Team Teachers

The Updated Teacher Roll Call

Charellabon took it upon herself to take on the daunting task of organizing the Teacher Roll Call.  Girlwithalessonplan started the roll call by keeping a blog post of teacher bloggers before the #education tag was officially started.  World-shaker took it a step further by using GoogleDocs to create a submit form that exported all the information into a spreadsheet.

Charellbon has checked each entry, identified defunct tumblrs, and organized each blog by state.  You can now view the master list and even find people by state/location. She should be applauded for her work on this.  

So, what’s new?

1. Sorting by Location groups, alphabetically by state abbreviations, on the Master Roll Call, which is the main spreadsheet and the first page (and thus called the Master, due to subsequent spreadsheets following the Master Roll Call).

This roll call is available to the public, but only to those with the link.

Link to the Master Roll Call: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArEdPVjEjZTjdEx4MER4a2ZKaEFkQ3VRRVExcW9zUkE#gid=14

2. A new Submit form to point to the To Be Added/Filed tab, the tab directly to the right of the Master Roll Call spreadsheet.

The To Be Added/Filedtab gets updated live. Char will plan to manage future entries by manually transferring them from the To Be Added/Filedtab onto the Master Roll Calland respective Location sheets. Note that the form is the same exact form from the original (I copied and pasted), but with a different destination. 

Link to the new Submit form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1MsiEYZYSInaR_WntyneMFr3IdXVIJji_Z3w15ICCmIs/viewform

