Following are five online time management tools, some I have used, some I have just learned about in this quest, to help educators to organize, prioritize, ensure efficiency, and omit stress for online educators. We were asked to identify whether each relates to personal or professional use, or both, and, interestingly, they all in some way relate to both, as our professional and personal lives are inextricably linked:

1. Computer / Family Calendar:

Every member of our family has some form of digital technology, whether it be a smart phone or a tablet. Since we all syncs our phones and tablets with this computer, we all share the scheduled appointments on the family calendar. Every family member has their appointments on this calendar, so that we can all plan for each other without conflict. This is also a great way for our children to learn to plan ahead and prioritize. This tool also has a feature which allows users to set two alerts, plus an additional travel time alert if needed. It will allow users to send an appointment to friends and family via their e-mail address, so they may also add it to their digital devices / home computers.

2. One Note / Microsoft 2010:

I have not yet used this feature, but its ability to organize virtual folders and file notes seems like it would be of great value to educators and other professionals who compile a lot of research. Could be of personal value as well if researching genealogy, etc.

3. Symbaloo:

I was first introduced to this social bookmarking site in the Navigate skill, and I can't see myself being a teacher in the future without it. This site creates digital tiles to file useful teaching websites, which may also be color-coded to hyper-organize your files. It's a great time-management tool for teachers, because it cuts the time of having to access paper resources, and, as an added bonus, helps to omit paper / binder clutter. This may be also used for personal organization of files as well, such as creating a web mix of healthy eating websites, etc.

4. Toggl:

This is an interesting tool to assist users in tracking their total time on a project or task. It even allows you to best your score to improve personal efficiency in the completion of tasks. It digitally saves projects as well, and is accessible from all devices. For personal and professional use.

5. Evernote:

This app syncs to to all devices, so it's accessible anywhere. It categorizes your To Do list for you--any information from every aspect of your life is organized, and even has an index.

I am also interested in further exploring Paprika or RememberTheMilk to organize grocery lists and menus, and Wunderlist, which seems similar to Evernote, to organize all important upcoming events and due dates, both personal and professional. Lightroom is also an excellent digital tool for the digital organization of historical information.

Following is the Content Map from our Quarter 2 American Romanticism / Dark Romanticism / Transcendentalism / Realism Unit, which always fell at the beginning of Quarter 2, and a bit of which spilled into Q3:

There are times when appearances do matter, especially in the virtual classroom. We don't "see" our students every day, so we need to incorporate instructional sites that are visually appealing and engaging, but also user-friendly and content-rich. When instructional sites are fun for educators to use, they are fun for students as well. Sites that incorporate forms of gaming, WebQuests, virtual field trips, and some for of interactive learning, have always had the greatest appeal to students, and have always seem to accomplish the goal of a deeper understanding of the text. 

The key to designing an effective site is that you don't have to sacrifice style to make it educational. In CANnect's "Content Layout and Styling" article, they stress that content creators "separate structure of the content from presentation," so that content is not sacrificed in the name of style, and user-friendliness is maintained: the text is the most important aspect in the layout of a site; color contrast must be distinguishable for colorblind students, and to limit confusion; keep the appearance of content uniform, not distracting; and use white space to separate blocks of text.

In an online course, students identify engaging websites by the appearance / presentation of the content, but it also should remain accessible and comprehensible to all students.

Following are a few site that meet these standards, and a few that could use some tweaking in order to avoid the "Moonwalking Bear" syndrome (articulate.com)--unfortunately, looking back at the sites I most relied upon, the most content-rich sites were also the most visually unappealing:

5 Visually-Appealing, Content-Rich Instructional Sites--No Moonwalking Bears:

1. Blackboard:

Blackboard recently partnered with CK-12, below, but this is my favorite site. They have recently updated their plagiarism prevention tool, are continually updating the site's tools, and added an article to their blog, "Why Investment in Design Is the Only Way to 'Win' in Education." They understand.

2. CK-12:

CK-12 recently partnered with Blackboard, so this is sort of a cheat, but this site has all the right features for a producing online learning environment. A content-rich, visually clean and simplistic site. Dashboard makes it easy for user to find a specific course.

3. The Norton Anthology of American Literature.com

This site is clean, crisp, and easy to navigate. An unlimited supply of overviews of literary periods, reviews, connections and quizzes, authors, topic clusters, and timelines. Incredibly useful in teaching high school literature. This site makes me feel like I'm in an old library. In a good way.

For this quest, I chose several Web 2.0 tools, mostly because there are so many choices, and they all have something different to offer for students of all learning styles. It was a lot of fun exploring the new tools, figuring out how they work, and completing the final instructional tool. I chose Smore to create a newsletter, and GoAnimate and ABCYa to create differentiated instructional tools.

