I’m sitting in a classroom on a Saturday morning…learning. That’s right, while all of the #satchat people are busy tweeting, sharing, and collaborating online, I decided to take it to the next level and make the trek to Jackson, Michigan to participate in a casual, participant driven conference focused on connecting educators, not just lecturing to us. The following are my notes, reflections, and thoughts on the day; my...

Google has been having a rough go of keeping their cloud services up and running smoothly for all users lately. Today is just another example of the sporadic nature of Google Apps “up time” as of late. Google Drive is down, this too shall. Although, would be nice if Google’s 3rd shift janitor updated Dashboard google.com/appsstatus#hl=… — Ben Rimes (@techsavvyed) April 17, 2013 Besides the general headache of...

Yesterday I shared a quick “how-to” video about exporting your Google Reader subscriptions. It’s the first step for users looking to find a new RSS feed reader with the announcement this week that Google will shutter the service on July 1st. I shot out a tweet asking for alternatives to Google’s Reader service, and created the Storify below of some alternatives. Hopefully, the second step of getting your exported...

Help, the sky is falling, the sky is fall….er, Google is closing down Google Reader as of July 1st, 2013. I know a LOT of educators use Google Reader for subscribing to professional, casual, and entertainment blogs through RSS. Many students use Google Reader as well to follow blogs for classroom purposes. Sadly, that’s all ending in less than 4 months. Time to start packing up subscriptions and moving to new digital tool for...

I’m helping facilitate a wonderful series of video conferences this week and next in my school district, and I wanted to share a little bit of the excitement as students in Michigan connect with others in Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, Oklahoma, and many other states! Read Around the Planet is a huge collaboration in celebration of reading that happens alongside many other celebrations in the U.S. and schools for “March is...

I work with many different teachers in my district that in turn work with many different grade levels of students. While most of the teachers call for my technical skills for a project to take care of the nuts and bolts of getting the students up and running with a technology-rich project, I usually bring my former teacher self as well to the classroom. When I present students with a potentially new work space, especially one in which they...