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SOS - Safe Online Surving

By Barbara Bray      July 23, 2013 -- 08:05 AM


As part of its longstanding crime prevention and public outreach efforts, the FBI has a free web-based initiative designed to help teachers educate learners about cyber safety.

 

It is called the FBI SOS (Safe Online Surfing) Internet Challenge—and it was developed with the assistance of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and with the input of teachers and schools.


The goal of the  is to promote cyber citizenship and help students learn about online safety while engaging in fun, interactive games. Students will then navigate through the various ...   more...

Comments ››

Linda Ullah: Featured Member March 2013

By Barbara Bray      July 23, 2013 -- 07:56 AM


  Linda UllahLinda Ullah  

  Semi-Retired Educator, Coach

  Online Instructor, Friday Institute
  for Educational Innovation, NC State

  Krause Center for Innovation, Foothill College

 

Linda has been a member of My eCoach since 2005. She is currently part of a nationwide educational reform movement toward small, focused high schools that have chosen the New Tech approach of project-based learning. Linda primarily works with the teachers coaching them through their projects and helping them learn to integrate technology and PBL.


Linda has many reasons for ...   more...

Comments ››

Marsha Johanning: Featured Member February 2013

By Barbara Bray      July 23, 2013 -- 07:54 AM


Marsha Johanning  Marsha Johanning

  Library/Media Specialist,
  Mentor, Teacher

  Grades 2-5, Sullivan Elementary

  Sullivan, MO


Marsha has been a member of My eCoach since 2009. She works in a mid-sized elementary school where she tries to make the library the hub of her school by creating a comfortable inviting place that both students and staff like to be. Being a Library/Media Specialist, her teaching environment includes both text and technology. As well as working directly with students, Marsha also does technology teacher trainings, sets up programs, and helps solve difficulties ...   more...

Comments ››

Learning with Minecraft

By Barbara Bray      July 19, 2013 -- 12:19 PM

Video Games and Virtual Worlds in the Classroom: Learning with Minecraft EDU was designed to give parents, students, and teachers a better understanding of how one California middle school uses virtual learning environments in the classroom.

 

Throughout the year, their sixth grade Core Humanities program immerses students in the digital world of Minecraft EDU, an independently developed video game specifically geared towards the classroom. Explore this website to learn more about how students at Del Mar Intermediate School are re-imagining the Ancient world.

 

Minecraft at Sony Ericcson Booth
 

Click here to view the project....   more...

Comments ››

Marcelo Leal: Featured Member January 2013

By Barbara Bray      July 19, 2013 -- 12:16 PM


 Marcelo Leal Marcelo Leal

  Language Department, Migrant Ed. Program

  IT/Curriculum Specialist, Oak Grove High School

  East Side Union High School District

  San Jose, CA

 

Marcelo was introduced to My eCoach in 2008 and immediately saw its applications for the classroom and beyond. He has incorporated the surveys and quizzes functions of My eCoach in the classroom and found that the ease of creating a website through My eCoach has enhanced his world language department and Migrant Ed. program’s visibility. Most important to Marcelo has been My eCoach’s ...   more...

Comments ››

Featured Member September 2012

By Barbara Bray      December 22, 2012 -- 01:39 PM

 

 

 Pam Lowe

 Curriculum Director/Instructional Facilitator

 Naylor R-2 School District

 Naylor, Missouri

 

 

 

I was a Missouri eMINTS fourth grade teacher when I was introduced to My eCoach in 2000. The ease of use and being able to create online resources for my students that aligned with state standards made the program the perfect tool for me.

 

I created many online resources, an e-portofolio and as I grew as an educator and began presenting workshops to schools and teachers, I began to use My eCoach for my presentations. ...   more...

Comments ››

Featured Member December 2012

By Barbara Bray      December 22, 2012 -- 01:27 PM

 


  Ken Bakken

  Retired Teacher and Technology Trainer,

  Certified My eCoach Trainer and eCoach,
  Washington State

 

 

Ken has been a member of My eCoach since 2003 and particpated in its early evolution. He helped administer state grants using My eCoach in his role as an inservice technology trainer in Washington State. Because of the geographical distances between the schools in his grant projects he found that the tools within my eCoach greatly helped bridge these distances.

 

Most of the projects that he developed were focused on middle ...   more...

Comments ››

Spotlights to Check Out

By Barbara Bray      December 22, 2012 -- 12:41 PM

Here are a few of the websites and resources that we spotlighted this year. We also added vocabulary, questions, and extension activities for you:

  • Teaching from Space offers experiences and resources not found anywhere else. You can get involved in real NASA missions and research, gain access to NASA experts, and use NASA equipment to take learning to a new level.
  • FBI Online Surfing (SOS) promotes cyber citizenship and help students learn about online safety while engaging in fun, interactive games. The program was designed to address current Internet safety threats while keeping each grade ...   more...
Comments ››

Featured Member November 2012

By Barbara Bray      December 22, 2012 -- 12:36 PM


  Cynthia ChandlerCynthia Sistek-Chandler, ED D

  Assistant Professor, National University

  Certified eCoach




Cynthia has been a My eCoach member since 2006. She has been actively engaged in the online teaching community since 2000 for higher education and k-12. She has over 50 projects in My eCoach which she uses for teaching and for presentations at conferences. From 2007 through 2012, she worked with almost 500 School Administrators in AB 430 Training. As part of their training, administrators engaged in My eCoach by creating blogs for archiving their practicum evidence and by constructing ...   more...

Comments ››

Featured Projects Examples from 2012

By Barbara Bray      December 22, 2012 -- 11:30 AM

Teachers are amazing. We continue to be surprised by the quality of projects teachers create in My eCoach. Here are a few examples of projects we featured over the last few months.

Comments ››

Featured Member October 2012

By Barbara Bray      December 1, 2012 -- 08:55 PM

  Cynthia Melendez

  ESOL Specialist, Grades 1-5

  McMullen Booth Elementary

  Pinellas County, Florida

   


Cynthia has been an active member of My eCoach since 2009. She is currently working on a site for ESOL parents and students. She wanted one place where they could go to practice and learn more about reading by playing games and singing songs. The tools, easy project builder and secure website publishing that My eCoach offers suited her needs perfectly. Cynthia also incorporated Web 2.0 tools by creating glogsters that feature games and songs, all ...   more...

Comments ››

Tips for Being Creative and Innovative

By Barbara Bray      November 7, 2012 -- 11:12 AM

Anyone can be creative because we all possess mental processes that include decision making, language, and memory. All we have to do to boost our creative potential is to break down the established ways we view and interact with the world. Allowing yourself to see things differently encourages creativity and looking for ways to be innovative.

  1. Observe: When you are trying to come up with a new project or idea, study how others do something similar and the problems they might be having.

  2. Become an Expert: Focus on something you are interested in and learn as much as you can. Then share what you ...   more...
Comments ››

Featured Member August 2012

By Barbara Bray      August 7, 2012 -- 09:04 PM


 Donna Blanton

  Elementary Teacher

  Pinellas Park Elementary

  Pinellas Park, Florida

   


Donna was introduced to My eCoach via a science grant for a collaboration project in 2006. She was so intrigued with the capabilities My eCoach had to offer to create teacher and student friendly websites that she incorporated My eCoach into all areas of her curriculum.


Donna creates surveys, blogs, quizzes, a classroom webpage and projects that include web-based learning units. Donna is always looking to keep up with todays’ demands in the ever-changing ...   more...

Comments ››

Featured Member July 2012

By Barbara Bray      August 7, 2012 -- 11:03 AM


Russ Knopp

My eCoach member since 2006, 6th grade teacher, GenYes Teacher, Tech Coordinator, Waitsburg Middle/High School, Waitsburg, WA

 

Russ ran class teams for his 6th grade classes and GenYes students at the high school. Check out this site for his students:

 

Learners for Life

 

Russ just retired June 2012 after teaching 45 years. Russ taught most grade levels, coached basketball, was on the Board of Directors for the school district, was a middle and elementary school principal, and went back to the classroom to teach 6th grade and GenYes students. His daughter wrote ...   more...

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Featured Member June 2012

By Barbara Bray      August 7, 2012 -- 10:59 AM

 

Roxanne Clement, Featured Member June 2012

 

Library/Media Specialist, Mentor, Reading Specialist, Teacher, Technology Coordinator, Grades K-6, Bay Farm School, Alameda, CA    


Roxanne has been a member of My eCoach since 2004 and continues to use My eCoach for many of her projects, surveys, blogs, and websites. ...   more...

Comments ››

Create a Form from Survey Builder

By Barbara Bray      August 6, 2012 -- 10:42 PM

You want to create a form but the surveys keep adding Q1, Q2, etc. to each question. Surveys just didn't look like forms. So now you can just click one box to convert a survey to a form.

 

 

 

 

When you create a form, you probably want to be notified and know who fills it out. Use the pull-down menu to choose either internal message or email where you want to be notified.

more...

Comments ››

Case Study: San Diego COE Leadership Services

By Barbara Bray      May 10, 2012 -- 09:23 AM

San Diego COE Case Study

 

San Diego County Office of Education supports administrators from all over the region starting with AB430 Module 3 training. SDCOE uses My eCoach as a learning management system to house the curriculum for the training. Principals are part of an online community to share and discuss leadership issues and to refer to materials they learned in the workshop.

Problem
SDCOE wanted more than a learning management system for their AB430 train...   more...

Comments ››

Case Study: Madison Middle School, Oakland USD

By Barbara Bray      May 10, 2012 -- 09:15 AM

Bill of Rights Project

 

Oakland Unified School District is an urban district that is trying everything they can to stop students from dropping out. Madison Middle School is in East Oakland with a determined principal who wants to make a difference in their children’s lives.

Problem

Teachers were working hard and test scores were improving, but students were not motivated to learn. The lessons needed to be more rigorous and engaging. The teacher turnover rate was too high. The principal, Dr. Lucinda Taylor, not only wanted to increase student achievement and improve student engagement, she wanted to ...   more...

Comments ››

Case Study: Bay Area Foreign Language Department @ Stanford University

By Barbara Bray      May 8, 2012 -- 10:56 AM

BAFLP - My eCoach Case Study

BAFLP (Bay Area Foreign Language Department) Stanford University
World language teachers in the Bay Area Foreign Language Program (BAFLP) in Stanford University used My eCoach to create a system for collaboration, communication, and demonstrated improved results in the classroom.


Problem
World language teachers in the Bay Area Foreign Language Program (BAFLP) needed a system that allowed for collaboration, coaching, publishing, and aligning standards to the curriculum. Stanford University provides ongoing workshops for World Language teachers in the summer and throughout the year. They needed ...   more...

Comments ››

7 Questions about BYOD in Schools

By Barbara Bray      April 26, 2012 -- 06:31 PM

Smartphones and mobile devices are changing the business world. Instead of IT departments being able to force a particular set of mobile solutions on the workforce, employees now expect to be able to use the smartphones — and increasingly, iPads or other mobile devices — they bought for personal use. According to data from Aberdeen Group (via ZDNet), about 75% of enterprises now have “bring your own device” policies in place. Read more 

So “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) is making sense for companies. Is BYOD going to work for schools?
 

Think ...   more...

Comments ››

Be One of the ING Unsung Heroes

By eCoach Staff      December 21, 2011 -- 04:55 PM

ING Unsung Heroes began in 1995 as a way for ING to demonstrate its commitment to the education community. Grants are given to K-12 educators utilizing new teaching methods and techniques that improve learning.


All K-12 education professionals are eligible to apply. Applicants must be employed by an accredited K-12 public or private school located in the U.S. and be a full-time educator, teacher, principal, paraprofessional, or classified staff member working on a project with demonstrated effectiveness in improving student learning. That's YOU!


Submit an application for an ING Unsung Heroes ...   more...

Comments ››

Whatever It Takes

By eCoach Staff      December 21, 2011 -- 04:46 PM

“Whatever it takes” is an attitude that drives most of Finland’s 62,000 educators in 3,500 schools from Lapland to Turku—professionals selected from the top 10 percent of the nation’s graduates to earn a required master’s degree in education. 

 

 

"Whatever it takes" should be education's manifesto everywhere. Every child is unique, special, and gifted. Finland values good teachers, expects them to be highly trained (Master degrees), pays them what they are worth, and provides them ongoing support. Children start school at seven and stay with ...   more...

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Using Technology to Personalize Learning

By eCoach Staff      December 21, 2011 -- 04:17 PM
According to Darrell West in his article "Using Technology to Personalize Learning and Assess Students in Real Time", American education must adopt new instructional approaches and leverage new technologies in the classroom in order for the United States to compete in the global economy. In John Dewey’s book Schools of Tomorrow he wrote in 1915 "conventional public school is arranged to make things easy for the teacher who wishes quick and tangible results." Oh my! That was some time ago. 

 

Just think 1915!! Dewey made the case that education ...   more...

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Celebrating December's Holidays

By eCoach Staff      December 21, 2011 -- 03:32 PM

The month of December is rich in holiday traditions for millions of people around the world so we created this project for you.


Free Animation from Animation Library

We offer you this project, Celebrating December Holidays, filled with resources to help excite and inspire teachers, parents, and children about this wonderful time of year. You can learn about your own family traditions as well as those of others from countries around the globe. 


Happy Hannukah! Chanukah or Hannukah, the Festival ...   more...

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Be an Armchair Astronaut and See the Universe

By eCoach Staff      December 21, 2011 -- 03:10 PM

Solar SystemEyes on the Solar System is a 3-D interactive environment full of real NASA mission data. Explore the cosmos from your computer. See the entire solar system moving in real time. Use this visualization tool control space and time. As an armchair astronaut it’s up to you.

 

Use the tutorials to learn how to navigate EYES on the Solar System.

 

Hop on the the NASA Spacecraft Juno. Juno’s principal goal in this NASA mission is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Underneath its dense cloud cover, Jupiter safeguards secrets to the fundamental processes and conditions that governed ...   more...

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Global Education Collaborative

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:49 AM

Online Conference November 14-18, 2011 
Global Education CollaborativeDon't miss any of the 325 presentations starting this Monday as part of the 
Global Education Collaborative. Each presentation is using Blackboard Collaborative for you to participate or watch later.

 
Join Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey as they present Personalized Learning Toolkits on Thursday Nov. 17 at 4pm PST. Go here to access sessions.
 
   more...
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11 Tips on Personalized Learning

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:49 AM

Personalizing learning means moving to student-centered learning. This takes time. Here are a few tips to help you transform your learning environment. 

  1. Find out how each student learns best.
  2. Allow students to choose their topic.
  3. Encourage teachers and students to co-design the curriculum.
  4. Ask lots of questions.
  5. Teach less, learn more.
  6. Share how you learn.
  7. Connect, extend, challenge.
  8. Re-evaluate assessment.
  9. Define goals and encourage reflection.
  10. Focus on learning, not work.
  11. Coordinate student led conferences .