Smore:

I chose to create a Smore Web. 2.0 Differentiated Teacher Instruction newsletter for this quest, because it is user-friendly, has engaging visuals, and lends itself to the uploading of a multitude of web tool creators using videos, images, URLs, etc. The newsletter contains my GoAnimate video short, which is a reminder of an upcoming due date, and all of the differentiated / virtual projects we use to study The Crucible throughout the year. I also used a Wordle-like program on ABCYa to create a picture with some literary devices and key words from The Crucible, to keep students thinking about these concepts.

GoAnimate:

I chose GoAnimate site instead of Voki, because it seemed a little more updated, was more user-friendly, and Voki seemed very much like talking Larry. I also like the choice of visuals. I chose to use The Crucible / Puritanism unit for the lessons on the flyer. There are so many great interactive web sites, videos / biographies, and WebQuests for differentiated instruction regarding The Crucible and the Salem Witch Trials, and students of every learning style enjoy using these tools. Some of them have been around for at least ten years, and still look impressive. I created a quick reminder video short regarding an upcoming Crucible final project due date. I just signed-up for a 14-day free trial, so the video won't last forever.

My newsletter, below, includes the GoAnimate video short--just click the red button saying "Click Me! Upcoming Project Due Date," and the GoAnimate website appears with the video:

Kahoot!

This tool is probably the best thing I've seen to come along for educators and students, ever. It is fun, interactive, engaging, and an entire lecture hall of students may use this tool simultaneously for the same game. Using any mobile device, students use these simple directions to join in the fun:

• log in to kahoot.it
• Enter the pin displayed on the screen at the front of the room / computer
• Enter a nickname, which will then appear on the screen
• Use your device to answer each question by clicking on the shape / color which corresponds to the correct answer
• The aim is to get as many points as possible and get to the top of the leaderboard
• The quiz master then downloads the quiz results; the class is able to view the score each person received in the room, the answers the gave, and how quickly

For this blog entry, I'm calling the creator of any internet resources the "author."

OERs, or Open Ended Resources:

There is a "three-layer" design to Creative Commons' public copyright licenses: Legal Code, Human Readable, and Machine Readable":

Legal Code:

This is the traditional legal tool in legal jargon, their typical language and text format.

THE THREE LAYERS OF LICENSES:

Human Readable, a.k.a. Commons Deed:

This is not a license: this user-friendly format of the Legal Code is in layman's terms, not legalese, so that most people using internet resources, such as creators, educators, and scientists, may use this as a reference tool, and will better understand important terms and conditions. This would be a sort of "Creative Commons for Dummies."

Machine Readable:

This is a summary of the freedoms and limitations of the author's work, which is converted to a format readable by software systems, search engines, and other technology. This language was dubbed "CC Rights Expression Language," or (CC REL), by the CC. A few sites that cater to CC REL to minimize copyright infringement by students and educators are: Google for Creative Commons content, Flickr for pictures, Jamendo for albums, and spinxpress for general media. Wikimedia Commons also filters through the CC REL language.

THE CC LICENSES:

Attribution (CC BY):

Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND):

Resources under this licensing allow for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long it is shared in its original state, giving credit to the author

Atrribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike (CC BY-NC-SA):

This license allows others to remix, tweak, and add to an author's original work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited, and new creations are licensed under the original terms.

Attribution-Share-Alike (CC BY-SA):

"Share and share, alike":Others are allowed to remix, tweak, and add on to the author's original work, even for commercial purposes, as long as the original author is credited, and new creations are licensed under their original terms. Similar to "copyleft" free / open-source software licenses. This is the license Wikipedia uses.

Attribution-Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC):

These resources are available for remixing, tweaking, and building-upon the author's work non-commercially. New works must acknowledge the original author, but they don't have to license their new creations using the same licensing terms.

Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works (CC BY-NC-ND):

This license allows the least freedom for users: these resources may be downloaded and shared as long as the original author's credit remains, but they may not be changed in any way, and may not be used commercially.

Following is an online poster made by Creative Commons, which identifies key issues and statistics regarding using other's online works. Some of the statistics make it easy to see why were at times feel limitless in creative online pedagogical possibilities: for example, 227,230,423 CC photos are available for use online without limitations--hundreds of millions of images:

As an educator who has utilized online resources for almost twenty years, all I can say is thank goodness for Fair Use and the TEACH act. If teachers were not allowed access to copyrighted materials, we probably wouldn't get much sleep. But online educators must take extra precautions to seek out OER and CC-protected resources, first, so they avoid Fair Use and copyright issues. The digital community has the ability to multiply the use of images exponentially, so educators must take care in following these laws. Teaching students these issues the first week of school, and abiding by them, ourselves, is an effective way to model good behavior.

How Does an Understanding of Fair Use Affect One's Role As an Online Instructor?

