I also find that while I tend to keep PDF files as a backup, I sometimes misplace my original Word document that I used to create the PDF. This handy tool will allow you to get the Word document back by converting the PDF into an editable format.

Before you get too excited, some formatting usually gets a little wonky in the conversion process. If there are a ton of tables and graphics it may not convert to an exact replica. If what you are converting is just text, however, expect to see a near perfect converted document.

Here are the easy steps:

1. Go to PDFtoWord.com

2. Click ‘Choose File’ and select the PDF file from your file explorer.

3. Enter the email address you want the Word file emailed to.

4. Enter the Captcha letters (so the system knows your human).

5. Hit convert and wait for the file to be emailed to you!

That’s it – easy, isn’t it?

There is also a free trial of the desktop version of the PDF conversion software that works really well. If you have Adobe Pro you can also use Adobe Acrobat Pro to convert from within the PDF viewing software itself.

Questions? Comments? Leave them below.

Article source: http://instructionaltechtalk.com/convert-pdf-to-word/

The post Convert PDF to Word by @InstTechTalk appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

Either by using a homemade rig or one purchased through this website, the iPad is a great device to achieve one of the following great things:

• Annotate over the projected image (use a great app called Board Cam)
• Record your lessons to post for the class later
• Record a dissection or science experiment and annotate over the video (apps such as Coaches Eye)
• Project and annotate textbooks
• Create and discuss mind maps and graphic organizers (several apps do this)

The nice thing about using the iPad as a document camera is that it has several options to project the screen.

The first way is through the dock connecter into a VGA port (or HDMI). This wired option is the most reliable and easiest to setup with minimal additional equipment needed.

The second way is via AirPlay wireless streaming. This is an extremely convenient option as it doesn’t require any wires and can be used anywhere in the room. What is needed is either a computer that can accept AirPlay connections or an Apple TV that will connect to the projector and mirror the iPad’s screen.

For the easiest way to use your iPad as a document camera, consider using the stand that is created byJustand – it serves multiple purposes and is great for the classroom. Check it out here.

Have great uses for an iPad as a document camera? Know of a good way to setup the iPad for free? Post it in the comments!

Article source: http://instructionaltechtalk.com/ipad-document-camera/

The post Use Your iPad as a Document Camera by @InstTechTalk appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

This site will create a PDF duplicate of the website you enter. It also allows you to manipulate the following options:

• Page Size
• Orientation
• Gray Scale
• No Images
• No Background

Once you hit convert, the website shows a preview of the PDF at the bottom of the page with a link that allows you to download the file.

It is such a simple process with many different applications in the classroom:

1. Websites are dynamic, which means they are always changing. Emailing a link to someone doesn’t necessarily mean that the site will look the same when they load it in their browser. Saving a PDF retains a permanent record of the site so you know that the person you send it to will see what you did. This is great for showing some supporting information to students or parents as you know they will get what you intended.

2. Many websites have great questions relating to your subject area and topic of instruction. Create a quick worksheet by saving the page as a PDF and printing it. You don’t have to hassle with the bizarre formatting of the webpage when it prints as it will look just like it does in your browser in the PDF.

3. Easily create posters of the websites you use in class using the larger paper size options. This is great for posting how-to posters of websites such as EBSCO or other research oriented sites.

There are, of course, many other uses of a conversion site like this. Got any ideas of your own? Post them in the comments

http://www.sciweavers.org/free-online-html-to-pdf

Article source: http://instructionaltechtalk.com/iweb2print/

The post Convert Web Pages to PDF Files using Web2Print by @InstTechTalk appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

I celebrated, in the past several days, in a way I could not have imagined possible when I wrote my first post: Introduction of a Reluctant Blogger. I celebrated new educational bloggers. I remember my own excitement and gratitude when Edna Sackson (whatedsaid.wordpress.com, @whatedsaid) and Cristina Milos(ateacherswonderings.posterous.com, @surreallyno) commented on my first post. I didn’t imagine that the just one year in the future I would be welcoming new bloggers, not as an “expert” but rather as an accessible role model and guide, providing encouragement, support, and gratitude for the learning and insights these educators are sharing.

Sunday I commented on new blogs by  Joey Sagel(principaljoey.wordpress.com – What Keeps Your Engine Running,  @principaljoey)  and Rabbi Michael Bitton – Rabbi Mike’s Edtech Blog – How To Blog (rabbimichaelbitton.blogspot.com,  @RabbiMBitton).