Learning begins with the learner. What children know and what ...   more...

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Curate Your Own Learning

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:48 AM

Curation is a new skill that all of us can use. There are multiple curation tools where you can collect resources based on a topic, tags, and other people's suggestions. One curation tool that is growing quickly is Scoop-it. Barbara has set up several Scoop-its that you can follow and rescoop any of the resources to your own Scoop-its: 

   more...
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Growing Creative Environments

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:48 AM

Barbara posts regularly on her blog Rethinking Learning. Join her as she facilitates growing creative and engaging learning environments. Here's some of the latest posts:

 

Contact Barbara, follow Barbara's blog
and follow her at Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn

   more...
Comments ››

November Featured Projects

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:47 AM

We are so proud of the featured projects our members have created that they now appear in the lower right on the outside of My eCoach so everyone can view them. Here are a few of the featured projects since the last newsletter:

Comments ››

November eLibrary Spotlights

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:47 AM

Here's a few spotlights that go straight to their websites. When you are on the My eCoach home page, you can find more than a link to the website or resource. We add vocabulary words, keywords, curriculum areas, grade levels, essential and discussion questions, extension activities, and, in some cases, match to standards.  

Do you know a great resource? Please submit it to our eLibrary.

   more...
Comments ››

Educational News, Grants and Contests for November

By Sara Zimmerman      November 11, 2011 -- 08:46 AM

Educational News, Grants and Contests

Articles and Resources

 

Contests & Challenges

Comments ››

12 Tips on Inquiry-Based Learning

By Sara Zimmerman      August 31, 2011 -- 02:24 PM

Inquiry-based learning is a style of teaching that is based on asking questions that kids honestly care about and guiding them to find the answers as well as coming up with new questions.  

  1. Plan enough time to pre-plan, plan, and plan again during implementation.more...
Comments ››

Earthquake and Hurricane Resources

By Sara Zimmerman      August 31, 2011 -- 02:23 PM

 

EarthquakesThe world is shaking and the wind is blowing all over the place. We found some lessons and activities that you can use in your classroom. 
   more...
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Building Creative Environments

By Sara Zimmerman      August 31, 2011 -- 02:22 PM

Barbara posts regularly on her blog Rethinking Learning. Join her as she facilitates growing creative and engaging learning environments. Here's some of the latest posts:

 Going Places Contest

   more...
Comments ››

August Featured Projects

By Sara Zimmerman      August 31, 2011 -- 02:22 PM

We are so proud of the featured projects our members have created that they now appear in the lower right on the outside of My eCoach so everyone can view them. Here are a few of the featured projects since the last newsletter:

Threads of Life

   more...
Comments ››

eLibrary Spotlights for August

By Sara Zimmerman      August 31, 2011 -- 02:21 PM

Click on an eLibrary Spotlight and find more than a link to the website or resource. We continue to build a rich collection of resources for you with vocabulary words, keywords, curriculum areas, grade levels, essential and discussion questions and extension activities. These are featured on the Home page when you login also with matched standards. Here are a few spotlights we want to share with you:

Do ...   more...

Comments ››

Educational News, Grants and Contests

By Sara Zimmerman      August 31, 2011 -- 02:20 PM

Noteworthy updates from the educational community

Articles & White Papers

Comments ››

What did you do today?

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:54 PM

                      
Alaska Clean Up

Follow Janice Friesen, one of our Certificated eCoaches, on one of her trips around the world. Janice set up a blog where she is inviting her followers to add what they are doing. Go to Janice's blog to learn more...

 

   more...
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PBL 101 Playshop in Hawaii

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:53 PM

Experience Projects as Learner and Teacher  

PBL Summer InstituteA playshop July 18-22, 2011 in Honolulu, Hawaii for teachers excited about project-based learning (PBL). There are a few spots left where you can join K-12 teachers who will collaborate by topic to create a video and then group by content area or grade level to transform lessons to inquiry-based PBL. A big plus is that the playshop is in Hawaii on the beautiful campus of Mid-Pacific Institute then play even more later on the beach.

Go to project101.ning.com to learn more...

   more...
Comments ››

ISTE Conference in Philly

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:53 PM

Are you going to the ISTE Conference in Philadelphia, PA, June 26-29, 2011? This is the International Society of Technology in Education conference with over 17,000 people from all over the world. If you want to connect with the people who write the articles and blogs you read, this is the conference. You can still sign up to go.

 

If you'll be there, please come by:

Comments ››

Rethinking Learning - a Blog to Follw

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:52 PM

Barbara Bray has a new title: Creative Learning Strategist and a redesigned website and blog called Rethinking Learning. Join her as she facilitates growing creative and engaging learning environments. Here's two of the latest posts:

   more...
Comments ››

June Featured Projects

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:51 PM

We are so proud of the featured projects our members have created that they now appear on the outside of My eCoach so everyone can view them. Here are a few of the featured projects since the last newsletter:

   more...
Comments ››

eLibrary Spotlights for June

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:51 PM
Click on an eLibrary Spotlight and find more than a link to the website or resource. We continue to build a rich collection of resources for you with vocabulary words, keywords, curriculum areas, grade levels, match to standards, essential and discussion questions and extension activities. These are featured on the Home page when you login also with even more information. Here are a few spotlights that we hope you find helpful:
Comments ››

Science and Math Expo

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:50 PM


Showing Glogs in Algebra 1Madison Middle School in Oakland Unified School District, CA with the leadership of Dr. Lucinda Taylor put on a successful Expo the evening of June 7th. Everyone in the school community was involved including the district Instructional Technology Team. You could feel the excitement everywhere. Students, parents, teachers, and community members attended in the biggest event ever. Parents shared how much they enjoyed seeing the types of projects their children were doing: CSI Oakland, BizWorld, Dream Houses, Glogs showing Algebra 1 Problems. and a Film Festival. Read more...

   more...
Comments ››

June Educational News, Grants and Contests

By Sara Zimmerman      June 14, 2011 -- 01:50 PM

Noteworthy updates from the educational community

Articles & Presentations

Contests & Challenges

Comments ››

Google Search by Reading Level

By Barbara Bray      June 13, 2011 -- 10:19 PM

Google searches now allow users to choose reading levels of the results of a search. There are three levels to choose among: basic, intermediate and advanced.

So how do you do a reading level search? After typing in a query on Google.com, look at the column of tools on the left side of the search results and you will see "All Results."

Click on "More search tools" and then click "Reading Level."

After you click on Reading Level you will see at ...   more...

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Cool Tips about My eCoach Blogs

By Barbara Bray      June 6, 2011 -- 10:35 AM

It is pretty easy to create a blog in My eCoach and have "user control" of who edits and comments.

  • You can create a personal blog as a private journal. No one else sees it.
  • If you are on a team, you can have a team blog and only the members of the team can view and comment on it.
  • You can share a blog with one or more My eCoach members.
  • You can create a public blog and choose from different themes.

When you create a blog, you need to create at least one post. Think of a blog as a book and the posts as chapters in the book.

...   more...

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Please take our Survey

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:40 PM

We want to hear from teachers and administrators

We are looking for input on what type of support you need as a teacher or administrator. Please take a moment to answer this short survey of 8 questions so we can better understand what your needs are.

Comments ››

Tip: Brand Yourself

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:38 PM

What is your Unique Selling Position (USP)? How do you stand out in a crowd or in social media so you are remarkable and different enough to get noticed by an employer or client?

 

You can do this by branding yourself. The job market is tough and sending thousands of resumés may not be the right way to get that "job" you want. This article from AARP...   more...

Comments ››

March's Useful Posts for Educators and Coaches

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:37 PM

If you are setting up or participating in an online community, training, or coaching program, follow Barbara Bray's blog. Bray writes a regular column on professional development for the OnCue Journal and has been involved in coaching and designing online communities with numerous organizations around the world. Here's links to the latest four posts:


Visit Barbara Bray's website, contact her, or follow her at Find us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter View our profile on LinkedIn.

   more...
Comments ››

Playshop for Teachers about PBL

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:37 PM

July 18 - 22, 2011 at Mid-Pacific Institute in Hawaii

Project Based Learning 101: A Playshop for teachers excited about project-based learning but are unsure of where to begin. This is a week long playshop in Hawaii open to K-12 teachers. Go to this site for more details and to sign up for this unique opportunity.

PBL Summer Institute

   more...
Comments ››

Presentations at Educational Conferences

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:37 PM

CUE Conference in Palm Springs March 17-19

Here are some interesting presentations at this year's Computer Using Educator's conference in Palm Springs. Visit cue.org to get a list of open presentations and to sign up for workshops. 

  • Come & Get It - Free Stuff to Use Right Away (3/17 9:30-10:30)  
  • Digital Storytelling and Web 2.0 Playshop (3/17 11:30-2:30)  
  • Mobile Technology: Learning on the Go (3/18 11:30 CUETip)
  • Quick Ways to Bring Joy to Learning (3/18 3:30 CUETip) 
  • Comic Style Storytelling to teach Digital Citizenship
    (Presenter: Jeff Brain 3/19 8am)  

ISTE Conference in Philadelphia June 26-29...   more...

Comments ››

More updates about our Text Editor

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:36 PM

Last month we launched our new text editor. Here are a few more quick tips about how to use our new text editor:

  • To align your image, go to the second tab (Appearance) to the pull down menu.
  • Use the Full Screen to have more room to type.
  • If you make a mistake while you type, you now can Undo your last actions.
  • Check out the Word icon where you can now insert text from Word and it keeps the formatting the same.
  • The paint brush icon removes messy code.  
  • You can even insert the date and time into your text. 

Click here for an overview of some of the features.New Text Editor

   more...
Comments ››

March's Educational News, Grants and Contests

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:36 PM

Noteworthy updates from the educational community

Articles

Contests & Challenges


Grants and Funding Opportunities

Comments ››

Featured Projects & eLibrary Spotlights

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:35 PM

We go way beyond just providing links to the eLibrary Spotlights for our search results by finding additional activities, vocabulary, keywords and tags, extension activities, standards matched to this resource, essential questions and more. Login and click on the eLibrary Spotlight for more details about each site.  

 Featured Projects

eLibrary Spotlights


Do you know a great resource? Please ...   more...

Comments ››

Project-Based Activities Showcase

By Sara Zimmerman      March 15, 2011 -- 02:34 PM

Language Arts and Social Studies Madison Middle school teachers and students showcased their technology projects to over 220 parents and family members. This was a success thanks to a great team that included Oakland Unified School District's Instructional Technology department, a supportive principal Dr. Taylor and dedicated teachers. What a fun evening for everyone!

Ancient Egypt Travel AgentMs. Elphick's 6th grade Ancient Egyptian Travel Agents promoted their Egyptian city with special deals for camels and pyramids. Mr. Kim's 8th grade students created songs, skits, and poems about the pros and cons of the Bill of Rights amendments...   more...

Comments ››

Getting Ready for Expo

By Sara Zimmerman      January 26, 2011 -- 03:03 PM

 Madison students on netbookThe My eCoach team and the Oakland USD Instructional Technology team are working together to support Madison Middle School teachers. Language Arts and History teachers and students are preparing for their exposition Thursday, January 27. Students worked collaboratively and used their netbooks to research and design their posters and presentations. Two of the project-based activities include 8th grade students creating songs and skits about the pros and cons of the Bill of Rights amendments and 6th grade students selling their tour to their Egyptian city as Ancient Egyptian Travel Agents...   more...

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Upcoming Educational Conferences

By Sara Zimmerman      January 26, 2011 -- 03:02 PM
   more...
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Tip: Online Teaching Tips

By Sara Zimmerman      January 26, 2011 -- 03:01 PM

Teaching online can work even if you have only taught face-to-face. The first few times you set up an online class, you may wonder if your students are listening or even present. Here's some tips that might help you manage your online class:

  • Take roll: If you are using webconferencing tools, you can see Online Teaching Tipswho is online. However, many of your students may not use their names for their login. You can set up a discussion board called "Roll Call [date]" with your students responding "I'm here".
  • Protocol ...   more...
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January Educational News, Grants and Contests

By Sara Zimmerman      January 26, 2011 -- 03:00 PM

Articles

Contests & Challenges

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New Text Editor: works with all browsers

By Barbara Bray      January 18, 2011 -- 05:04 PM

Our new text editor means that now you can use any browser with My eCoach. This text editor is different than our older text editor so you may have some questions about some of the new features. This is a quick overview of some of the features.

Some of these features are pretty intuitive like the first row. There are more fonts and options plus whatever font ...   more...

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Access to Team Lists

By Barbara Bray      December 14, 2010 -- 04:26 PM
Team managers now can export the contact information for the members of their team.

On the Team Manager, the eCoach has access to loads of tools. Now there's a link to Export Roster right above the roster to the left of Send Message to Team.


The list is exported as a .csv (comma separated file) by first name, last name, email address, and more. The eCoach has access to the team manager on their team page.
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Webinars in Oct and Nov

By Sara Zimmerman      October 20, 2010 -- 07:27 AM
Webinars are a convenient way to participate and gain professional development without the hassle of flights and travel details. Here are a handful of upcoming FREE webinars for educators:
  • Joy of Learning at Classroom 2.0 Live with Barbara Bray on Saturday, October 30, 2010 9am PST will provide an overview of learning, the background of flow, where technology helps, and why it is important to bring back joy to learning so students and teachers are engaged in a joyful learning experience.
  • Understanding Common Core Standards This free session by Leslie Noonan of Collaborative Learning addresses ...   more...
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October's Newsletter Tip: Projects Encourage Sharing

By Sara Zimmerman      October 19, 2010 -- 05:37 PM
Sharing ideas, websites, projects, and products helps teachers and learners alike. When you share, you get back more than you give. You can build a collaborative, learning environment by building in activities that encourage sharing.
  • Create projects that have students work in pairs or small teams.
  • Encourage students to communicate with each other while they are working on projects.

  • Have students to come up with a guiding question and support questions.
  • When you introduce new projects, have students use think/pair/share groupings whenever you can. 

  • Use mind mapping activities...   more...