3. Specific Location spreadsheets within the Master Roll Call (i.e., CA Tumblr Teacher spreadsheet tab). 

4. Location spreadsheet tabs at the bottom (desktop view) or top (mobile view) are also listed alphabetically.

5. Pink highlighted entries indicating defunct, “not found” tumblrs.

We will eventually be deleting these blogs from the list.  

~~~

Char noted the following:

In addition to making these 20 spreadsheets plus the Submit form, I crunched out some numbers out of curiosity: 

- 1377 total entries of Tumblr teachers!

- 223 defunct tumblrs within the Master Roll Call. 
This still means we have 1,154 active Tumblr Teachers out there - over a THOUSAND entries, folks!

- The leading location - as far as numbers are concerned - is our International tumblrs, with 237 active entries. Then No Response tumblrs, with 93 active entries, followed by California tumblrs, with 82 active entries. New York is the runner up, with 75 active tumblrs.

Again, major props to Charaellbon for this.  She’s a education-licensed homeschooling mom and relatively new to Tumblr #education, so give her a follow and thank her for her work.  

Team Teachers Tour: Page Links

teamteachers:

You may have noticed some links at the top of the Team Teachers blog (they’re dark right now because our theme knows it’s nighttime on the East Coast). These links exist to give you quick access to resources we’re developing for you. Here’s a breakdown:

New to Tumblr?

Here’s a quick introduction to the education community for those of you new to Tumblr. In the future this will contain a “Quick Start Guide” that you can share with your colleagues so they can set themselves up on Tumblr. At the moment, it specifically deals with the Tumblr Teacher Roll Call, and the Education tag. Speaking of which…

The Education Tag

This is the one of the central locations for educators on Tumblr. Any post tagged “Education” will appear here. This is one of the few tracked tags on Tumblr, and one of the Top 30 tags on Tumblr overall. It is curated by a set of editors from the Education community.

Education Resources

Future community-driven projects and free online resources will be linked to here. Two of the most successful projects are currently currently listed on this page. They include the Tumblr Teacher Roll Call (linked above) and a List of Interview Questions for those of you who are job-hunting.

Teaching Tags

We feel strongly that tags will have a huge impact on your ability to find content from other Tumblr bloggers that matches your grade level, discipline, or interest. This page currently lists the most popular education tags on Tumblr. In the future, we’ll be working with all of you to develop new tags for each discipline and grade level. Have a suggestion for an education tag? Submit it here.

Teacher Dare Day Rules

Teacher Dare Day is the brainchild of positivelypersistentteach, and is essentially the Tumblr education community’s version of an #edchat on Twitter. It’s a great way to interact with other educators on Tumblr. The rules are simple, and can be found here. Remember: If you are participating in a Teacher Dare Day, tag your posts “Teacher Dare Day.”

There will certainly be more to come, but this is a great start.

What do you think? Did we miss anything?

How to Find that Old Post on Your Tumblr Blog

“It was that post about that one thing that I shared back in March. Or maybe September? ARGH!”

The trouble with Tumblr blogs is that they’re not easily searchable. Sure, you can use tags to navigate around. But tags on Tumblr encourage you to look at things that are being posted now, not several months ago. This is especially problematic for those of you who post educational things to your blogs to “save them for later.” But if you want some real help tracking down that old post you’re looking for, you can actually just Google it.

Tumblr blogs are public by default, so your blog has likely been indexed by Google. To perform a search of just your blog, type this into Google:

site:YOURBLOG.tumblr.com

Add a space, then type whatever you’re looking for. It’s that simple, and the results will be exclusively from your blog.

Here’s a sample Google search for posts on my blog about pedagogy: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aworld-shaker.tumblr.com+pedagogy

On a sidenote, this also works for any website that has been indexed by Google, which is a helpful research strategy if you’re having trouble finding content on a specific site.

Protip: Make judicious use of tags in all your posts to make it as easy as possible to find what you’re looking for down the road.

Hoping for a SUPER year

Hey all,

I am entering my third year of teaching second grade and looking forward to it. My first year, I centered my classroom community around the theme of baseball. My students loved it! Last year, I seemed to have lost my spark and gave up on the idea. At the end of the school year, a former student remarked that I should have done a theme again. I decided to take his advice and my superhero theme was born. 

Just wondering-  anyone else doing a classroom theme?

Connecting Classrooms via Skype

positivelypersistentteach:

talesofan8thgradeteacher:

Earlier PPT put out a simple idea: wouldn’t it be cool if classrooms could debate via Skype. And instantly I thought, “YEAH!”.

Well it seems that quite a few other teachers thought the same thing! 

To help those interested get connected, I thought I would go ahead and create a Google Form to help us get connected. I ask that you provide your Tumblr Name, grade level, and if you would prefer to get in contact via Tumblr or directly by an email you provide. If you’d like to share the subjects you teach and/or how you’d like to use Skype in the classroom, you can also give those specifics. This way, we can get in contact individually based on our needs and hopes for this project! Check out the form responses here.

I hope that helps everyone! Here’s to getting connected - I’m excited and I hope you are too! 

BOOST!  

Thanks tales for stepping up to organize this!

As requested, I am blogging this to TT.

Teachers on Tumblr with Wish Lists

positivelypersistentteach:

Positivelypersistentteach’s wishlist is here.

Girlwithalessonplan’s wishlist is here.

Listenlearninspireteach’s wishlist is here.

Thinkbrit’s wishlist is here.

Novicephoenix’s wishlist is here.

Diaryofafyt’s wishlist is here.

HeyMissAt’s wishlist is here.

Msleahhbic wishlist is here.

Donteatthepaste’s wishlist is here.

Hithertokt’s wishlist is here.

Annaslibrary’s wishlist is here.

Texasfirstyearteacher’s wishlist is here.

Allisonunsupervised’s wishlist is here.

Pablophonic’s wishlist is here.

Wiinga’s (formerly Bettyinthebush) wish list is here.

VWalker’s wishlist is here.

RevolutionizeEducation’s wishlist is here.

Denisea’s adopt-a-classroom is here.

Incognerdo’s wishlist is here.

Reblogs are appreciated.

I’m sure there are more (and you’re welcome to add yours in a reblog), but these are the ones I was able to find with some stealth research or were provided to me by fellow teachers.

I think that people outside of teaching might be surprised by how much teachers spend in their classroom.  At the first school I taught at, I even had to supply the tables my students sat at.  I’ve found that even among teachers, we are surprised by what colleagues in other grade levels or districts have to purchase.  I spent over $2,000 in my first year of teaching (I also taught in a economic disadvantaged area and at a charter school that didn’t even supply books for my students to use).

I now teacher Pre-K at a different school, and while our school has a school library, my students are not permitted to borrow books from it (only K-5 are).  Since early literacy skills are very important, I work hard to cultivate a classroom library with quality books (in decent conditions) for my students to borrow each day.  Sometimes the number of books I have goes down due to a mishap with a little brother, or when I give a book to a child because his family is moving to another state (or in some cases to another country).  

There are theater teachers that must buy tools for setting up the stage, art teachers that buy paints, most teachers buy construction paper, and on and on.

I don’t wish to ask that other teachers spend money on myself or those listed above, as I know they have their own items to buy for the year.  But, I did want to put out the wishlists that I know of out there, so that if there are any generous people out in the tumblr sphere with a passion for education and some spare change, they’d know where to look to get things done.

Pro-Tip: If you are buying from multiple wishlists, you must do them separately in order for it to allow you to choose the wish list addresses (I think).

Sometimes orders from wishlists do not show who the sender is.  With that in mind, I’d like to thank anyone who donates on behalf of the teachers who receive items.

Tumblr Teachers: What’s the best #education post you’ve seen so far this year?

world-shaker:

Reblog/Reply with:

• The title
• The link
• The name of the Tumblr user who posted it