps for mobile devices and your computer.
Start building your Personal Learning Network (PLN) using Twitter. Your PLN is a great resource for ideas and as a sounding board. Visit a Teacher ‘s Guide on Creating Personal Learning Networks. Also, check out Helping Educators Get Started With Twitter. You can follow me at @mr_rcollins, and I have a Twitter list of Ohio Educators that can point you toward some teachers to follow.

Your inbox is not an organizational tool. Some tips on setting up your email efficiently and take back your email. I also have another article, Automatically filter student email out of your inbox to tame all of those Google Docs notifications.
Investigate and research Twitter chats. Based on Twitter hashtags, a Twitter chat is usually a question/answer format discussion. Teachers’ Visual Guide to Educational Twitter Chats

Learn to code (http://www.codecademy.com/): The learn to code movement isn’t about becoming programmers. It is about becoming comfortable with the language and logic of computers. CodeAcademy is a great start. I would recommend starting with Python (the computer language, not the snake).
Interactive Fiction (IF): From the text adventures of the 80s, Interactive Fiction is a form of writing where the reader can be an active participant in the story. Larry Ferlazzo has a post about The Best Places To Read & Write “Choose Your Own Adventure” Stories, which also contains several examples. inklewriter is a great online resource for you or you students to use to write their own interactive fiction. For more advanced IF, Writing IF is a good start on the why, and Write a Text Adventure With Inform 7 is a good start on the how.

I’ll be online in the Teacher Like a Hacker chatroom that you can access here if you have any questions or comments.