In addition, I’ve had the great pleasure of seeing a good number of educators, many of whom at least do not yet blog, reflect recently on blogging on a Community of Practice I am privileged to facilitate YU2.0 (yu20.org). These include: Welcome To Blogging by Chagit Alpert, Research Projects And Blogging by Molly Hazan, Blogging Concerns by Miriam Strulowicz, The Power Of Blogging – It’s Much More Than The New Persuasive Essay by Rebbeca Penina Simon, and Not All Who Could Should Blog by Rabbi Pollock. I love engaging and learning with the skeptics as well as the committed bloggers.

Why do I blog? I blog because I long to learn with others, contributing what I can, reflecting in order to stretch my thinking.

Happy Birthday Sharing Our Blessings! Looking forward to the learning the coming year can bring!

Article source: http://sharingourblessings.wordpress.com/2013/01/09/celebrating-new-bloggers/

The post Celebrating New Bloggers by @ShiraLeibowitz appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

On Thursday May 9, the Passaic City Public School District welcomed teachers and administrators from across New Jersey and New York to discuss and demonstrate a new technology program they have recently begun implementing in their middle school.  Through the help of state and federal funding, Passaic City Schools, a district of more than 15,000 students, is transforming into one of the largest urban school districts to make the shift to a 1:1 learning environment.

This introduction to what a 1:1 (one to one) program could and should be, is just the beginning of what will be a 5-6 year technology plan being rolled out in the Passaic High School and Middle Schools.  Referring to the 2012-2013 school year as “Year Zero,” Students in Lincoln Middle School have recently begun to merge learning and technology using Passaic’s introduction of what will be more than 5500 Samsung Chromebooks.

Why go 1:1?

According to Joshua Koen, the Director for Instructional Technology, “technology should be implemented in the classroom to make teachers more effective and efficient in the classroom.”  Koen who leads a district wide team of Technology Coaches is currently rolling out the district’s second wave of Chromebooks in the middle school.

Allowing students quick access to the internet in a student-friendly, safe environment, Samsung Chromebooks provide students and educators an affordable mobile solution to engage in 21st Century digital learning.  Students will be able to take advantage of the benefits Chromebooks offer by creating documents and quickly sharing them with their classmates and teachers.  It is because of this sharing and digital technology that the school system will be seeing a drastic cut in technology costs.  Gone will be the days where the district provides copier toner and ink for printers.  These days, the students and faculty are creating a collaborative network of learning through their new cloud based  ecosystem.

Creating a Digital Campus for Digital Learning

To prepare for the transition to a 1:1 learning system, Passaic Schools have needed to undergo two key transitions; installing a brand new Wireless Network, and installing a new teaching method into their staff.

To complete the wireless, both the Middle School and the High School are being fitted with CAT6 high density Cisco 802.11.C wireless access points and CAT6.5 wiring to support a seamless digital environment.  Students and staff will soon be able to walk from end to end of their buildings without a drop in their internet signal.  This wasn’t an easy undertaking for buildings that have a rich history of educating students.  The results of this new networking system can be seen in the students. During walkthroughs of English, Social Studies and Bi-Lingual Classes, students were actively engaged in the creation of digital presentations using Google “Docs,” learning spanish and problem solving using “Brain-POP.” These students were having fun learning. The addition of digital projectors in every room and wireless keyboards also provides teachers with the ability to walk around the classroom providing hands on instruction during their lessons.  By the end of this school year, 14 out of the districts 16 schools will be completely wireless.

The biggest shift however is not in the technology and it’s not in the physical structures that surround the students.  It’s the teaching styles.  Creating a system of learning that fosters higher test scores, and engaged learners is requiring Koen and his team to re-imagine what Professional Development looks like.

Koen supports a 3 part philosophy when it comes to implementing a 1:1 program.

• Instructional change
• Digital citizenship and Internet safety
• Managing a 1:1 classroom

Instructional Change: Teachers need to feel empowered to create dynamic lesson plans. They need to take risks with the understanding that failure is going to happen.  After the possibility of failure is accepted, then technology and learning can essentially be merged together. Teachers are expected to teach students to use higher level thinking rather than ask a question that could simply be found online to their classes.  If a student can answer a question by typing it in Google… it is not a worthy learning experience.  Koen demonstrated a series of questions that students are now able to answer using their Chromebooks.  One of these questions required the students to know how to problem solve, “drag and drop,” and use deductive reasoning.  All skills which will be required of them on the new PARCC tests that will be introduced next year into all New Jersey School Districts.