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Current My eCoach Projects

By Sara Zimmerman      October 19, 2010 -- 05:36 PM
Individuals and groups are regularly using My eCoach, with many users returning to realize the benefits of their lifetime memberships. Below are some exciting projects currently happening in My eCoach:
  • Mid-Pacific Institute in Honolulu, Hawaii teachers are including inquiry and project-based learning in their lessons. Barbara worked with an amazing team of facilitators who guided 15 teams of 8-10 teachers to create public service announcements about their school. Read more...
  • Madison Middle School in Oakland, CA is creating exciting learning environments where teachers participate in job-embedded ...   more...
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Featured Projects and eLibrary Spotlights in October

By Sara Zimmerman      October 19, 2010 -- 05:35 PM
Featured Projects eLibrary Spotlights    more...
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Educational News, Grants and Updates

By Sara Zimmerman      October 19, 2010 -- 05:33 PM
October's Educational News, Grants and Updates:

Articles

eBook
Grants, Contests and Resources
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Conferences and Events

By Sara Zimmerman      October 19, 2010 -- 05:32 PM
Here are some current and upcoming online conferences and events for educators:
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Common Core Standards Available in My eCoach

By Barbara Bray      October 18, 2010 -- 01:09 PM
The Common Core Standards (English/Language Arts and Mathematics) are available in the My eCoach standards alignment tool. We encourage you to add the standard that meets the learning objective or target with your lesson or project. There are a few projects matched to the standards.

Add The Common Core Standards to your Standards List. Go to Toolkit > Standards.

Choose Common Core Standards and any other standards you want in your Standards List. Then click Save.

Go to My Locker > My Standards and ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Rebecca Jones  December 28, 2010 -- 12:34 AM

Request Feedback from your eCoach

By Barbara Bray      September 28, 2010 -- 03:11 PM
You are creating a website, lesson, or project with My eCoach’s Universal Builder and you need help. If you are part of a team and have an eCoach, you can now request feedback on each and any page you are working on.

You get a pop-up with your eCoach(es). Choose one and send request for help. All communication between you and your eCoach is private and confidential. Only you and your eCoaches can see your comments and the eCoach replies.

When you receive a comment, you get a message in My eCoach and an email notification if you set that up in your settings. You can also see a comment icon next ...   more...
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Featured Projects and eLibrary Spotlights in September

By Sara Zimmerman      September 28, 2010 -- 02:46 PM
Featured ProjectseLibrary Spotlights
We look for resources and projects that go the extra mile. Featured Projects are authored by one or more My eCoach members using our Universal Builder. They have multiple activities, images, resources, links, embedded files and Web 2.0 tools, standards, tags, and more. When you login to My eCoach ...   more...
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Upcoming Conferences and Events

By Sara Zimmerman      September 28, 2010 -- 02:45 PM

  • The 2010 CRSTE Global Symposium will be held evenings and weekends for nine days, from October 16 - 24, 2010, to pursue and explore this notion of worldwide collaboration among professional educators. Online and free.
  • The 2010 Global Education Conference will be held November 15 - 19, 2010, online and free. Sessions will be held in multiple time zones and multiple languages over the five days.  They are now accepting proposals for presentations.
  • One Day Earth On October 10, 2010 (10.10.10), across the planet, documentary filmmakers, students, and inspired citizens will record the human experience over a 24-hour ...   more...
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Free Webinars for Educators

By Sara Zimmerman      September 28, 2010 -- 02:44 PM
Webinars are a convenient way to participate and gain professional development without the hassle of flights and travel details. Here are a handful of upcoming FREE webinars for educators:
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Andres  November 8, 2010 -- 07:09 PM

September's Educational News, Grants and Updates

By Sara Zimmerman      September 28, 2010 -- 02:43 PM
Noteworthy updates from the educational community

Articles

Grants, Contests and Resources
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Eco friendly schools go paperless

By Sara Zimmerman      September 28, 2010 -- 02:38 PM
Educators have been taught to create worksheets and print everything. Look at all the paper in the trash or recycling bin at your school by the end of the day. The first thing you can do is rethink how you use paper and why. Before you print out your email or type up your lesson plan to print, consider the following facts about paper. [Source]
  • The United States wastes approximately 749 pounds of paper a year... per person. That would be one tree per person... if all trees were 18 inches around and 100 feet tall. 
  • Each ton of recycled paper saves 17 trees, 7,000 ...   more...
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Steps for a 1:1 Laptop Program

By Barbara Bray      August 24, 2010 -- 04:01 PM
When the school moves to computers for each teacher and student, the learning environment not only changes, teaching practice changes. We ask a lot of our teachers: To not only teach the concepts, assess understanding, manage the classroom, differentiate instruction, but they also have to learn technology while they use and infuse it in their daily activities. What happens when you completely immerse the school into a technology rich environment is there is systemic change and resistance. The power of all of this is a strong leader who involves all stakeholders in the visioni...   more...
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Daily Writing Activities

By Sara Zimmerman      July 23, 2010 -- 10:25 AM
Activities for student writing improvement

Writing Fix Logo
One of the best ways to encourage your students to write is to add writing as part of their daily routine. One way to do this is to have your students keep a daily journal. Another option is to follow a writing prompt, such as those on these sites:
  • Go to Writing Fix and have your students click the daily writing prompt, copy it, and then write to the prompt.
  • Go to Daily Writing Prompts and have students go to the calendar for each day. Have them use the prompt and write to that
    prompt.
  • Daily Grammar blog offers short lessons that you can have your ...   more...
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Educational News, Grants and Updates

By Sara Zimmerman      July 23, 2010 -- 10:24 AM
Noteworthy updates from the educational community

Articles

Grants
Other News
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July's Featured Projects & eLibrary Spotlights

By Sara Zimmerman      July 23, 2010 -- 10:22 AM
Featured Projects
eLibrary SpotlightsEdible Schoolyeard Project
We look for resources and projects that go the extra mile. Featured Projects are authored by one or more My eCoach members. They have multiple activities, images, resources, links, embedded files, standards, and more. When you login to My eCoach and visit eLibrary Spotlights in the eLibrary or from your Home, ...   more...
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Useful Posts for Educators and Coaches

By Sara Zimmerman      July 23, 2010 -- 10:21 AM
If you are setting up or participating in an online community, training, or coaching program, follow the blog by Barbara Bray, My eCoach's CEO. Bray writes a regular column on professional development for the OnCue Journal, is a Learning Strategist, and has been involved in coaching and mentoring in numerous organizations around the world. Here's quick links to the latest three posts:
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Summer Resources

By Sara Zimmerman      July 23, 2010 -- 10:20 AM
Making summer fun and interesting for teachers and students:    more...
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Interactive Whiteboard Basics

By Sara Zimmerman      July 21, 2010 -- 04:33 PM
Interactive whiteboards are now used on the computer as way to extend learning with your students. There are a few basics that teachers and students need to know when they can use an interactive whiteboard. These tips were adapted from Smart Board Basics:
  1. Calibrate your interactive whiteboard.
    • Turn on your interactive whiteboard and press the keyboard and right mouse click mouse button together. This will start the calibration tool.
    • Pick up one of the pens, press it against the middle of the target that appears on your board, and release. Repeat this procedure
...   more...
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Useful Posts for Teachers

By Sara Zimmerman      June 10, 2010 -- 11:23 AM
Barbara coachingIf you are setting up or participating in an online community, training, or coaching program, we suggest following the Rethinking Learning blog by Learning Strategist and My eCoach CEO, Barbara Bray. Bray writes a regular column on professional development for the OnCue Journal and has been involved in coaching and mentoring in numerous organizations around the world. Here’s quick links to the latest three posts:
  • Tread Softly on Their Dreams - Sir Ken Robinson talk explains about doing your passion, doing what you are good at and personalizing learning. Not everyone is supposed to go ...   more...
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June's Featured Projects and Spotlights

By Sara Zimmerman      June 10, 2010 -- 11:22 AM
Featured Projects
eLibrary Spotlights
We look for resources and projects that go the extra mile. Featured Projects are authored by one or more My eCoach members. They have multiple activities, images, resources, inks, embedded files, standards, and more. When you login to My eCoach and visit eLibrary Spotlights in the eLibrary, you will access additional activities, vocabulary, extension ...   more...
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Educational News, Grants and Updates

By Sara Zimmerman      June 10, 2010 -- 11:22 AM
Noteworthy updates from the educational community

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Teacher Summertime Resources and Opportunities

By Sara Zimmerman      June 10, 2010 -- 11:19 AM
Just because summer is here doesn’t mean that learning stops. Here are some great resources and opportunities for teachers over the summertime:

Summer Teacher Opportunities:
Resources for the Summer:Contact us if you would like professional development or help in setting up an online coaching program for the summer or fall. ...   more...
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Empowering teachers interview with Barbara Bray

By Sara Zimmerman      June 9, 2010 -- 04:15 PM
Teresa Roebuck, president of Global Association of Teacher Empowerment (GATE) interviewed Learning Strategist and My eCoach CEO, Barbara Bray. The interview focused on empowering and ways to motivate teachers, tools for promotion, finding strengths, etc. You can listen to Teresa’s full length interview of Barbara Bray here: 



Barbara Bray
RSSSubscribe Podcast: http://my-ecoach.com/podcast.php?rid=76023


This interview is just one of the many resources provided by GATE. The intent of GATE is to support the nation’s novice teachers in their professional lives by helping teachers connect - or reconnec...   more...
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Building Trust in Your Online Community

By Sara Zimmerman      June 8, 2010 -- 11:00 AM
There usually is one manager of an online community. The manager can be called a community manager, a team manager, or an eCoach. The members of your community will need to trust you to feel safe in your community. Here are seven tips to ensure a trusting relationship with the members of your community.
  1. Personalize your Community

  2. Lead by Example

  3. Be True to Yourself

  4. Share What You Learn

  5. Learn from Mistakes

  6. Be Consistent

  7. Let it Go

Building a trusting online community can take weeks maybe months. Trust is vital to the health of your community. Click here to read the thorough explanation by Barbara Bray...   more...
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Winners of April's Teacher's Contest

By Sara Zimmerman      May 21, 2010 -- 08:32 AM
Why do you love to teach? We asked teachers to tell us in 250 words or less what excites them to teach. The three winners' names and answers are:

  • "I love teaching because I can make a difference in the life of a child. If I can bring a smile to a child's face, I consider myself successful, especially if that child was not easy to smile before you met her. I love teaching because it gives me the opportunity to reinvent myself on behalf of children who need my help in discovering the world. I love teaching because it brings hope to humanity when I can inspire a child to not throw garbage on ...   more...
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Check out Some eCoaching Tools

By Barbara Bray      May 20, 2010 -- 08:59 AM
My eCoach offers lots of tools and many of them are not as conspicuous for members. If you are on a team and have an eCoach, your eCoach can provide you ongoing feedback and support to help you meet your learning goals.

Individual Learning Plans (ILPs)
Members can create an ILP about a specific goal. The power of the ILPs are how they are interactive and allow feedback.
ILPs were created to put in one goal with where you are currently and where you want to be by a specific time. You can add 5 steps and concerns. To know if you are doing this right, you can request for feedback ...   more...
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Customize Look and Feel

By Barbara Bray      May 18, 2010 -- 08:44 AM
When you login to My eCoach, you can change what you see and how My eCoach looks and feels. After you login, go to the inbox at the top right or your profile.

After you click Settings, click on Look and Feel.



This will open some new looks and themes that you can choose from. The default is the teal theme that you were assigned when you first join My eCoach. I had changed my look to an olive green theme. Thought it was time to change it to a more neutral color.
Scroll through all the different themes and choose another theme. Then choose if you want to keep the icons or not.
Then ...   more...
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Even MORE new themes

By Sara Zimmerman      April 5, 2010 -- 04:25 PM
We added some more new themes this month for members of select teams. These new themes can help customize your projects, lessons or even your ePortfolio. Some of the new themes include Art, Clouds, Professional, Music, Winter Flowers and Fall Trees.

These new themes are only available to specific teams. An eCoach can request themes to be added to their team or you can join the New Theme Team for access to these themes for only $15 a year. Stay tuned for more new themes!

Music theme

Professional theme

Winter Flowers theme

Fall Trees theme


Art theme


Cloud theme
   more...
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New Themes Team

By Sara Zimmerman      April 5, 2010 -- 04:20 PM
My eCoach created new themes for My eCoach members who really want to create

New Clouds theme is just one of the many themes now available through the New Themes Team
exciting projects using the Universal Builder. Many of these themes work for specific types of websites.

We created this New Themes team:

  • for members to access all of our new and old themes.
  • to review and discuss development of new themes.
  • to help members determine which themes will work best for their websites.
Join Now for a cost-effective way to make different websites that make you look really good!    more...
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Powerful Teacher Training

By Sara Zimmerman      April 5, 2010 -- 03:20 PM
5 Things Powerful Teachers do...

Global Association for Teacher Empowerment (GATE) offers live training opportunities for teachers. GATE is an association of educators developed for educators by educators that is dedicated to empowering teachers everywhere.

Join Teresa Roebuck on Thursday, April 8, 2010 at 1pm CST (11am PST) as she interviews Barbara Bray on empowering teachers how to be proactive about their work and themselves. Barbara will share how to:
  • Identify your Strengths and Weaknesses
  • Actively participate in Web 2.0 and Social Media
  • Create an Effective ...   more...
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8 Quick My eCoach tips

By Sara Zimmerman      April 5, 2010 -- 03:19 PM
My eCoach has a lot of features that members may not be aware of, so we decided to share some quick tips with you. Some of these tips are new features for everyone while some are new features just for teams:
   more...
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April contest for teachers

By Sara Zimmerman      April 5, 2010 -- 02:51 PM
Why do you love to teach?

new MATH theme available to Theme Team Members

We love hearing from you and want to share inspirational thoughts and words that can help get other teachers motivated. Tell us in 250 words or less what excites you to teach by April 30th. Three random winners will each win a free membership to My eCoach’s New Themes Team where they can have access to fun and inspiring themes for their class website, projects, lessons, and ePortolios. Winners will have access to the New Themes Team as long as they want (normally $15/year for members) and a membership to My eCoach if they ...   more...
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Tip: Embed Webpages within your Universal Builder Project

By Sara Zimmerman      March 24, 2010 -- 03:02 PM
You can have outside website appear right in your Universal Builder page. Using an iframe in a label allows you to embed code into the embed box on the Universal Builder page or a tab in the team pages. Insert code like:

You cannot use iframe code with the text editor. Above is a screen capture of the code. We cannot put the exact code in this text editor for you. So here is the code without the brackets <> that you can copy, replace the URL, add the brackets, and then paste the code into the embed box.

bracket iframe width="100%" height="200" align="middle" src="http://www.google.com...   more...
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My Notes Feature on Teams

By Barbara Bray      March 19, 2010 -- 07:10 AM
Now when you are on any team in My eCoach, you have your own personal notes tab to store files, reflect, keep notes about work on the team, and whatever else you might need while you are on that team.

Click My Notes and then click Add Notes Now.

You will then get a pop-up window to work on your notes that you can use with any of the tabs on your team.