Educators, especially those online, always must be aware of the material they gather and use for instruction. In my face-to-face school, we were always reminded to follow copyright laws. In the classroom, however, there is less of a violation than online, where one share leads to another share, leads to another share, etc. North Carolina State University has compiled a succinct checklist for educators regarding the resources protected for use by educators and nonprofit organizations under the TEACH Act, including:

• The resources are used only for our students
  
• Only our students will have access to them
• The materials directly apply to a lesson
• No unnecessary copies will be made
• The resources used are the specific type and amount authorized by these laws for: 1) entire performances of nondramatic literary and musical works; 2) reasonable and limited parts of a dramatic literary, musical, or audiovisual work; 3) displays of texts similar to their use in the face-to-face classroom

How Do Fair Use and the TEACH Act Correlate to the Delivery of Reliable Content?

Online learning companies and nonprofit, accredited, educational institutions, and government agencies must decide if they want to exercise their new exemption rights under TEACH, based on the technological capabilities of their network. These institutions must have policies in place regarding copyrighted materials, and must provide updated information to faculty, students, and staff regarding these laws. Additionally, the LMS must not interfere with the technological controls within the materials used.

Teach does not allow for / extend to:

• Conversion of materials from analog to digital formats, unless that transmission is authorized, and when a digital form is unavailable
  
• Textbooks / digital content on license from the author, publisher, etc.
• Delivery of commercial documents
• ILLs (Interlibrary loans), coursepacks, or electronic reserves

The text I choose was a "Character Wheel" writing assignment, which I found with the search "The Crucible Lesson Plan Creative Commons." It was posted by a teacher named Mr. Burkland on his Weebly.com teacher blog.

Portable Learning Objects are learning tools used by educators and students to create games, assignments, lesson plans, newsletters, videos, assessments, and any type of informational template to better engage students and encourage retention of course material.

I used Smore to house both online learning objects, as Padlet will only allow one image per blog entry.

GlogsterEDU Study Board for The Crucible, Act I:

I created the first learning object using GlogsterEDU, which allows users to create learning boards from pre-existing templates, or by uploading your own images and video. Students can't help enjoying study time with this engaging tool . Teachers may create study boards, or students may create projects. The "Glogopedia" I created represents the basic literary devices and characters associated with The Crucible, Act I, for which students will be responsible on an upcoming quiz. See the Smore attachment, below:

Kahoot! Quiz, The Crucible, Act I:

The second learning object was a quiz I created using Kahoot! Kahoot! is a highly engaging study format for students, and allows them to become competitive. Students may use this site at home with their smart phones, and then link to the game on the teacher's website by plugging in Kahoot.it, then the game code. My fifth grader uses this game in her class as review before quizzes and tests, and the entire class becomes competitive, yet has fun simultaneously. Students may use the study board, above, as one of their review items in order to study for this quiz, which is given upon completion of The Crucible, Act I. Click on the Smore attachment, below:

There are a plethora of Content Management Systems available to educators and educational institutions, so finding the one that seems the right fit takes extensive research. Factors such as flexibility in presentation styles and materials, user-friendliness, accessibility, cost, engaging visuals, and import / export capabilities are all important considerations when selecting the CMS that is compatible with educators and / or online learning institutions. Following are three tools that may be used to aggregate and present learning material:

Blackboard:

This LMS has been my top pick since we first began researching LMSs. They have recently merged with Angel Learning, which we used in my face-to-face classroom. With a user-friendly and engaging platform, which allows for easy creation of synchronous and asynchronous sessions, Blackboard is an invaluable tool for both educators and students. Schoolwires, a hosting and content management system, has also recently merged with Blackboard to create a K-12 portfolio that is an "unmatched communications and community engagement solution set. They have also partnered with CK-12, Discovery Education, Softchalk, and several other major online companies. While it is not free, it is definitely worth it if online learning communities are able to pay for it.

Edmodo:

This site is the global leader in K-12 social learning communities, and allows teachers, students, and parents to connect safely and securely. It is a student favorite due to is compatibility with social media. A free account may be created, which allows educators to quickly create groups, assign homework, scheduled quizzes, and manage progress with unlimited storage. "Snapshot," a key feature which aligns work with Common Core, allows teachers to regularly gauge student progress, but not with a data-overload--it only shows whether or not the students need help. Having mobile capabilities, it is the perfect fit for the educator and student. Edmodo is free to users.

Schoology:

Schoology is also an interesting LMS platform. It has mobile capabilities for students and teachers, a built-in CMS, a communications hub which allows for smoother communications between educators, administrators, and students. This site allows educators to create courses, post materials, host discussion boards, give assessments, and has a dropbox for learning objects. It has a global collaboration feature for educators, curricular consistency, and an easy-to-use environment which is engaging to students. They also partnered with Turnitin.com, my favorite resource to check for plagiarism in essays. They also advertise that they are compatible with Blackboard Collaborate and Moodle. Schoology allows educators to sign up for free.