To assist with the distribution of new curriculum and teaching methods, administrators have turned to two online solutions to assist their staff.  PowerSchool, created by Pearson, provides a web based student information system.  By using PowerSchool, educators can make quick and accurate decisions that have a direct impact on student performance.  This tool also provides a collaborative and transparent partnership with parents.

In addition to PowerSchool, teachers are able to monitor and keep track of student learning and computer usage through a system called Hapara. By using Hapara, student work created through the Google Apps for Education network can be tracked and assessed so teachers can provide the best digital learning environment to their students.

Digital Citizenship and Internet Safety: One of the key fears that educators and parents have about todays growing digital environment is the “control” they feel the need to have on digital devices.  At Passaic, students are learning how to surf the internet quickly and in a very advanced manner.  They are learning how to create and publish documents for others to see, share, and more importantly learn from.  In one of the classes we visited, students were working on a project that required them to create an online presentation of their favorite celebrity with a disability.  The students were researching the likes of Mohammad Ali, Hellen Keller, and other personalities.  The final project required the students, who were all ESL learners to present their projects in English. “By teaching them at the middle school level to create and give presentations such as this, we are better preparing them for real world situations,” said their teacher.

Managing a 1:1 classroom:  Where many educators feel timid or have some reserve about students having access to the entire internet, the environment being created at Passaic is a filtered, safe digital hub of learning.  If a teacher wishes to have a particular website “unblocked” they simply put in a request to Koen’s team, and gain access to it’s content.  What does a well managed 1:1 environment look like?  Simply put… engaging.  Teachers were walking around using their own Chromebooks “visiting” their students work providing useful comments and feedback in real time.  Imagine having your teacher right there with you while you do your homework 24/7.  This is truly turning into 21st Century learning and the kids are eating it up.

How Do You Measure Digital Success?

“There is a fine line between having a successful technology program in a district and creating an environment filled with $1000 pencils,” explains Koen. “You never want to ask the question… ‘We have technology.. now what.” Where the district believes that teaching teachers how to use Chromebooks and other technologies as a “digital pencil” is a needed step, they also see it as a first step towards creating higher level lesson plans.  “This is not an IT initiative,” Koen continues, “This is curricular initiative.  The district speaks mostly of curriculum issues rather than IT issues.  All of the conversation is focused on education and what happens in the classroom. Our network isn’t as safe as it needs to be so the teachers have the freedom and ability to creatively use social media and other digital resources to their advantage.”

Changing the way that teachers teach in their classrooms, is not going to be easy.  The district firmly believes that there will be resistance from educators to change the ways that they engage their students.  Currently a small pilot team of educators has taken on the role of lead learners.  They are hoping that through after-school and weekend Professional Development opportunities they will begin to see a strong adoption rate for high level transformative lesson planning.

Being in Year Zero means that Passaic has just begun to create, and see change in their students.  A common theme among the technology team in the district is to, “Think big, have perseverance, have transparency, and invest in your people through great PD.”  Above all, the district knows that innovation will be a messy process.  The district knows that they will have pitfalls, and they are already taking steps to secure the future of this program before pitfalls happen.

Creating an Innovative Community by way of Social Media

One of the ways that Passaic City Schools has garnered support for their program in the community is through an overwhelming support system from their administration, mayor and other township leaders.  “Involve your primary change agents,” says Koen. “Over communicate your message… use Twitter to your advantage and use it to break down the public relations barriers.” The district believes that if they are consistently demonstrating respectful and effective uses of web 2.0 tools such as Twitter and Facebook, they will be ahead of the game when bumps in the road do happen.  The district has a very active social media presence with a very active Twitter account that consistently promotes the positive events happening in the district.

What Happens Next?

Over the next few months, the Passaic City School District will continue to infuse their new Samsung Chromebooks into the middle school eventually turning themselves into a 1:1 environment in both the Middle and High School.

For More information on the Passaic 1:1 Program

• YouTube Commercial
• Audio Podcast
• Video from the May 9 Open house (4 videos)

For more information on the Passaic Public Schools and their 1:1 program please contact Joshua Koen <jkoen@passaic-city.k12.nj.us>

In May 2013, TeacherCast sat down with Joshua Kohen and others to discuss his success on the TeacherCast Podcast.