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ePortfolio Process Team

By Sara Zimmerman      March 1, 2010 -- 02:30 PM
Instructions for developing a successful online portfolio

An ePortfolio is a collection of evidence drawn from a digital file cabinet that represents what a person or organization has learned over time. In this ePortfolio Process you will be following these steps:
eportfolioprocess
  • Collect 
  • Plan
  • Create
  • Reflect
  • Publish
  • Promote

Throughout this process, you will have several eCoaches and other members to connect, share, and learn what works for your ePortfolio. There are multiple templates and themes to choose from along with examples, resources, and research. My eCoach members ...   more...
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New: Follow your team forum

By Sara Zimmerman      March 1, 2010 -- 10:07 AM
If you are on any teams in My eCoach, you probably are using the forums for threaded conversations. We now have a way for you to follow specific topics and receive an email notification if anyone adds a post or comment to that topic. Following is the default.

To check or change your options for following any of your forum topics, go to either your team by
or to My Community on the left navigation to Forums where your team forums will be at the bottom. You can see the number of posts and last date of any posts.
Click on the forum and you can see if you are following that topic or ...   more...
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Congratulations to our Scholarship Winner

By Barbara Bray      February 24, 2010 -- 02:16 PM
Congratulations to Cathy Keck, Technology Integration Specialist at the Academy of Notre Dame, in Pennsylvania for winning our Leadership Scholarship! Her school is a private, college-prep, all-girls academy for grades 6-12 in the suburbs of Villanova, PA. Cathy teaches grades 6-9 and help the faculty integrate technology into their curriculum and hold technology wokshops for faculty development.

Her major challenge is finding time! Cathy teaches classes so her time with the faculty is limited. She was looking for an online community that can support and aid in faculty training and collaboration: ...   more...
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Follow the Winter Olympics 2010

By Barbara Bray      February 23, 2010 -- 10:33 PM
Did you watch the Olympics or follow the events?

Go to Winter Olympics 2010 for activities we did as we watched the Olympics. This helps one learn about it, think about it, show what you know, and what’s next. One section gives many how-to videos that you just have to check out.

Here’s one that I never thought I’d want to learn about:
How to land from 50 feet in the Air


The central focus of this project is actually access, content reading skills, response to content, organization and synthesis of information, and development of deeper understandings. The author also wanted to create a site for her students that shows how to ...   more...
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New Universal Builder Themes

By Barbara Bray      February 23, 2010 -- 08:24 PM
We have been busy creating new themes for lessons or websites using our Universal Builder. Several organizations using our teams requested different themes for projects, ePortfolios, and lessons so we went to work. Some themes will be exclusive for select teams and available soon for those teams only.
more...
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New UB Lite for Free members

By Barbara Bray      February 15, 2010 -- 03:59 PM
If you are a Free member, you can now use our Universal Builder Lite Version (UB Lite) where you can quickly create a one page lesson or website. Everyone who signs up to My eCoach, even Free members, has a lifetime membership to My eCoach. Free members do not have access to the Universal Builder but now can Go to Toolkit to Builders to Universal Builder and can access UB Lite.


Free members, click Create New and you can...


  • create and publish one page to the Internet

















  • combine the features of a website builder and blog
  • access some of our tips and handouts
  • choose from a few of our themes
























  • add text, files, and images
  • embed Web 2.0 tools
  • allow commenting and cloning





















If you are a 30 day trial member, you can access all of the features. After that, try our new UB Lite and see if it’s enough for you to use. Remember you can publish a lesson a day quickly. Free members are not able to clone any projects or templates, nor use our survey or the quiz builder. If you want these features, then upgrade.

Our members who have full memberships can use the Full Version and clone this WRL Template to create a one page lesson plan.

We continue to try to meet your needs and look for ways for you to have a great experience while you are in the My eCoach community. Enjoy!    more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Edward Woolbert  March 3, 2010 -- 10:08 AM

Looking for My eCoach Gifts and Stuff?

By Barbara Bray      February 9, 2010 -- 08:04 PM

Some of our members have asked us to create a store with our new logo - so we did. Now you can get yourself or a gift for a friend a shirt, children's organic shirts, onesies, messenger bag, prints, teddy bear, tote bag, journal, gift cards, postcards, and even a mug with our logo.











Check out our new My eCoach Online Store today!



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Did you Know... that we have a Survey Tool?

By Sara Zimmerman      January 29, 2010 -- 05:03 PM
Need a survey for your students, team members, or school community? Why spend your limited funds on a subscription service for your survey program? Save your money by using the multi-leveled survey tool in My eCoach. As a lifetime member, you can easily create surveys that:
  • stand-alone or work with any programSurvey
  • lets you co-author and clone surveys
  • share with anyone in and outside of My eCoach
  • include images, videos, and files 
  • have ...   more...
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My eCoach Featured Partner of Curriki

By Sara Zimmerman      January 29, 2010 -- 05:01 PM
New Partner with Free Open Source Curricula Website

CurrikiMy eCoach is a featured partner of Curriki for the month of January. Curriki provides free resources, lessons, and learning objects for teachers. 

How can you use My eCoach with Curriki?
My eCoach allows you to use Curriki's resources in our Universal Builder as you design your class site, ePortfolio, lesson, or unit. Not only can you download lessons that are documents, you can easily adapt the lesson to be published online and embed free objects donated by Curriki members.  Learn more...
   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Anna  January 30, 2010 -- 10:12 PM

My eCoach CEO interviews Seth Godin

By Sara Zimmerman      January 29, 2010 -- 04:59 PM
International Marketing Guru Answers Educational Questions

Barbar
Linchpina Bray, CEO/President of My eCoach, recently had the opportunity to interview Seth Godin, "America's Greatest Marketer," and author of the "best marketing blog in the world," about his new book, Linchpin: Are you Indispensible?. In the interview, Barbara had the chance to ask Seth about his views on the future of education.

To read Barbara's interview with Seth, check it out on her blog: Rethinking Learning. Take a moment to read all interviews of Seth including Barbara's on Squidoo.
   more...
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New Features within My eCoach (January 2010)

By Sara Zimmerman      January 29, 2010 -- 04:56 PM

  • Drag and Drop in the Universal Builder: You can easily modify the position of your pages of your Universal Builder projects with our new drag and drop editor! more...

    LandingPage -select
  • Choose your landing page:
    Now you can easily choose which page shows up first when you log in to My eCoach. If you are an individual, you can select the Home page or Profile page. If you are on a team, you also have the option to choose which team page  you land on first. more...

  • Additional "Delete" in Inbox: We've added an easy-to-access delete button at the top of your Inbox.

  • New icons in Universal Builder ...   more...
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ePortfolios and Assessment

By Barbara Bray      January 29, 2010 -- 01:19 PM
We are gearing up our focus on authentic assessment strategies with ePortfolios. We are in the process of building a team with steps for you to create ePortfolios based on your individual learning plans. Our dream is that you and your students have ongoing support and access to the tools you need to demonstrate evidence of learning and reflect on your progress in meeting your learning goals.

We found that if we design a generic scope and sequence ...   more...
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New Team for Teachers of English Language Learners

By Barbara Bray      January 28, 2010 -- 11:21 AM

We added a new free team for My eCoach members who are teachers of English Language Learners (ELL). This team is where they can ask questions, find resources and research, connect with other ELL teachers, and share tips and best practices that will help make their job more effective. Some of the members of this team who teach English as a Second Language live in other countries: Ecuador, China, and Korea. ELL/ESL/ELD teachers want to connect and share especially those that work remotely. Discussion topics include:

  • Universal Design for Learning
  • Differentiating Instruction
  • Grade Level Websites
  • ...   more...
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Change your Landing Page

By Sara Zimmerman      January 28, 2010 -- 10:25 AM
You now can change your settings so when you login, you can land on your Profile or one of your team pages if you are on a team. Go to your settings either on the info box at the top of each page or on your profile.

When you first login, your default landing page is Home.
Click on Settings and select either Home (default), your Profile, or one of your teams. Then click Save.
Logout and login again to see your new landing page.


You can continue to keep Home your landing page if you want. Links to Home, Your Profile, and the pull-down menu to get to any teams you are on from most pages.

If you ...   more...
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Private Rooms under Teams

By Barbara Bray      January 28, 2010 -- 10:11 AM
When you set up your team in My eCoach for your coaching program, you can now assign subteams, or "Private Rooms," for confidential conversations with one or more of your members. This unique, coaching feature helps extend the meaning of one-on-one virtual coaching or mentoring. The only people that can have a private room are members of your team. The eCoach is the only one that can set up and add members to the private rooms.

more...
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Tip: Fun with photos

By Sara Zimmerman      January 28, 2010 -- 09:54 AM
I found a fun site that lets you change the way you present your photo. Think about a different way to post to your profile on My eCoach or Facebook. Photofunia is free and very easy to use. It is an online photo editing tool that gives you a fun filled experience. You upload any photo and just wait to see the magic. The technology automatically identifies the face in the photo and let’s you add cool photo effects and create funny face photo montages.

You don’t have to login to try it. Choose an effect.

After you choose an effect, Photofunia converts your picture with that effect. You ...   more...
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New Universal Builder drag-and-drop features make editing easy!

By Sara Zimmerman      January 4, 2010 -- 12:47 PM
Our Universal Builder just got easier to use. We implemented drag-and-drop technology into the Universal Builder editor so you can easily move the order of your pages with the quick click and drag of your mouse. eCoach Ken Bakken shows you how easy it is to use in this 5 minute video.

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Give the Gift of Membership

By Sara Zimmerman      December 15, 2009 -- 03:58 PM
Great gift for educators at only $35

GiftMembership Looking for an easy gift to give a teacher? How about a gift membership to My eCoach? It’s easy, quick and no worries about wrapping or shipping. This is a great value for the teacher in your life who wants to make a website, surveys, quizzes, or more. Click here for your gift of a Lifetime membership to My eCoach.
 
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Did you know we have a Quiz Builder

By Sara Zimmerman      December 15, 2009 -- 02:23 PM
We have a QUIZ Builder!

QuizYou can create a quiz, invite a co-author, clone any quizzes you created, send the link to non-members, embed your quiz in a blog or website, and add images, videos, presentations, audio files and more to your description and quizzes. Teachers can also put in correct answers with a score, view individual results and at-a-glance class results, and leave comments for students on different answers. By the way, this is all free for Lifetime, Trial and Team My eCoach members.    more...
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Featured Holiday Projects

By Sara Zimmerman      December 15, 2009 -- 02:19 PM
Free Projects with Resources for K-12 Teachers
  • Xmas WreathCelebrating December Holidays Project: This project was built by eCoach Charlotte McGovern in our Universal Builder and has a great list of holiday resources for teachers and students.
  • Gingerbread Man Around the World:
    This is a K-2, learner-centered, thematic unit introducing children to the classic Gingerbread Man theme including stories from around the world. It was created using My eCoaches Universal Builder tool.
  • Ma Buche de Noel:
    Here is another fun My eCoach project created to teach children French through ...   more...
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Thank you for voting for us

By Sara Zimmerman      December 15, 2009 -- 02:12 PM
A big THANK YOU to everyone that visited the U.S. Dept. of Education's website that surveyed teachers for their recommendations for the best technology tools to be included in the upcoming National Educational Technology Plan. My eCoach received some genuine and authentic comments of real personal experiences and successes. You can find the comments and votes for My eCoach at https://edtechfuture.org/?s=my+ecoach.

Additionally, there was a very high vote count for our partner, HyperStudio, as well as some of our other partners. Please check what people wrote about this wonderful produ...   more...
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New Standards Added

By Sara Zimmerman      December 15, 2009 -- 12:14 PM
We have state and national content, professional and technology standards, skill sets and curriculum guides. You can add and view standards from your locker and match standards to any lessons or projects you create. We have recently added some new national standards:
  • 21st Century Skills
  • IRA/NCTE Standards for the English Language Arts
  • Instructional Design Competencies
  • Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium Standards (INTASC)
  • ISLLC (Standards for School Leaders)
  • National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
  • National Standards for Quality Online Teaching (iNACOL)
  • NBCT: The Five ...   more...
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Drag and Drop on Blog Sidebar

By Sara Zimmerman      December 15, 2009 -- 12:13 PM
Now you can drag and drop any of the links or widgets up or down instead of clicking move one at a time. You can customize the sidebar of your public blogs by adding links and embedding widgets. Go to your Blog Home to the T-Shirt icon to customize your sidebar.*


This is the way we used to edit the sidebar.

You can still add links by clicking Add Links and adding the title and the URL.
The way we used to have it is clicking on the up or down arrows to move items one at a time.

Now each item is in a box where you will be able to click on a box and drag and drop an item up or down as far as you ...   more...
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New team reporting tools

By Sara Zimmerman      December 10, 2009 -- 10:28 AM
Team managers can now provide even more focused support to their team members by using our new team reporting tools. You can see who is using what tools, how often, and view by each team tool or by each member. Bring up a report and send messages to team members right from that report. We added an At-A-Glance chart that gives you activities in a bar chart by date plus you can compare activities by different dates.


Screenshot of our new team reporting tools

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Video: How to make a simple website using the Universal Builder

By Sara Zimmerman      December 7, 2009 -- 11:02 AM
Here is a video made by eCoach Ken Bakken about how to make a simple website in My eCoach using the Universal Builder. In the video he goes through the basic steps of setting up the website, adding categories and content to the pages, embedding video, and changing the template.


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ILPs: An integral part of successful Professional Development

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:13 PM
Individual Learning Plans (ILPs)
An integral part of successful Professional Development
ILP
My eCoach created a Technology Use Assessment in the 1990s for teachers to generate their Individual Learning Plans (ILPs). This included a list of learning opportunities that were based on a scope and sequence aligned to NETS. All of this started with Concerns-Based Adoptions Model (CBAM) and how we accept change.*

ILPs ensure a successful coaching program. Currently our ILPs are available to all My eCoach members and work best if the user is part of a team with an eCoach who can provide ongoing feedback. ...   more...
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November Facebook Contest Winners!

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:12 PM
Our November contest asked people to become fans of our Facebook Fan Page. We had some great response and randomly chose 4 lucky winners:
My eCoach Fan Page
  • Diane Chen: A copy of FableVision's Animation-ish
  • Cathy Keck: $25 Amazon.com gift card
  • Bobbi Kurshan and Ann Lumm: Individual Lifetime Memberships to My eCoach
Missed out on the contest but want continual updates? Facebook is free to join. Once you have an account, go to this link and click on "Become a Fan" on the top. Then tell your Facebook friends by going to our Fan Page and clicking on "Suggest to Friends."    more...
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Giving Thanks: Project and Survey

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:12 PM
Giving Thanks: Project and SurveyThanksgiving turkey
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Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  November 23, 2009 -- 01:08 PM

My eCoach services are covered by EETT funding

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:11 PM
My eCoach services are covered by EETT funding

EETT grant.orgWhat is EETT?
EETT is a 2-year grant. A minimum of 25 percent of the total grant award must be spent on that provides teachers with the capacity to high-quality professional developmentintegrate technology effectively into curricula and instruction to promote student achievement. more...

