by Chrissy Hellyer | Sunday, February 19, 2012 | Learning
Each week on a Friday, I get to spend 30 minutes with an amazing young man – my ES Technician – Khun Tua. Recently we’ve been sharing our knowledge and discoveries on the iPad and the Chrome Browser.
Here’s a few things we’ve been sharing:
Chrome Extensions:
Chrome has a vast variety of extensions to make your experience with the Chrome Browser slicker, quicker and easier. Switching between Most Visited & Chrome Apps is as easy as a click at the bottom of the page.
These are the extensions that I now have installed for quicker access to the things I use the most. Very easy to install, very easy to access. I’m especially enjoying the pinterest extension at the moment – it’s really appealing to my creative/visual side (more to come on that later!)
by Chrissy Hellyer | Tuesday, February 14, 2012 | Learning
I’m not quite sure how many faithful readers I have left ……. but to those of that still have me in your RSS feed or those of you that stop by in the hope that I’ve updated my blog …….. I say thank you. Thank you for checking by or for reading this post.
Image by JetSetWilly http://www.flickr.com/photos/jetsetwilly/1401229809/
Somehow, my blog has managed to end up on a “block this site” list within Thailand. It’s been very hard to get to the bottom of why and it seems that (thanks Jeff Utecht for the brilliant explanation and many, many thanks to the always helpful Chris Craft) my BlueHost hosted website on a shared IP address has had it’s said Shared IP address blocked by the MICT in Thailand. Try to find out why has been next to impossible so I’m guessing that it’s not my site that’s causing the blockage but probably one of the 100 sites that share the same IP Address as me. (I have doubled checked my blog and it’s content to ensure I’m not offending anyone and I’m pretty sure I’m not!).
Enter BlueHost’s Active Chat – extremely helpful and efficient service within 2 minutes I’m chatting with someone at BlueHost explaining my dilema. The solution: Pay $30 per year for a dedicated IP address. Mmmmmm, I was kinda hoping you could switch me from that server ……… obviously not.
So I’m seriously considering doing that. It’s made me take a step back and reflect on whether I want to continue blogging on my own domain ……. in fact, it’s made me really think “do I want to continue blogging in general?” (Given that my contribution to my own blog over the last 9 months has been abysmal to say the least!) Turns out I do. I’m not ready to let this blogging thing go yet. I do have much more to share. I do love helping people and I do like writing when I’ve got something that I feel is worth saying/sharing/explaining.
Right now, I want to make sure that the Shared IP Address is the only reason why I’m experiencing difficulty getting to the backend of my blog. I have this nagging feeling that there’s a bit more to sort out as I can’t even get compfight to load right now!
I’ll keep you posted ………. hopefully …………
by Chrissy Hellyer | Sunday, January 22, 2012 | Learning
As we begin our second semester at ISB, I’ve been reflecting on quite a number of things. One of which is how do you bring parents into your classroom (digitally speaking)? 
One of the things I really like about my position as ES Technology & Learning Coach is the opportunity to work with a wide variety of colleagues, all of whom are in different places in their own personal technology journey as well as different grade levels of students.
Every classroom in the ES has a class blog. They are “windows into the classroom” and used in a variety of ways. Here’s some of the things our teachers do to bring parents into the classroom digitally:
by Chrissy Hellyer | Sunday, November 13, 2011 | Learning
Ok, so I really should be updating my professional blog, travel blog AND photography blog with the zillion and one idea posts on my list – but I find myself procrastinating AGAIN and watching inspiring video links from Facebook instead! It started with the gorgeous Amy Krouse Rosenthal and her amazing The Beckoning of Lovely (5 part video) (see previous post) and progressed to this wonderful video below. I am missing being in the classroom with students so much and this is why!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AbC-Vt0OII&feature=colike[/youtube]
by Chrissy Hellyer | Friday, November 11, 2011 | Learning
11/11/11. On this day, at 11pm, (US time) the film below is set to be released on YouTube.
By the way … we are truly lucky to have Amy Krouse Rosenthal visiting ISB in the new year! I am very excited to meet her! Click on her name above to access her site.
Of course, today is even more special as it is my son’s birthday – he’s 10 (wouldn’t it have been so cool if he was turning 11?).
by Chrissy Hellyer | Saturday, August 13, 2011 | Learning, Visual Literacy
Presentation Zen in the Classroom
Currently I use the presentation zen style for PD sessions with faculty as much as I can. When I was in the classroom I used this style in all the Keynotes I prepared ahead for Readers and Writers Workshop visual mini lessons. The result in the classroom was (I think) better conversations, shorter mini-lessons and increased motivation and inspiration – especially for writing.
Recently at the JIS Technology Learning Institute, I ran a popular session on using presentation zen in the classroom. To give you an idea of what was in this session, I’ve embedded (and linked to) the Keynote (which was uploaded to SlideShare) I used to introduce the basics of Presentation Zen. After looking at the basics, we looked at an actual Readers Workshop keynote (also embedded for you below) that I’d used in the past.
Next, I asked the session participants to begin work on their own Presentation Zen keynote. This session was a great way to not only introduce the basics of presentation zen and keynote but it encouraged a really good conversation about Creative Commons and copyright, which a lot of schools are struggling with.
Do you use PresentationZen?
What ways do you use it?