The post An Educators Guide to Successfully Starting a 1:1 Program by @JeffBradbury appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

I discovered an interesting website called Future Me from the Kevin Hodgeson’s Blog Instructify. You provide the email address, add a subject line, write a note to your future self, and then choose when it should get delivered. You may designate your emails private or public, and there is a gallery of interesting public emails.

A great time to use FutureMe would be at the  end of the school year to write a letter to yourself when you are a senior in high school or about the graduate college. It may start some interesting discussions about the future!

Article source: http://notanotherhistoryteacher.edublogs.org/2013/04/22/future-me-send-an-email-in-the-future/

The post Future me: Send an email in the future by @MSeideman appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

1. Presented and Paid to attend a conference put on by a well-known education organization focusing on dyslexia, Conference A
2. Presented and attended a free conference organized by educators in one school district, Conference B

It is astounding the difference between these two events!

Conference A:

The conference began with a wonderful keynote, and there appeared to be strong attendance, although found out later that attendance on day one was a little over half of whom had registered.   The sessions that followed were sorely disappointing.  None of the sessions I attended were conducted by K-12 educators, but rather professionals in related fields and college professors, none directly in the field of dyslexia.  Two sessions I attended covered that exact same material, and was to me and others I was with, presented as new content, but for us was 5 year old information.  The four of us attending all ended up at sessions that were selling products, without knowing they were going to be such sessions.  Sessions were highlighted as strategies, but once there, found it was only if you used their product.  One session I sat in on did not even mention dyslexia at all, and was focused on multi-media.  The presenter spent an hour on how to use photos to engage students…with so many great multi-media tools available, I had hoped to gain information, not feel way ahead of the curve.  My presentation with a colleague was lightly attended…we were the second to last session on the second day…the attendance on day two was at least half or less of the first day.  So despite paying for the conference, people were not attending, and were choosing to opt out.  I feel their pain and left the conference feeling defeated as an attendee and presenter.

Conference B:

#icon2013 I learned about on Twitter from some fabulous educators I follow.  It was a free conference organized by educators that I follow on Twitter and learn from daily.  I threw my hat into the ring to present because there was choice to lecture, have hands on, or lead a discussion.  Fabulous choices!  Each session I attended was lead by a K-12 educator and addressed real time skills, issues or applications.  They were talking real life, even if it was to get me to buy an app to engage my students or increase my productivity.  There was not the sales pitch but rather the evidence of true application in the field.   The information was relevant. All the presentations and conversations were real and applicable directly to the classroom. I was able to connect with and collaborate with educators I regularly “chat” with on Twitter, having great impromptu discussions before and after sessions.  I left that conference invigorated and excited.  I enjoyed my discussion session with educators dealing with Tech and the LD student and felt I had applied my knowledge to engage with and learn from others.  It was real life PD, including the opening and closing sessions which were not top down, but reaching out to engage and entertain attendees as equals.

The Take Away:

The face of PD is changing.  The old school way of  spending  money to attend organizations conferences is not the way to engage in 21st professional learning.  It is the real world conferences and discussions created by those in the trenches educators, things like #edcamp ,#eduscape, and #icon2013. Amazingly enough they are usually cost effective or free, so available to a greater pool.  Teachers are looking for those tips, tricks and strategies to immediately take away to apply in the classroom, not theory and research studies to contemplate.  They want to connect with other educators in real presentations and conversations to impact student engagement and address real time classroom application.  I would even pay for those over the scripted old school style.

The world of education is changing and evolving quickly for the 21st Century teacher and learner.  PD needs to evolve as well to fit this model and engage educators to join in.  Today’s 21st Century educators are learning daily in forums like Twitter, Pinterest and Learnist and PD needs to fit in to meet these new expectations.  PD needs to be readily relevant, not discussions of the backstory.  I was so engaged in conference B, as I could relate to the educators presenting, and felt the educators I was presenting to could be part of the real life discussion of the topic.  I was meeting educators I regularly learn from on Twitter and finding new ones to learn from.

Twitter is the 24-7 source of Professional Development that makes the  pay-to-attend conferences seem stuffy and irrelevant, but also leads you to such great planned, engaging PD across the country.  Even if you cannot be there, the information shared from educators to educators is astounding.  With such continuous learning opportunities, for conferences to be successful, they  need to be organized to be real, relevant, and authentic, not forced and antiquated.  I commented with a Twitter colleague after the two conferences, my go to now will be ensuring that when I attend future conferences, it will be one that has a hashtag, thus ensuring that it a conference that is working within the confines of #21st Century teaching and learning.