How can My eCoach help?
If you have EETT funding or are going to apply for other educational grant funding, then write My eCoach into your grant. Our services directly match EETT (and other) grant requirements and have been successful in similar programs worldwide. ...   more...
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Leadership Coaching Scholarship

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:10 PM
Leadership Coaching Scholarship
Apply 11/20/09 through 12/31/09

Do you have a coaching program where your literacy, math, or technology coach needs an online community and support to supplement their face-to-face coaching? We are offering a coaching scholarship to one school or district that includes:
  • virtual training for one coach to become the eCoach
  • lifetime memberships for the eCoach and ten teachers
  • a team with coaching tools for three years
  • five hours virtual coaching for the eCoach
To apply for this scholarship, you must: Leadership Team
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Educational News, Grants and Updates

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:09 PM
Noteworthy updates from the educational communityTopEducatorAward
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Featured Project: Noemi Ban's Journey to Taipei American School (TAS)

By Sara Zimmerman      November 19, 2009 -- 02:07 PM
Noemi Ban's Journey to Taipei American School (TAS)

NoemiBan Last month we featured a blog by eCoach Ken Bakken about his trip escorting Holocaust survivor, Noemi Ban, to Taipei to talk with students about her Holocaust experience. Ken created Noemi Ban's Journey to Taipei American School (TAS) as an interactive project documenting Noemi's trip and as a place to host student reflections.

The project Ken created in our Universal Builder discusses how Ms. Ban spoke to over a thousand students and parents during her four day visit. Her impact on the students was inspirational and life changing for many. It includes podcasts of Ms. Ban's answers to student ...   more...
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New features and updates

By Sara Zimmerman      November 18, 2009 -- 02:26 PM
We are constantly adding new features and doing updates to ensure our community has effective tools for learning, publishing, sharing and communicating. Here are some of our most recent:
  • Share your blog or your project on Twitter and Facebook. Projects: share by selecting the networking buttons from the sidebar. Blogs: share by selecting networking buttons beneath each post.
  • New team reporting tools are available for team managers to view activities of members by type of team tool and by specific dates. You can now view the number of blog and forum posts, comments, and replies.
   more...
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Become a Facebook Fan and Win! November Contest

By Sara Zimmerman      October 27, 2009 -- 10:40 AM
November Contest: Become a Facebook fan by Nov 16th

Become a fan and follow My eCoach on the new
My eCoach Facebook Fan Page by November 16th and win! We will randomly select three of our fans to win:
My eCoach Fan Page
  • A copy of FableVision’s Animation-ish
  • An Amazon.com gift card for $25
  • Two Individual Lifetime Memberships to
    My eCoach

The
My eCoach Fan Page has regular updates, links to interesting projects, discussion ideas, information on upcoming grants, photos and more (pls note: this is NOT the My eCoach Share Place Group page).

Facebook is free to join. Once you have an account, go to this
link and click ...   more...
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October Contest Winners!

By Sara Zimmerman      October 27, 2009 -- 10:39 AM
Winners and Projects of last month's eLibrary submission contest

Thank you to all of our members who submitted fantastic projects to our eLibrary. Below are our winners, their projects and prizes:
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Educational News, Grants and Updates

By Sara Zimmerman      October 27, 2009 -- 10:38 AM
Noteworthy information from the educational industry
Teachers with computers
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Blog Spotlight: eCoach Ken Bakken Escorts a Holocaust Survivor to Taipei

By Sara Zimmerman      October 27, 2009 -- 10:37 AM
eCoach Ken Bakken Escorts a Holocaust Survivor to Taipei

Holocaust
"Today Noemi gave her first talk to the ninth and tenth grade students about her experience of the Holocaust. Her message of hope, love, and understanding was warmly accepted by the students and staff of TAS. When she told her story to the 500 plus students, you could hear a pin drop. Later in the day, she met with two groups of students who were given the opportunity to ask her questions. The questions were fascinating. For me the most interesting question was: Do you ...   more...
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New Search Feature: Easily search keywords, tags, and more from every page

By Sara Zimmerman      October 27, 2009 -- 10:36 AM

New Search menu Trying to find projects or pages in My eCoach with specific keywords or tags? Now you can easily search from every page within My eCoach with our new search menu.

This drop down menu is located near the top of the right-hand bar above the list of your friends and recent projects. Click and select ...   more...
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My eCoach Leadership Team

By Sara Zimmerman      October 27, 2009 -- 10:35 AM
Free team for My eCoach members in leadership roles

We just launched a free team for My eCoach members who are in leadership roles called the My eCoach Leadership Team. This free team is for leaders from around the world to:
  • ask/ answer questions with people in similar roles
  • find resources and research
  • connect/ communicate/ collaborate with others
  • share tips or tidbits that will help make you and your job more effective
  • explore My eCoach's customizable team tools and new features in this supportive environment

To learn more, login toTopEducatorAward My ...   more...
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How to sign up for free teams?

By Sara Zimmerman      October 23, 2009 -- 01:27 PM
Would you like to collaborate and communicate with other My eCoach members who have similar interests as yourself? My eCoach offers several free teams for Lifetime Members. Teams provide a great way to use My eCoach tools, access resources, share with others, and more. Watch this 1-minute video on how to log in and sign up to join one of our teams.


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How to access the Leadership Team once you've joined

By Sara Zimmerman      October 23, 2009 -- 12:14 PM
So, you’ve joined the free Leadership team in My eCoach, but can’t remember how to access it? Watch this quick video that will take you step-by-step from logging in to finding your team**.

**Please note this video uses the My eCoach Leadership Team, (which is a free team for My eCoach members and leaders of programs, institutions, and organizations), to demonstrate how to reaccess the team and the components of the team. Though this video is for revisiting the Leadership Team, the instructions on how to revisit your own team are the same. Also note, not all teams will have the same tabs once ...   more...
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My Personal Space Video Tutorial

By Sara Zimmerman      October 13, 2009 -- 04:30 PM
Have you ever wondered what that area called "My Personal Space" is at the bottom of your home page? This is an editable section that you can customize however you like. Ken Bakken, a Certificated eCoach, takes us on a tour of how you can personalize this space with easy-to-access links to Web 2.0 tools and My eCoach projects. Watch this short 2.5 minute video to learn more.


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Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Ronarae Adams  October 20, 2009 -- 08:44 PM

Contest: Submit Projects & Win!

By Sara Zimmerman      September 30, 2009 -- 02:55 PM
Submit to eLibrary & win FableVision’s Animation-ish and more!

Have you made fun or interesting projects using the Universal Builder in My eCoach? If so, submit it and win!!!! We’re looking to add YOUR great projects to our eLibrary. We are looking for:
  • educational projects
  • lesson plans
  • class websites
  • topic-specific content sites
  • presentations or demonstrations
  • projects made with older builders (pre-2007) converted to the Universal Builder
How to enter:
It’s easy!!! Find one or more of your fantastic projects (or create one) and submit by editing your project, going ...   more...
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Follow My eCoach on Facebook and Twitter

By Sara Zimmerman      September 30, 2009 -- 02:50 PM
Stay informed through your social networks

Facebook iconDo you find it hard to keep up with all that My eCoach does? If so, become a fan and follow My eCoach on the new My eCoach Facebook Fan Page and on Twitter. We're adding regular updates, links to interesting projects, discussion ideas, information on upcoming grants, photos and more.
 
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Upcoming Grants for Educators

By Sara Zimmerman      September 30, 2009 -- 02:49 PM
Here are some upcoming grants for U.S. teachers, students and librarians:
Did you know that My eCoach can also help you stimulus moneywrite grants to incorporate eCoaching and Class Teams into your school? Contact Us for more information.
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Schedule a Demo for a Team

By Sara Zimmerman      September 30, 2009 -- 02:48 PM
teams iconAre you interested in streamlining your team's communication and collaboration skills but are not sure how? Are you an individual who wants to be on a team but are not familiar with the tools? Schedule a demo today where we will walk you through team pages using our unique team tools. Contact Us for your demo today.
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Tip: Easily Follow My eCoach Blogs

By Sara Zimmerman      September 30, 2009 -- 02:47 PM
Tip: Easily Follow My eCoach Blogs

Follow Blog Icon We recently added a new feature for My eCoach blogs: Follow. You can now follow someone's My eCoach blog or other members can follow your blog.  The FOLLOW icon is in the sidebar of your public and team blogs and to the right of Add New Post for Community blogs.

Anyone who reads your blog can click on the FOLLOW icon and choose to follow your blog either by receiving a message from the Message Center or through their external email. A thumbnail of their profile ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By soundar  April 29, 2011 -- 04:49 AM

Video Tutorial about Getting Started for new members/first-time users

By Sara Zimmerman      September 1, 2009 -- 01:44 PM
Below is a video tutorial about getting started and getting familiar with My eCoach or click here to view it in a separate window. Take a moment to view and share it with others you know.


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Team Tool Video Tutorial for Team Members

By Sara Zimmerman      August 27, 2009 -- 12:53 PM
We just launched our new team tools, making team management and navigation so much simpler for the both the team member and team manager. Click on the play button below watch a short video on how this team tool can work for you (you may need to turn up your speakers).




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Coming Soon... Lounges: A place for teams to collaborate and communicate

By Sara Zimmerman      August 27, 2009 -- 08:18 AM
Teams will soon be able to co-author, share, communicate and collaborate with other teams in a new feature in My eCoach: Lounges!

For instance, this would allow an elementary class in North Dakota to compare data with a class in Hawaii on the different effects of climate change. Teams will also be able to use the lounge to work on lesson plans together, co-author projects, and optimize their communication between one or more teams. Stay tuned!!!   more...
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Homeschool Team Grows: Free team for members gathers momentum

By Sara Zimmerman      August 27, 2009 -- 08:15 AM
Only a month old, the Homeschool team and resource list is growing. This free team is for any My eCoach member involved in homeschooling. It is a place to communicate, collaborate, share ideas, projects and resources. To join, log in and go to My Community> Teams to Join or click here.    more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By small Sara Zimmerman  August 31, 2009 -- 03:40 PM

My eCoach Integral part of National Grant

By Sara Zimmerman      August 27, 2009 -- 08:13 AM
The National Professional Development Grant was developed through San Francisco State University (SFSU) aimed towards professional development and implementation of instruction for English Language Learners. My eCoach will be the web-based component to help implement this program so curriculum, program information, and communication can be done virtually. SFSU faculty and students will be working with teachers from San Francisco USD, Palo Alto USD, Santa Clara COE, University of San Francisco, University of Santa Clara, and San Jose State University. My eCoach members will soon be seeing ...   more...
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Team for New Teachers Launches: Accomplished Teaching and Collaborative Leadership Community

By Sara Zimmerman      August 27, 2009 -- 08:09 AM
Over 200 teachers, (including many K-12 science teachers), will soon be part of the newly-formed Accomplished Teaching and Collaborative Leadership Community, a team within My eCoach for National Board Certified Candidates and Support Providers. National University created this online learning community so candidates will have the tools, resources, people and support materials available to them, anywhere at anytime. If you are interested in registering with National University to join this team, contact Ronarae Adams at radams@nu.edu.

My eCoach members will be able to see the wonderful ...   more...
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Class Team Spotlights

By Sara Zimmerman      August 27, 2009 -- 08:02 AM
New eCoaches and eTeachers have set up some fantastic teams for the upcoming school year. Class teams include up to 40 of their students and are a great way for the class to work together, share, receive information, schedule events, and communicate. A few of the teams:
  • Village of Excellence Academy, Charter School in Tampa, FL
  • Travel & Tourism Academy at Oak Grove High, San Jose, CA
  • Russ Knopp’s eKids team & his sixth grade class, Waitsburg, WA
  • San Diego COE, AB430 training in multiple teams with hundreds of new principals
As part of each newsletter, we will be sharing new communities and ...   more...
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Member Pages have new settings, new nav bar, and new icons

By Sara Zimmerman      August 26, 2009 -- 01:07 PM
We’ve been busy updating and streamlining our inside member pages. Once you login as a member, you will notice:
  • We have new icons for our home page and our left hand navigation bar.
  • There are new color choices for your "look and feel" under your settings. 
  • We also changed our navigation bar on top to have more links and information. Some of these links will take you to a new window to the outside non-member pages where you can view examples, read updated FAQs, and learn more about the numerous features and tools of My eCoach. 
Take a moment to look around, enjoy our new appearance,
...   more...
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New Online Community for HyperStudio Users: HyperStudio Playground

By Sara Zimmerman      August 26, 2009 -- 09:42 AM
My eCoach has created a free team for HyperStudio 5 users and trainers called the HyperStudio Digital Playground. This playground is a place for the HyperStudio 5 community to:
  • ask questions
  • discuss how they are using HyperStudio 5 with their classrooms
  • share ideas
  • find training resources
  • find trainers who can help with professional development
  • link ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By patrick  April 2, 2011 -- 05:08 PM

Class Teams

By Barbara Bray      July 28, 2009 -- 12:55 PM
Teachers can now set up Class Teams as an eTeacher for up to 40 students per team for the calendar school year right in My eCoach. This gives their students access to all of the features in My eCoach. Students can create team blogs where they can share links and resources, participate in confidential threaded discussions, create, co-author, and publish websites, presentations, and surveys, and use a secure messaging system.

A new team eTeachers are setting up are eKids Class Teams. This is where the eTeacher manages either a Generation Yes team or other types of student techies. These eKids learn ...   more...
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New Team Tools

By Barbara Bray      July 24, 2009 -- 06:15 AM
We just launched our new team tools, making team management and navigation so much simpler!

As a team member, you now have an organized place to find all of your teams’ work, materials, and information. As an eCoach, you now have more editable options, preferences, and space in your private team. This includs
the ability to add, edit, drop and drag tabs, view your team members as friends on the sidebar, add text boxes, embed box, and any team tool, and drop and drag any of those on the tab page. eCoaches can now place the content for their teams and courses right on the team page and ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By robert groves  July 31, 2009 -- 02:24 PM

Stimulus Money and My eCoach

By Sara Zimmerman      June 22, 2009 -- 03:07 PM
Stimulus Money
Federal funding can pay for My eCoach services for your educational institution
stimulus money
My eCoach provides the tools and services that support 21st Century learning environments required in The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) and other funding sources including:

  • Comprehensive Professional Development Integration
  • Technology Coaches/Integration Specialists
  • Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)
  • Education Portals
  • Digital Content
  • Portfolio Assessments
  • Blended Assessments (of 21st ...   more...
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My eCoach and HyperStudio Partner

By Sara Zimmerman      June 22, 2009 -- 03:04 PM
My eCoach and HyperStudio of Software MacKiev, will announce their partnership at the June 2009 National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington D.C. Created by Roger Wagner, The My eCoach - HyperStudio partnership provides an exciting way to extend classroom learning by creating, sharing, collaborating, and publishing interactive projects created with HyperStudio 5 to the Internet using a safe and supportive online learning community. Certificate eCoaches will be providing training on HyperStudio and manage an online community for HyperStudio users.

