The #EduTour Begins! #EdChat

Hello everyone! I'm excite to start the EduTour tomorrow. My @TheNerdyTeacher account and The Nerdy Teacher site will be relatively quite over the next two weeks. All of my social media efforts will be focused on all things EduTour related. Below you will find all of the different accounts you can follow to enjoy the ride along with us. We will be live tweeting, doing on the road podcasts, tweet ups and other great things along the way.

The main reason I'm doing this tour is to meet people outside of my educational and personal world. I want to hear what the "average" American thinks of the education they received and the education students are receiving today. I will be playing the role of a journalist and I'm excited to hear the stories and share them with all of you. 

Please do me a solid and follow the accounts, interact with us while we head west and we promise to provide hours of entertainment. 

Social Media sites for the #EduTour:

Twitter: @TheEduTour
YouTube: The EduTour
Facebook: The EduTour
Instagram: The EduTour
FourSquare: The EduTour
Flickr: The Edu Tour
Nick's Evernote Food Journal
Tim's Evernote Food Journal

.@SimpleK12 for your PD needs! #EduTour

Hello everyone! I wanted to give another shout out to another sponsor of the trip here. SimpleK12 and the Blue Bunnies donated memberships to five lucky people here on the #EduTour and we have been excited to give them away.

I've done PD with SimpleK12 and they are some of the nicest people in the edtech world. The sessions are always jammed packed with people and they are never disappointing. With great names like +Steven Anderson and +Kyle Pace doing sessions for them, you know it is going to be top quality PD from the comfort of your home.

I will be doing a session on using Evernote in the classroom on September 21st that will show people the different ways Evernote can help you as a teacher.

If you are looking for ways to grow as a professional and want access to thousands of great resources, then look no farther than SimpleK12.

Follow the bunnies!

.@Evernote and @LivescribeK12 on the #EduTour

This is the first of a few posts I will be writing about using various tools to support the EduTour.

I wanted to briefly talk about the awesomeness that is Livescribe and Evernote. I have been using the Livescribe Sky Pen for a while and I have always loved it. It can record the notes and audio and directly save it to a specific Evernote notebook. This isn't new. However, using it on this trip makes the most sense. This is something that I would recommend to all journalists and journalism classes. I will be passing this to my journalism teachers this Fall.

One of the things I am doing on this trip is interviewing people about education. I want to know what they think about the current state of education and what they thought about their education growing up. Traditionally, I would just listen and take notes on my iPad or in a notebook. My main problem is that my handwriting is not very clean and I have a hard time listening and writing down information at the same time. Note-taking has always been a nightmare for me. Livescribe and Evernote solve that problem.

I now get to keep the audio of the conversation and I do not have to worry about the handwriting or getting every word down for the interview. What I have actually done is write the questions done in advance and just create dots for each person I'm interviewing. When I go to the next questions, I create a new dot. I have all of the information right there in the book for review after the trip or while Tim is driving. By listening to the interview, I can make any other notes I want for the things that really stand out to me.

The back up to Evernote is also great. If something should happen to the notebook on the trip, everything I have is saved in Evernote. I will not lose a single interview or note. That is what is so great about the cloud based storage of Evernote and Livescribe. I really think more teachers should look into taking their class notes using Livescribe so students can do the same thing. The notes will always be there not matter what happens and that is huge for students who tend to lose things. These two guys just made the #EduTour so much easier.

What I've Been Up To... #EdChat

I was pretty spent after ISTE this year. I decided to take a break from all things Social Media and just be. I had to work on a Keynote with +Timothy Gwynn for the Greater Clark Connected Conference with +Brett Clark and do some work for The EduTour, but that was here and there between lots of relaxing.

Some said I was cheating because I was posting a ton on Instagram. That might be true, but I was just posting pictures of me hanging out with my crazy son. Wouldn't you post a picture of this guy?

I also content that I wasn't cheating. I was taking a break from being a connected educator. I was overwhelmed with the amount of work I had to do, so I took a step back and focused on what was important. To me, that was my family. I got to do so many fun and silly things with this crazy guy, it put me back in a good place. 

If I would have been "plugged in" to my feed and obsessing over my blog, I would have missed the little stinker doing "Gangnam Style". These are things I would hate to miss and am happy that I have video evidence of this to share with his friends and future girlfriends. 

There have been many posts written out there about the value of taking a break from tech and "unplugging", so I'm not going to bore you with another lecture about that. I do want to say thank you for those of you that let me rest in peace the past three weeks to get my head right. Many of you have been where I was and it was awesome to have your support. 

Lastly, I want to share some of the things I've been up to the past three weeks:

Saved By The Bell Comic Book

This was a sign that everything in the world is going to be just fine. This gift from the gods is something that many of us have dreamed, but never thought would actually happen. Well, it is going to happen and I am excited to read the first digital issue. I wonder if these will be stories set during high school but between episodes. Also, will Zack and Kelly be together? Will their band "The Zack Attack" still pay "Friends Forever"? OMG, will there be Tori issues and an issue that explains the absence of Kelly and Jessie? So many questions and I can't wait to dive in!

Speaking of Comics...

I know that I am The Nerdy Teacher, but I do not talk about the comics I love that often. Most of the time, those conversations are saved for +Dan Callahan. I have to say that I have just been in love with updated version of Wonder Woman. Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang have just done an amazing job of creating an awesome story and the artwork is simply beautiful. I've been reading since issue one and I suggest you give it a try if you are into comic books. She is a different Wonder Woman than you might remember and that is a good thing. 

I'm also reading The Walking Dead. It is consistently great and frustrating. It's great because the art and story telling is wonderful and frustrating because I only get to read a small part of the story once a month. If you have not started this comic, please pick up a collection and get to work. It's better than the show and the show is unbelievably awesome. 

My Pond Rocks

For those who do not know, I built a pond in my backyard a few years ago. I woke up one morning in August and decided to build one. I had no idea how to do it, so I dug a giant hole and went to Home Depot. Three years later, I have a second level, waterfall and plants, fish and snails! It is one of the most relaxing places in the world to me. I get to tend the fish, fix my plants and just listen to the sound of the water. We all need a happy place and this is one of mine. There is also an added bonus of awesome because I know I built it all by myself. 

Real Names

I saw this today and thought it would be fun to share here. 

Jon Green is amazing and I seem to love everything he does on the Internet. Here is his Commencement Speech at Butler.

I've only read one book of his, Looking for Alaska, and recommend it to anyone who likes a very good read.

Captain Planet

Lastly, I have to share this with all of you because it blew my mind.

Yes, Meg Ryan was the voice of Dr. Blight on Captain Planet and the Planeteers. That really happened. 

Well, I'm off to do some work, play with my kid and relax by my pond. See you around. 

Nick