Thank you to my PLN for always being such fabulous sources of inspiration and information.  I learn and grow daily .  You know who you are.

Images

http://mriddett.com/essays/the-rational-choice-approach

http://libinfo.uark.edu/ata/v6no3/understandingjoys.asp

http://www.longwood.edu/graduatestudies/41537.htm

http://edcampcolumbus.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/twitter

http://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=2379624

Article source: http://iplantes.com/2013/03/24/the-new-face-of-professional-development/

The post The New Face of Professional Development. by @iPlante appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

Schools today are interested in sharing their voices with not only their local community, but their global community as well.  No more is it the norm for school districts to have a simple website that brings information to it’s people in a passive format.  Items such as Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts and Mobile Apps are becoming common place amongst educational institutions.

What does it take to manage all of these accounts?  A Good Social Media Manager.

A Social Media Manager is someone with the mindset and drive to be the virtual voice for the school district as well as being the voice for the community inside of the conference rooms. First we will examine some of the skill sets needed to be a Social Media Manager in an educational environment.

1. Confidential:  A Social Media Manager must be someone that is trusted and respected by the school district.  Why? Because the Social Media Manager should have access to information about the districts current plans, future plans, and understand how the district is implementing them so they can provide the best information to the community when called upon.  This means having a good line of communication with district administration.  When something great happens in the school, the Social Media Manager should be one of the first to hear about it to alert the community. When something happens that needs strategic attention, the Social Media Manager should also be in the loop to accurately provide vital information in a time of emergency.
2. People Friendly: Your Social Media Manager should know how to get things done, and get them done quickly.  We live in a world of seconds, not minutes, and certainly not hours.  When your football team wins the big game, your twitter feed needs to be moving and moving fast.  It’s not news on Monday.  To have a successful social media strategy means that your Social Media Manager needs to be able to work with a district appointed team to bring in the needed content and bring it in quickly for accurate reporting.
3. Community Aware: What types of devices do your community members use on a daily basis? How do they access their informaiton? What do they want to hear from the school district? How often do they want to hear it? These are some of the things that a good Social Media Manager needs to be familiar with.  There is no need to build a mobile app for your district if most of your community has no wireless access or smart phones.  If your community isn’t on Twitter (yet) you shouldn’t be tweeting as your primary source to share emergency informations.  A good social media manager works WITH the community to learn how they wish to be given the information about their students and school system.
4. Persistence: A friend of mine once asked me “Did you see my tweet about….” This was the only tweet that my friend tweeted over a 6 month time.  He thought that by tweeting once, everyone would have seen it.  A tweet, a Facebook post, and most other forms of social media fall into the category known as “A Tree in the Woods.”  If you send out one tweet, and nobody reads it… did it really exist?  A good social media manager needs to understand that the best way to build up a social following and profile is by communication repetition.  This takes… well… time and energy.

These are just several of the qualities that companies and school districts should look for in a good social media manager.  Knowing how to organize everything is the other half of the battle.

The last two, and most important qualities that a good social media manager needs to have is speed and patience.  Implementing a solid social media plan in a community for the first time takes planning, preparation, education, and this is a time consuming responsibility.  Things need to be done quickly and efficiently with the cooperation of several educators.  A Social Media Manager does not work alone.  They require the commitment from every building in the district as well as a commitment from their coworkers to supply content, submit videos, photos, and much more to fully realize a successful social media plan.  The Social Media Manager is only the captain of the ship… but a captain with a huge responsibility and dedication for their school and community.

What is the Name of the Game?

The responsibility for the Social Media Manager overwhelmingly is communication.  Your job is to speak on the level of those you are speaking to.  True, the internet has developed a code, a language, and several other gimmicks to differentiate those who are “connected” and those who “aren’t.” A good Social Media Manager understands the community better than they understand themselves and is always a step ahead of the game.  Remember those little square digital boxes?  Well, now, most people understand them as Quick Response, or QR Codes.  It’s becoming common place to find them in stores all around to help promote a product.  The same goes with things such as URL’s or Hashtags.  It is the responsibility of the district, through the Social Media Manager to train their community, through communication, rather than push away through intimidating “new” tech terms.

Links of interest:

• What is a Social Media Manager
• So You Want to be a Social Media Manager
• What is a Social Media Manager: HubSpot
• Social Media Manager Job Requirements and Description: Engadget
• 6 Must Have Attributes of a Social Media Manager
• What does it take to become a Social Media Manager
• Social Media Manager Salary Guide
• 6 Things your Social Media Manager Must Do to improve your Online Presence 

For more information on how you can create a dynamic 21st Century Learning Environment, please visit our newly created (and still constructing) website.