Visit HyperStudio, along ...   more...
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CEO Barbara Bray presented Online Educator Award

By eCoach Staff      June 15, 2009 -- 05:26 PM
Congratulations Barbara on receiving the Top Online Educator award from Surf Aquarium!

My eCoach CEO/President Barbara Bray was recently honored the Top Online Educator award in recognition as an esteemed leader in technology and learning. Barbara was awarded this honor in hope that through the celebration of her work, other educators will be inspired to embrace technology as a tool for transforming their classroom into an environment where all students can be successful.

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Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Russ Knopp  June 15, 2009 -- 09:45 PM

Follow any Blog

By Charlotte McGovern      May 19, 2009 -- 03:24 PM
You can choose any blog in My eCoach to follow and be automatically notified when a post or comment is added to the blog. 

Find a previously chosen blog you want to follow from My Locker > My Blogs. On your Blog Home, you can find blogs to follow from:
  • your team or that have been shared with you by invitation
  •  the My eCoach staff including the Conversation Corner
  • Community or Public blogs by clicking on Community/Public at the top of the ...   more...
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Centering Images

By Charlotte McGovern      May 19, 2009 -- 02:52 PM
Now you can center an uploaded image in the edit mode of the Universal Builder.
After you have clicked the Add Image icon and have found your image, choose the Center button.
Now your image will be centered on the screen like this.


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Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  May 19, 2009 -- 03:00 PM

Search for Members

By Barbara Bray      May 16, 2009 -- 10:37 AM
Are you looking for someone with similar interests that you can collaborate with on a project? You can now search for members either from within your own community or the entire My eCoach community. On the top of the right sidebar, there is a link to Search for Members.

You can search by name, email (even just the domain name), title, city, state, country, school, district, grade, curriculum, and tags.


Your search results will give you a way ...   more...
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Added Reply to Comments

By Barbara Bray      May 7, 2009 -- 02:26 PM
We just added a way that you can reply to a comment on a blog post instead of adding another comment at the end of the list. Let’s say you just want to reply to one person’s post that was in the middle of a long list of posts. Now you can and that reply indents so you have something similar to a threaded discussion.





















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New Look

By Barbara Bray      April 27, 2009 -- 08:35 AM
Lots of exciting things are happening with My eCoach. One is our new look. After 12 years with the same logo, we thought it was time to change to represent people helping each other and coaching.

My eCoach provides tools all in one place but it’s not the tools that make My eCoach. It’s the people, the coaching, and that My eCoach is an umbrella larger community for all the members. There ...   more...
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Insert Flash Files

By Barbara Bray      April 20, 2009 -- 08:04 AM
You can now insert Flash video files right into your project or blog or wherever there is the text editor.
  • Create or save a Flash file to your desktop.
  • Click the insert audio/video button on the toolbar.
  • Upload your file with the extension .swf


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Comments: 1   Last Comment By MR. WEBB  April 20, 2009 -- 08:47 AM

Now can search projects

By Barbara Bray      April 20, 2009 -- 07:52 AM
Search is available for Universal projects on your sidebar. Need to find specific pages within your project, then use search.




Type in what you are searching for and then click Search. The results page appears with the title of the page as a link and highlighted areas where the search terms appear on the pages.


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New Select Template Option

By Barbara Bray      April 6, 2009 -- 06:13 PM
When we made the text editor larger, members using the Universal Builder or Blog templates found text overlapping the template. So now there is an option to select 800 pixels wide or 1000 pixels wide templates using a new selection tool. The default template is 1000w.





















Choose 800w if you want to keep the same size you are using or 1000w if you want to add comment boxes, pictures, tables, etc. You can easily go back and change the ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Miriam  April 10, 2009 -- 04:11 AM

Inbox, Text Editor, and Text Search

By eCoach Staff      April 6, 2009 -- 02:57 PM
Did you notice that there is a new tab on the left navigation bar? Now you can quickly access the message center inbox and even see how many new messages are waiting for you. When you have any messages waiting, you willl still see the flashing envelope above your profile on the upper right.

The text editor is now larger. Why? Because members were adding more pictures, tables, and other files. This way they can now keep writing and sharing not only in the Universal Builder and blogs, but wherever there is  the text editor including the comment box.

Searching tags in My eCoach? When you start ...   more...
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Barbara wins Award

By eCoach Staff      April 6, 2009 -- 02:14 PM
Congratulations to Barbara Bray for winning the prestigious Platinum Disk Award at the Computer Users Educators (CUE) Conference in March 09. Barbara won this award for her contributions to the educational technology community. Mike Lawrence, Executive Director of CUE, is congratulating her as Bonnie Marks, CTAP IV Director, takes her picture.
Comments: 4   Last Comment By MR. WEBB  April 20, 2009 -- 08:47 AM

My eCoach Facebook Share Place

By Barbara Bray      November 21, 2008 -- 03:13 PM
We set up a place in Facebook to promote projects, programs, or events that you may be doing in My eCoach. Why did we do this?

You are doing so many wonderful things in eCoach that people may not know about. We feature projects that have been reviewed and submitted to the eLibrary. We spotlight resources that have been shared in the eLibrary. We write about programs that eCoaches tell us about. The best way for us to share is if everyone shares. Facebook is a social networking program that encourages people to connect. We have some of these features but ours are different.

We invite you to join ...   more...
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Ongoing Programs and Projects

By Barbara Bray      November 21, 2008 -- 12:31 PM
San Diego County Office of Education’s Leadership Services continues to provide AB 430 training for California principals. Melissa Hunt, Director, with the support of eCoaches Cynthia Sistek-Chandler and Ward Smith, set up one leadership team for over 400 principals who have participated in the training.


Stanford University’s Bay Area Foreign Language Program (BAFLP) with support from their eCoach Marcelo Leal has set up five more teams including BAFLP Leaders, an ELD Strand, and Mandarin Strand. Example project from Kathleen Rooney:
Ideas for Incorporating Technology in the Foreign Language Classroom....   more...
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Class Teams in eCoach

By Barbara Bray      November 21, 2008 -- 10:47 AM
We are working tirelessly to meet your requests. The main request is to allow students into eCoach. We are setting up a program where teachers can become eTeachers and set up a class team with up to 40 spaces for your students. Students will have access to all of the features in eCoach as long as the class meets. Then students will become free members with limited access. We are reviewing costs, training, and coaching. We welcome your ideas and comments.

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Changes and Updates in eCoach to Date

By Barbara Bray      November 20, 2008 -- 07:29 PM
Left Navigation
The left navigation has been changed and streamlined. My Community is where you can find Certificated eCoaches and other community resources. This is where you can find events, conversations, your teams if you are on any teams. The Message Center is the glue that connects all the features and people in eCoach.






My Locker is where all of your work is stored. We moved My Locker next because some eCoach members were going to My Toolkit that used to be in this area to start new blogs instead of adding posts to the blog they started. We encourage everyone to check their work first ...   more...
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WOW Interview

By Barbara Bray      November 20, 2008 -- 06:45 PM

Barbara was interviewed on EdTechTalk's Women of the Web (WOW) show on November 11th by Sharon Peters, Jennifer Wagner, and Cheri Toledo. There were several chat rooms going (one on WOW and one in eCoach). Barbara shared information about My eCoach, Web 2.0 tools, and the benefits of collaboration. Check out her interview and all the other exciting interviews by these wonderful women of the web.



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Are you a Librarian or Media Specialist?

By Barbara Bray      November 20, 2008 -- 06:41 PM
There are many librarians in My eCoach who may not be aware of our Universal builder and how easy it is to create and maintain a website for their library. We started a library website template that can be cloned and customized to fit your needs. We added loads of resources and plan to keep working on it regularly.

School Library Website Template

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Video Welcome

By Barbara Bray      November 12, 2008 -- 09:16 PM
We have been looking at different video capture tools and Web 2.0 tools to create mini-video tutorials. We also wanted to capture us talking to you via the webcam. I use the built-in iSight camera on my Macbook. I love the video chat that I use with my new granddaughter. Just found a great program that lets you record with the iSight camera: Conference Recorder v. 2.13.

So here’s a quick welcome in a corner of my living room. What was weird is the video was flipped so when I pointed to one side of the screen, it showed up pointing to the wrong side. Here’s a video without any pointing.

Welcome to My eCoach...   more...
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Verifying User

By Barbara Bray      October 29, 2008 -- 12:17 PM
When others outside of the eCoach community comment on your public blog or Universal builder, they are asked to verify who they are with a captcha.

Once that you have set the blog to view by public, anyone inside or outside of the My eCoach community will be able to read or comment on your blog. If anyone wants to comment on your blog, he/she will be required to type his/her name and the words (captcha). Captcha is a verification that is used to determine whether or not the user is a human. Each time there will be different numbers and letters. We changed to a new Captcha program that asks ...   more...
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Updated FAQs

By Barbara Bray      September 27, 2008 -- 09:21 AM
We have made lots of changes in eCoach and realized it's time to update the FAQs on the inside and outside. We try to keep up with the questions people ask us and share the answers. One thing we didn't share was the 30 day trial account and new pricing for organizations so that's up now. Please check out the FAQs.

We are open to new ideas and questions. Thanks!
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Certificated eCoaches

By Barbara Bray      September 9, 2008 -- 11:08 AM
We set up a new program for eCoaches who wanted to market themselves, their programs, and any services they provide. You can check out who our Certificated eCoaches are and what they created in eCoach. Some of our eCoaches will be offering free teams for members. Keep checking back to see more examples of their work and ideas for new projects in eCoach.

We will be offering Certificated eCoach workshops in the near future. If you are interested, please add a comment below.
   more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  November 6, 2008 -- 07:15 AM

New 30 Day Trial and Pricing for Organizations

By Barbara Bray      September 3, 2008 -- 01:30 PM
Any new members that sign up for a free account will now get a 30 day trial of all the features in My eCoach. We figured that if you were checking out eCoach, you really needed to be able to access all of the features. After the 30 days are up, then free members continue with their lifetime membership but with limited access. They can always join at any time.

Several large organizations have approached us to give their members access to all of the tools for at least one year so we came up with an annual subscription pricing structure. People are raving about all the tools in eCoach so we want ...   more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By Roxanne  September 17, 2008 -- 12:15 PM

Check out our New Look

By Barbara Bray      September 3, 2008 -- 08:12 AM
We figured it was time for a new look when you first come to My eCoach.




















We needed new color schemes, sample projects, and pop-ups. The pop-ups give you an overview of some of the features. We have so many features now all in one place that you may not be aware of them. So click on some of these like how to create surveys. We’ll be making more including showing you how you can make pop-ups just like these.    more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By Coach Cynthia  September 18, 2008 -- 10:48 PM

Join the Conversations

By Barbara Bray      September 1, 2008 -- 09:53 PM
Now you can ask anyone in the eCoach community a question or answer any question someone else asks using the Conversation Corner. When you login, the Conversation Corner is right on your home.

















It is a mini-blog where all you have to do is click Ask Questions to bring up the text editor.























Just ask your question in the title field and add a message that gives more information, links, images, podcasts, or whatever helps you get your question across ...   more...
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Quiz Reporting Tools

By Barbara Bray      July 9, 2008 -- 06:50 AM
Check out the Quiz builder in your Toolkit. You can set up a quiz and assign correct answers and score for each question. You can also add files including images or video to each question. Create a test with separate sections and even embed your quiz in the Universal builder or any blog or website if you know how to embed code.

The Quiz builder walks you through a wizard to create a quiz with a choice of questions:

  • Yes or No
  • Multiple Choice
  • Checkboxes
  • True or False
  • Numerical Scale
  • Likert Scale
  • Short Answer
  • Long Answer
  • Matrix of Choices
A comment box can be added to each question.

Mark ...   more...
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Pinellas eMentor Cross-Age Cross Curriculum Projects

By Barbara Bray      June 26, 2008 -- 12:52 PM
Pinellas County Schools received the EETT grant again to expand the cross-age cross curriculum projects they started in 2006. Barbara spent a week with a fantastic group of eMentors from Kings Highway Elementary School and John F. Kennedy Middle School. The focus is on science where there will be six new cross-age projects. The 12 eMentors mapped the curriculum, looked for gaps in the standards and where their students needed more engaging projects. The topics so far include the Changing Earth, Forms of Energy, Habitats and Life Cycles, Force and Motion, Ecology and Ecosystems, and Space. This ...   more...
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Announcing New Partnerships

By Barbara Bray      June 25, 2008 -- 09:31 PM
My eCoach proudly announces new partnerships with EduTone and We The Teachers.

The EduTone XchangeTM brings easy, convenient access to applications and information with a Single Sign-On Portal for all users, including administrators, teachers, parents and students. The EduTone area of the EduTone Passport will offer a single sign on access to My eCoach for free memberships or be able to join as full lifetime memberships.

We The Teachers (WTT) is a social network for teachers with forums, groups, tools, and lesson planning. My eCoach will provide the professional development solution for ...   more...
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Add a Calendar to your Project

By Barbara Bray      June 25, 2008 -- 08:51 PM
Several eCoach members requested the ability to add different month calendars to their class site. Now you can add a calendar to the text editor.

Click the calendar icon on the text editor toolbar.


A pop-up window appears where you can choose the month, year, and border color. Then click Insert Calendar.




The calendar uses the table feature with the appropriate days of the month you chose.


















You can change the fonts, add color fill, insert images, links, animation, and much more.


   more...
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Add a Widget

By Barbara Bray      June 25, 2008 -- 06:54 AM
You can share that you are a lifetime member of eCoach or post a widget from eCoach on any blog. Go to My Toolkit to Widgets











A widget is a logo or image of a site that your users can click to access that site quickly. We created four different widgets for you: the eCoach logo, I am a Lifetime Member of eCoach, one that goes to our free eLibrary, and a login to eCoach.

Choose one of the widgets to put on the sidebar of your blog. If you use another blog outside of eCoach, embed the code from the widget you would like to share with your readers.


















   more...
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New Features in Survey Tool

By Barbara Bray      June 19, 2008 -- 06:34 AM
The survey tool works with any program and can be shared with anyone on your team, specific members, and others outside of eCoach. We even have newspapers using eCoach for public only so they are the only ones seeing the results. We have received requests for some new features in the surveys.

You now have access to the text editor in the description and each question. What that means is that you can upload images, videos, podcasts, and most types of files.













...   more...
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Embed Code - We made it easy!

By Barbara Bray      June 6, 2008 -- 09:23 PM
Now you can add Web 2.0 tools like SlideShare or stream videos from Teacher Tube using our new Embed Code box in the Universal Builder. Under Contents either Add a New Page or Edit an existing page and now your will see an Embed Code box.