Creating a 21st Century Educational System

The post What is a Social Media Manager? by @JeffBradbury appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

The primary goal is to inspire youth to explore their own interests through a series of online activities and related incentive badges. Many of these badges are integrated with content from online education conferences, which highlight a variety of different topics.

The second goal is to enhance students’ cognitive capabilities by incorporating knowledge and skill-building into the quests. The online conferences and quests are interdisciplinary in nature, offering students the opportunity to choose what they care about most.

All quests engage students in exploring a topic of interest either as part of a formal standards-aligned school curriculum or as a student-driven after school activity. An important secondary audience is you, the educator, whose support is vital in connecting with students. To this end, you also will be offered badges that will document their participation in Smithsonian online conferences, online professional development sessions, and the completion of class projects. All quests will be reviewed and badges awarded by a team of Smithsonian experts.

Sign-up now! You will receive an invitation to join a grade-level based group in the Smithsonian Quests Community.

Article source: http://notanotherhistoryteacher.edublogs.org/2013/04/17/smithsonian-quests-inspire-students-to-explore-their-own-ideas/

The post Smithsonian Quests inspire students to explore their own ideas! by @MSeideman appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.

WordPress comes in two varieties, these being WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Where there are suddle differences between the two, the core functionality remains the same.  Wordpress.com is a blogging platform.  It is a free service that would fit any educator looking to create an online presence or start a simple class website.  It offers a variety of themes, (both free and paid) and in almost no time, a user can create a free account and be up and running with their very on online blog.

For educators who want to kick things up a notch, or for school districts looking for a dynamic content management system, WordPress.org is the place to be on the internet. Don’t believe me… just ask the more than 60 Million websites online today using the WordPress platform.

Why Should a School System Adopt WordPress?

Educational institutions around the globe are quickly adopting WordPress as their Content Management System.  Basically, WordPress isn’t just a website builder, it’s a fully functional database.  Through a combination of Pages and Posts, users can create any type of website, big or small, to their liking.  It all boils down to just 4 simple components: Header, Menu, Content Area, Sidebar

• Header: The top graphic design on any website
• Menu: The buttons just under or above the header that provide navigation
• Content Area: This could be a fixed page of content, or a series of blog posts listed in reverse chronological order
• Sidebar: A customizable area on either the left or right (sometimes both) on a website that holds a websites “widgets”

It is through these four simple areas of a WordPress website where simple folk as well as professional graphic designers create their websites.

Can anyone create a website using WordPress?

Simple answer is YES!  Both WordPress.com and WordPress.org offer a quick solution for users searching for themes and plugins.  This makes WordPress very attractive for new users as well as talented webmasters to come up with something appealing and eye catching for their users.

Does WordPress Play Nice with Search Engines?

YES! WordPress is one of the most trusted website tools on the planet.  Therefor, it is trusted by Google and all of the other big time search engines.  With over 60 Million WordPress sites and growing, how could Search Engines look away.

Will WordPress help me gain Social Media Followers?

YES! Through a combination of plugins, and a little bit of SEO homework, you can create a website that works FOR YOU.  No more will you have to actively search out for those hard earned Twitter followers and Facebook Likes… a WordpPress website can create dynamic content that is pushed to your users and community while you are sleeping.

As you can see, there are plenty of things you can do with WordPress.  To date, I have created more than 20 WordPress sites as part of the TeacherCast family.  For more information, please check out these links below or contact me with any questions or concerns.

Website Solutions

• WordPress.com
• WordPress.org
• Edublogs

Links of Interest

• WordPress.com Launches Education Vertical for Students
• WordPress in Education
• Video: WordPress in Education: Luke Hewlett
• Education Continues Outside the Classroom on WordPress.com
• School Newspapers Online
• Why you should switch your website to WordPress … NOW!
• Examples of Schools using WordPress
• Improving School Website Design using WordPress
• School Websites don’t have to Suck!
• 35 Reasons why a WordPress Website is better than a Traditional Website

WordPress Themes

• 20 Beautiful Educational WordPress Themes
• 21 Free WordPress Themes for Educational Websites

The post #WordPress: The Hub of … Everything! by @JeffBradbury appeared first on TeacherCast Blog.