I went to TeacherTube and found a great presentation by Karl Fisch called "Did you Know?" and copied the embed code.










After you click Save. The video will appear below the text box.
 

You can use the text box to introduce your embedded file or video.

You can still use View Source that is in the lower left corner of your text editor to embed code. The text editor works with blogs, surveys now, message center, and calendar. We found using View Soure was a little difficult for some of our members so now with the embed code box, all you have to do is copy, paste, and save. You also have a similar box to embed code on the sidebar of your blogs and Universal builder.

   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Jayna  June 5, 2011 -- 06:07 PM

Citation Builder

By Barbara Bray      May 20, 2008 -- 03:48 PM
We encourage our members to cite all of their sources. So now you can use the eCoach Citation Builder instead of going out to another site. We are listening to our members and basing our research and development on member requests. You can find the citation builder in your toolkit:











 



Fill in the form with the information from the website you wish to cite:

















Create Citation







Save and add more








After you save your citations, they are available in your locker under My Citations. You can then copy and paste any citation into your work. We will eventually be creating a way for you to embed the ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Charles Cummins  June 25, 2008 -- 10:10 AM

New Conversation Corner

By Barbara Bray      May 3, 2008 -- 08:02 AM
Conversation Corner is a new feature on your Home where you can ask questions to the entire eCoach community. Everyone including Free members can share ideas, ask questions, and provide answers or possible solutions to questions. Conversation Corner works like the blog tool where each question is a new post on the Conversaton Corner blog. You can also see Conversation Corner in your Blog Home.

On your Home, click Ask Questions to start a new question or thread. This will open the text editor. Add your question in the title. You ...   more...
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NEW Profile, Add Friends, Change Settings

By Barbara Bray      April 24, 2008 -- 11:02 PM
When you click My Profile on the upper right or under My Locker, now you will find that it is really different.

My Profile is where others can learn about you, add you to their Friends list, and connect with tags. Now you can edit each section by clicking the pencil.








Members will be able to view all of your published work at the bottom of your profile. Published work includes your projects, surveys, and blogs.





Only you and your eCoach will be able to view your ILP, phone number, and street address. You can hide your email under settings so members or others viewing you as author of a project ...   more...
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Standards, Resources, and Programs - Oh My!

By eCoach Staff      February 26, 2008 -- 02:53 PM
Up to Standards
Every state’s content standards are available in My eCoach. We add standards based on community requests. Some communities have asked us to add professional, technology, and even local standards. Check your standards from the left menu and add any resources to your standards. These will then go to our eLibrary for review and publishing.

Resources Galore!
Look for thousands of new resources in our eLibrary. Along with your submissions, we have a group of interns and students who are finding rich resources for you ...   more...
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New Left Navigation

By Barbara Bray      February 21, 2008 -- 06:05 AM
The left navigation bar was changed based on much input from our members. Since My eCoach tries to bring together all the tools you might need for your community, the left sidebar navigation was getting long and cumbersome. We asked for ideas from many of our members to come up with ways to make navigation easier.
  • Home field is now Home.
  • Icons are different.
  • Looking ...   more...
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2008 Presidental Election

By Charlotte McGovern      February 12, 2008 -- 11:29 AM
Wondering what a Super Delegate is?  Are presidential candidates really chosen by the people who vote in the primaries?  Check out The 2008 Presidential Campaign Project

Help your students become involved. See how the media is playing a role in this historic election. Get the up-to-date delegate count and much more! Take our  survey "How Will You Vote?" .
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Have you entered our contest yet?

By Roxanne Clement      February 6, 2008 -- 04:59 PM

Now you can share activities and projects using the Universal Builder and win prizes too! Enter today!

Help us continue sharing quality activities and projects within our community as we expand and enhance our eLibrary. Add your project to the thousands of resources already available to maximize our time, energy, and creativity.

eCoach members have access to the new Universal Builder. Entering the contest is as easy as moving a project you’ve already created with an old builder into the Universal Builder. We’d love to have you share your projects with the rest of our community!
Contest details inside eCoach......   more...

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New Look on Home Field

By Barbara Bray      February 6, 2008 -- 03:19 PM
We changed Team Up to Bulletins where you can ask for collaboration, promote events and new teams, and share new features. We combined Tips and Tricks, Featured Projects, and eLibrary Spotlight into one box that rotates along with the Bulletin box on its left.

















Click Bulletins on the left and go to View All Posts to create a new bulletin to be approved and posted.

Check out the new personal space below just for you and only you. Use it as an aggregator for all of ...   more...
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Standards Added and Updated in eCoach

By Barbara Bray      January 18, 2008 -- 08:20 AM
We have been busy adding standards based on requests by our eCoaches and what they need for their communities.

Keep checking in, click on My Standards and edit them to add more standards to your list. We will be moving My Standards from your profile to where there already is My Standards on your left sidebar.

We will also be reworking how you update your standards and the look of the page where you choose your standards, so keep checking in.


We have over 45 states content standards listed and adding the rest soon. We also input professional standards for eCoaches states and local curriculum ...   more...
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Print and Export Features

By Barbara Bray      December 11, 2007 -- 08:45 PM
Print Feature

The Universal builder keeps getting more features based on members' requests. Now you and your audience can print your project. From the view mode, you and your users will see Printable View on the sidebar. If you allowed cloning, then Printable view appears below Clone This.

   


When you click Printable view, your project appears in PDF on multiple pages. The Print dialog box appears so you can print all of the pages.
















Click Preview if you want to view how ...   more...
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New eCoach Partner: CILC

By Barbara Bray      November 29, 2007 -- 08:02 AM
My eCoach is pleased to announce that the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (CILC) is a new partner. Established in 1994, CILC specializes in videoconferencing and collaboration technologies to deliver all types of programs to K-12 students and educators. As CILC continues to build their cadre of professional development content providers, their subject matter experts will utilize My eCoach to create online learnng communities to continue dialogue and provide ongoing professional support and coaching. Go to http://www.cilc.org to find out more about CILC.

About CILC
Established ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Joey Serim  December 31, 2007 -- 11:08 AM

How do you support new teachers?

By Barbara Bray      November 8, 2007 -- 02:53 PM
The East Bay BTSA (Beginning Teacher Support) Alameda BTSA program is designed for new teachers to be successful with their teaching practice with the guidance of their Support Providers. The Program Coordinators, Theresa Anderberg, Shirley Clem, and Teri Olsen with support from Diana Kenney, District Technology Instructional Specialist, designed an online learning environment in My eCoach that included communication, coaching, resources, project builders, induction standard 16, and a digital drop box. They set up one team for Support Providers with the Program Coordinators as eCoaches as the ...   more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By small Laura Smith  November 26, 2007 -- 07:55 PM

LAUSD Arts Education Branch eCoach Program

By Barbara Bray      October 28, 2007 -- 05:06 PM








The Los Angeles Unified School District Arts Education Branch (AEB) has set up an eCoach program and communities for each elementary and secondary arts discipline: Theatre, Dance, Music, and Visual Arts. The AEB staff are the League eCoaches who were trained this June as part of the AEB staff team: Karen Coates, Robin Lithgow, Steven McCarthy (Theatre), Shana Habel (Dance), Luiz Sampaio (Visual Arts), Steve Venz (Music), Chris Gilman and Dain Olsen (Media Arts to be developed).


The Elementary AEB developed Arts Instructional Guides (AIG) for each discipline with modules for each ...   more...
Comments: 3   Last Comment By Rachel Feldman  July 1, 2010 -- 11:26 AM

Updates with Blogs

By Barbara Bray      October 24, 2007 -- 11:55 AM
Several new updates with the eCoach blogging tool:
  • New templates
  • Add categories to posts
  • Blog posts now appear in recent activities
New Templates
Check out the extended list of templates for your public blog.

































We adapted the new templates in the Universal builder so you could extend your collaborative projects using a similar template. Just put a link to your blog in the Universal builder.

Add Categories to your Posts
Why would you do this? If you have multiple posts and people are having trouble finding a post on a particular topic, they can check your list of categories on the right sidebar.



At the ...   more...
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Event List for your Calendar

By Barbara Bray      October 23, 2007 -- 04:14 PM
Now you can see a list of all of your events on your calendar over as many months as you want. Go to My Calendar on the left sidebar. At the top of the calendar you will see a link to List:





Click List and you will see a list of current events.



















You can choose the dates (from one date to another) to view your event list.

   more...
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Updated Chat Room

By Barbara Bray      August 30, 2007 -- 03:18 PM

Go ahead and check out the chat feature now. Some of you were concerned about the jumping when you were chatting with others. We fixed that because of your request, so now it is seamless. Just make sure you are in the right chat room. The room that shows up is the All Community Chat room and everyone can read what you are writing.

You will also notice that your messages will stay in the room even after you leave. We did this because many of you wanted to archive the chat. So now the messages will last about 2 hours.

Also one more thing - when people left the chat room, their name and profile would ...   more...
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Embed Code with a Welcome

By Barbara Bray      August 27, 2007 -- 10:28 AM
Thought I’d share a Voki welcome by embedding the code here. I’ll share how to do this in a tip. Try moving your cursor around and my eyes will follow it. Kind of eery! Then click play to actually hear my voice welcome you.


Get a Voki now!

   more...
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New Templates for Universal Builder

By Barbara Bray      August 21, 2007 -- 10:47 PM
We thought you might want to change the look of your website that you create with the Universal builder. So we checked out some pictures from our eLibrary and played around with color schemes to come up with some interesting templates that we hope you will like. We have other ideas floating around in our heads on designs.

Since it’s almost Fall, Barbara took the picture in the banner when she was up at Tahoe and gave to Pearl to make a new Fall template:




















To see the new templates, edit one of your Universal builders and go to Customize to Templates and scroll to the bottom rows.



   more...
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Book Club in eCoach

By Barbara Bray      July 30, 2007 -- 02:18 PM
Have you ever wanted to join a book club to discuss a book you just read, are reading, or want to read? Do you want to share ideas about a book that you would like to develop into a curriculum project?

We set up a book club with help from a few of our members and are determining focus. The book club is available to members of the eCoach community who have full access to all features. Here’s our ideas so far:

Use team forum to
  • discuss focus and direction of book club
  • submit books to discuss
  • determine how we will set up the forum
We also plan to use other team tools such as the team page to put up ...   more...
Comments: 7   Last Comment By Elizabeth Oviedo  August 14, 2007 -- 06:00 AM

Online Facilitation Certification Course

By Barbara Bray      July 19, 2007 -- 07:00 PM

Are you looking to create an online course, facilitate an existing course, or develop and sustain an online community? Ever have a problem keeping participants motivated or staying in your community? How about encouraging online participants to share and collaborate?

We developed this five week course to give you the skills, tips, and resources you need to become an effective online facilitator and to provide an online community for facilitators.

First Session begins August 1st and goes to September 4th, 2007 (30 hours). Course Content includes:

  • Building Trust
  • Individual ...   more...
Comments: 4   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  August 1, 2007 -- 09:10 AM

Universal Builder is Really Universal

By Barbara Bray      July 18, 2007 -- 08:42 AM
The Universal Builder is open-ended and so flexible that you can use it for presentations, websites, class sites, ePortfolios, or really anything you want to publish on the web. You can allow comments and cloning, add co-authors, upload any file, video, podcast, link. You can select your audience and provide options for what they can do.

Each project you build has RSS feed in ...   more...
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NECC 07 a Success!!!

By Barbara Bray      June 28, 2007 -- 03:14 PM
We decided to try a different format for our booth at NECC in Atlanta this year. We wanted to sit with each person and give a personal tour. This seemed to work much better. At least we think it was better than doing stand up and deliver presentations.

Each of us (Roxanne, Janice, Ken, Barbara, Sara, and Anne) listened to your needs and designed our personal tour around you. We will be sharing who won the iPod next week.



The poster session on Tuesday was a real hit. The teachers from Pinellas County Schools (Nancy Kuznicki, Phyllis Hand, and Susan Brown) along with Barbara and Ken shared the ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By George Reither  June 29, 2007 -- 08:17 AM

New Front Page

By Barbara Bray      May 25, 2007 -- 08:06 PM
My eCoach has a new look. The front page looks more like our online community and has links to new information. You can still login from this page and access our store and the community eLibrary with thousands of free resources. Some resources are archived and others will be repurposed and added to our eLibrary.

Please visit and let us know what you think!

My eCoach

   more...
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New Program in eCoach

By Barbara Bray      May 25, 2007 -- 07:27 PM
Starting in June, My eCoach will work with the Los Angeles USD Arts Education Program (AEB), CA.

My eCoach will support the AEB staff as they develop instructional guides for each discipline and grade level in eCoach: Dance, Theatre, Music, Visual Arts, and Media Arts. Teachers and community partners will develop lessons aligned to the guides. The online instructional guides will replace binders. Instead of binders with hundreds of pages of paper, there will be links, images, videos, and lesson aligned to standards and Arts big ideas.
   more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By Dennis Imoto  September 16, 2008 -- 08:14 AM

Cross Curriculum Projects

By Barbara Bray      May 25, 2007 -- 07:17 PM
Pinellas County Schools, in Largo, Florida is planning this coming year the Pinellas science project will be expanding to add more teachers. This past year 38 eMentors ...   more...
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Example Communities continuing next year

By Barbara Bray      May 25, 2007 -- 07:11 PM
The New Teacher Center (UCSC), CA: adding more principal candidates across seven regions using the customized Individual Development Plan (IDP) builder. This year some will be providing evidence on their ePortfolios.

San Diego County of Education Leadership Services, CA: adding another 200 administrators as part of the required AB 430 training required for their admin clear credential. The program is growing beyond their county.

eMINTS eCoach Program, MO: continuing into their fourth year with Veteran eMINTS teachers using eCoach. eMINTS just received funding for 100 new eMINTS classrooms ...   more...
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Create and Link Quizzes

By Barbara Bray      May 17, 2007 -- 08:28 AM
Now when you create a project for your students, add a link to a quiz that you create using the Quiz tool. Many of our members were creating their quizzes in word and uploading them so they weren’t interactive.  You will be able to pull up each respondent’s quiz and find the percentages answering specific questions. This is data you can really use right away that will help you design the next quiz. It’s easy!
  1. Title the quiz with a description.
  2. Customize it with a logo.
  3. Invite another eCoach member as a co-author.
  4. Add as many questions as you would like before publishing. A comment box ...   more...
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How do you know it's working?

By Barbara Bray      May 2, 2007 -- 11:22 AM
As a teacher or administrator, you may be asking yourself: how do you know this lesson or new activity or program is working and really making a difference for kids. A simple method is to put together a survey and ask the questions that will help you find these answers.

What do you want to know?
  • How many of your 5th grade boys have Internet at home?
  • How many of your middle school girls are worried about bullying and chat online?
  • How many students are home after-school alone and have Internet access?
  • How many of your veteran teachers (5+ years in the profession) use email daily and blog?
These may not ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Sydney  March 3, 2009 -- 03:16 AM

eCoach or Open Source?

By Barbara Bray      March 19, 2007 -- 03:28 PM
Some of you love Moodle as your learning management system (LMS) and that’s great. My eCoach can complement Moodle or Bb but some are finding that eCoach does the same and much more. eCoach was not created to replace any LMS - it was created to support, supplement, and enhance face-to-face programs. We encourage blending f2f with online - that is not always possible - so some people are trying to find a solution for online only.

In my opinion - this is very difficult to do. You can set up a course in Moodle or Bb or even eCoach and find that maybe 50% participate.

Do you ever feel like you have ...   more...
Comments: 4   Last Comment By small Sarah Zykanov  March 26, 2007 -- 10:55 AM

Great CUE Conference

By Barbara Bray      March 5, 2007 -- 08:57 PM
CUE (Computer Using Educators)- A great conference where all of us are family. Great place for a conference: Palm Springs. It seemed like around every corner was an old friend I haven’t seen in a long time and then met so many new friends. Thursday I did a fun pop-up session called Feelin’ Googley where everyone followed along with me doing a karaoke.  So glad I wasn’t the only one singing. Don’t have much of a voice even if I look like Bette.

Next session was
Web 2.0 and Fun Tools. Both audiences jumped in and participated by sharing ideas and tips. I made these websites with the Universal ...   more...
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Theme of the Month: Black History

By Barbara Bray      February 4, 2007 -- 11:53 AM
February is Black History month so we decided to pull together projects for a thematic collection for our commuity from members from our eLibrary, websites that many of you contributed, linkable original art, and several links to books as Featured Projects on our Home Field. Here are a few from that site - go ahead and login to see the full list. Use this blog post to share any websites, images, books, videos, podcasts, or any other type of resource you believe that will benefit others researching the topic of Black History.

African-Americans Impact America
  by Jeffrey Taylor
What impact ...   more...
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Universal Builder Launched!!

By Barbara Bray      January 17, 2007 -- 10:24 PM
The Universal Builder is an open-ended flexible builder that is like a project and blog combined. You can create a website and publish it as a class site, content site, lesson, unit, collaborative project, course, etc. in no time at all.

Customize your Site
Similar to a blog, you can customize your site choosing from a variety of templates.

You can even customize your site even more by adding an image to the template either as a small image on the left or as a banner to make your own look. Add links and embed code to the sidebar. You can add RSS feeds and all types of files including text, ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Ken Bakken  February 5, 2007 -- 08:48 PM

Clone that Survey

By Barbara Bray      January 17, 2007 -- 04:11 PM
Clone This
Our survey feature is becoming really popular. Now not only teachers, administrators, and schools are using it, but businesses and newspapers. Found out one thing that needed to work differently. When you create a survey and someone answers it, you could not go in and change the questions. Think all surveys are like that. Well, we fixed that - had to make it better than any other survey - right?. Now you can create a survey, test it, and then if you want to make changes, clone it.


A clone of that survey appears in your survey home with (clone) after the title. It is the survey with questions ...   more...
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Your Web, Your Way

By Barbara Bray      January 1, 2007 -- 08:56 PM
I was reading the January Time magazine where the "Person of the Year" is You. Yes, you. You control the Information Age. With Web 2.0, everyone and anyone  controls the media. The focus is on citizens of the new digital democracy: Harriet Klausner as one of the world’s most prolific and influential book reviewers (12,896 reviews on Amazon.com). Ali Khurshid shares 200 of his photos of the beauty of Pakistan on Flickr. Wordsmith at War, mil-blogger Captain Lee Kelley, writes about his experiences in Iraq. Simon Pulsifer has authored between 2-3,000 Wikipedia articles and edited 92,000 others. ...   more...
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Happy Holidays!

By Barbara Bray      December 14, 2006 -- 01:09 PM
We want to wish you and everyone in the eCoach community a wonderful holiday and a very Happy New Year!

This time off (if you have time off) is a good time to reflect on the year and what you plan to do next year. This is also a good time to read and maybe write a comment to a blog or blog yourself.

Just finished Small is the New Big by Seth Godin - an interesting compilation of his blogs about the new marketing strategies. The Internet has changed everything. Each chapter is short, on different subjects, but mainly why viral marketing may take over traditional sales and marketing strategies. ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By small Donna Taylor  December 26, 2006 -- 08:52 PM

Going Online

By Barbara Bray      December 6, 2006 -- 08:24 AM
Imagine what would happen if a terrorist organization and or pandemic outbreak disrupted an entire county or city school district, forcing schools and area college campuses to close indefinitely? Where would the teachers and professor go to teach and where would the students go to learn?

These questions are from an article from the Courier Post titled "Schools must learn to use Internet to quickly recover from disaster." They write "...that less than 1 percent of K-12 teachers have ever taught online or received any training on how to teach online, and most universities and colleges teach less ...   more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By Stephanie Pierce  January 18, 2007 -- 10:18 AM

Google Teacher Academy

By Barbara Bray      November 7, 2006 -- 01:26 PM
I am so lucky to be part of this exciting day at Google (November 7, 2006 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View) along with 50 other teachers and technology specialists.  This morning went so fast: building teams, breakout sessions using the advanced search tools, Google Earth and United Streaming, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Cool! Now our job as Google Teacher Educators we need to come up with 3 professional development activities. Even more tools in the afternoon: Picasa and iPhoto, Blogger, Feedburner, Podcasts, and SketchUp. I learned so much so fast. Now I have to go ...   more...
Comments: 1   Last Comment By Janice Friesen  November 8, 2006 -- 07:33 PM

Look who won the Innovation Award

By Barbara Bray      October 30, 2006 -- 10:11 PM
Congratulations to EWYL (Earn While You Learn) teachers Mary Howland, Beth Fensterwald and Steven Caringella who were awarded the $5000 Rambus/KCI Innovation Award for their Environmental Concerns in the Community Project. They asked their fourth, fifth, and eighth grade students to answer the essential question: How do we become aware of local environmental concerns and what can we do to make a difference?




In their collaborative project, each class contributed a key component to be shared by all. Fourth graders collected water quality data from a local creek while fifth and eighth graders ...   more...

Comments: 3   Last Comment By Kelly Hudson  October 31, 2006 -- 09:55 AM

Winning means Don't Give Up

By Barbara Bray      September 29, 2006 -- 10:23 AM
Jeffrey Taylor from Oakland, CA who has been a member of eCoach since 1999 thought you’d be interested in "What do you mean Civil Rights is More than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks?" Jeff finds grants, contests, and giveaways for his classroom. He has won CTAP grants, CUE grants, presented at the Palm Springs CUE Conference with 5 of his students, goes to RAFT for supplies, and much more. We featured Jeff in 2004. He found Donors Choose on our Grants and Contests WRL and decided to apply - three times. He won and this is what he plans to do with the winnings:

ince becoming a ...   more...

Comments: 2   Last Comment By Linda Ullah  October 19, 2006 -- 08:29 AM

Microsoft Voucher Settlement

By Barbara Bray      September 20, 2006 -- 08:48 AM
In 2004, Microsoft agreed to a settlement with consumers and businesses in 14 states to resolve a class action suit that alleged it overcharged for its products. Now that the initial phase of the settlement is complete, some of the money that went unclaimed is available for schools in a "cy pres" fund. Every state is going to handle this money differently, and will have different criteria for how schools can claim it.  The results of the Microsoft voucher settlements are currently in negotiation in many states. 

California $1 Billion +

My eCoach is an approved ...   more...

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New Survey Feature

By Barbara Bray      September 19, 2006 -- 03:50 PM
Would you like a survey feature in My eCoach? Yes or No.

Guess what? It’s here. We created a survey tool that can stand-alone or be part of a project. Just click Surveys on the left navigation bar to create your own.

You may be invited to take a survey. We would like to invite you to take our Fall 06 Survey to give us feedback on the direction of the My eCoach community. This way you can see how it looks. The survey is anonymous unless you share your name. The survey is for members and those who have used My eCoach. You can also get to this survey by going to your Survey Home to My eCoach Staff ...   more...
Comments: 5   Last Comment By small Barbara Bray  November 6, 2006 -- 08:06 AM

Forest Hills One-to-One Initiative

By Barbara Bray      September 1, 2006 -- 09:40 AM
Forest Hills School District in Cincinnati, Ohio, has a one-to-one laptop initiative with tablet PCs supported by a coaching and mentoring program for nine schools: 6 elementary, 1 middle, and 2 high schools. Twelve teachers and media specialists signed up as eCoaches and attended several workshops including a three day training end of August and September by Barbara. Cary Harrod as the League eCoach will provide support for each of ...   more...
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Leadership Program at SDCOE

By Barbara Bray      August 24, 2006 -- 06:09 AM

San Diego County Office of Education provides leadership training as part of the principal certification program. eCoach Cynthia Sistek-Chandler led Team A along with the support of Ward Smith as the "trailblazing team" for the NEW AB75 (now AB430) curriculum. Sheri Barker, Director of Leadership Services, provided direction while Cynthia adapted a comprehensive curriculum folded into a very full three days. All AB75/430 participants are required to complete all seat time (24 hours) and practicum hours (16-20 hours), totaling 40 hours for Module 3.

As the first team, Team A was ...   more...

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Chill Out in Chillicothe

By Barbara Bray      August 15, 2006 -- 12:37 PM
Meet a new league in the eCoach community: The Hornets from Chillicothe RII Schools in Chillicothe, Missouri. Anne Jeschke, participated last year with eMINTS and again this year with the Veterans eMINTS teachers. Anne won our raffle at NECC in San Diego - YEAH!! This gave Anne eCoach training at our site in California for two eCoaches and to set up 3 teams for a total ...   more...
Comments: 2   Last Comment By Janice Friesen  October 6, 2006 -- 04:29 PM

Earn While You Learn (EWYL)

By Barbara Bray      July 29, 2006 -- 05:20 PM
Read the CTAP Portical Article on the Earn While You Learn Institute. They’ve called the EWYL  institute "A professional development model worth thinking about."

The Foothill College Krause Center for Innovation Earn While Your Learn and Earn (EWYL) While You Learn Fellows Institutes provide K-12 teachers with the opportunity to engage in yearlong technology integration staff development.

Participants for the Earn While You Learn Program are chosen through a competitive application from our LINC (Learning in New ...   more...

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Enjoyed NECC in San Diego

By Barbara Bray      July 5, 2006 -- 06:00 AM
Great times were had by all - presentations, fireworks, meeting new friends, hugging old friends, and will have wonderful stories to tell. Saw the fireworks with thousands of other NECC friends on a beautiful clear night. Lots of activities:
  • Wed workshop 12:30-3:30 on Learning Communities for some wonderful people.
  • Wed poster session 1:30-3:30 on Projects by Trena Noval with Ken Bakken’s help
  • Friday session 10-11 on Indigenous People and Culture with James Smith, Sylvester Robertson, and Michelle Williams - Room 29C
  • Ongoing presentations in our booths 2926 & 2928: Teachers and eCoaches ...   more...
Comments: 3   Last Comment By small James  August 18, 2006 -- 10:22 AM

My eCoach To Create a Builder for the New Teacher Center

By Barbara Bray      July 1, 2006 -- 07:19 AM
My eCoach is working with the New Teacher Center (NTC)  at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) to develop a new online environment and toolkit for coaching school administrators.






My eCoach will work closely with NTC ’s School Leadership Development Division to plan, design, and develop an Individual Development Plan builder (IDP). The new IDP builder will allow NTC coaches to virtually coach individual new administrators. Administrators will take a Pre-Assessment Survey based on the California Professional Standards For Educational Leaders (CPSELS), and use survey results and ...   more...
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My eCoach and Pinellas County Schools, FL

By Barbara Bray      June 27, 2006 -- 09:41 AM
My eCoach is very lucky to be part of the EETT grant with Pinellas County Schools, Florida. We are working with up to 38 e-Mentors as they develop technology integrated, project-based curriculum with 109 teachers and administrators. Public Post

e-Mentors are part of six teams that include one or more representatives from Pinellas Park Elementary, Morgan Fitzgerald Middle and Pinellas Park High schools. Projects are around science-based themes where they develop real-world project-based learning activities: Ecology, Life Processes, Living Interactions, Weather, Habitats, Florida Environment ...   more...
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eCoach Certification Institutes

By Barbara Bray      June 23, 2006 -- 09:29 PM
Why would you want to be an eCoach? eCoaches have online coaching tools to manage and coordinate their teams. They may be on-site coaches or mentors or even trainers who want to extend their face-to-face meetings and build an online learning community. Join us at the eCoach Certification Institute on July 24th through July 26th at the eCoach office in Oakland, California.

There are multiple ways to meet your learning goals. Most professional development involves workshops and coaching. Setting up a workshop takes lots of planning, at least three hours for every hour of a workshop. Workshops ...   more...
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New Team Manager

By Barbara Bray      June 20, 2006 -- 09:18 PM
Looking for a way to personalize your team information? How about creating a course announcement page? My eCoach offers the tools and features teams need to build their own learning community.

Now eCoaches can control and manage their teams using the new team management tools. For each team you are the eCoach, you can create a team page with announcements, links, list of courses, and whatever else you might want for your team






The Team Manager has a team content editor that allows you ...   more...
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Changing Home Field

By Barbara Bray      June 19, 2006 -- 09:28 AM
Each time you log in to My eCoach, you will see different tips and resources on the Home Field. We are constantly looking for new ideas to help you or just to give you ideas or websites that are fun or will make your job easier.



The
Welcome at the top will be different depending on your account. This area is from the eCoach staff. eCoaches get information for their team members or heads up on events. Players who are on one or more teams will get general information about My eCoach. Free Accounts have general information on what is My eCoach and links to more information. All accounts are lifetime ...   more...
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New Custom v1.2 Builder

By Barbara Bray      June 18, 2006 -- 11:52 AM
We have received many comments on updates people would like for our builders. From your suggestions, we created a modified and more flexible version of the custom builder (Custom Builder Version 1.2).

One suggestion was to make the Brainstorm connect with the rest of the features in ...   more...
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Introducing the New Inside Ticket

By Barbara Bray      June 16, 2006 -- 01:07 PM
Welcome to the new Inside Ticket as a public blog! We thought that if we were going to do a newsletter - why not as a blog that we can broadcast as a RSS feed for the eCoach community or anyone on the Internet?

How does it work to create a public blog? If you are a member of My eCoach, you can create a public blog that is published as your own website. Login and click Blogs. Click create using the Blog wizard. Choose from a variety of templates:

Choose the access ...   more...
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