Shelf Stuff
GoodReads.com
I noticed at our school corp year-end celebration that many of the retirees said that they’d now have more time to read and it seems as teachers, we like to read more. Nice layout, easy to use and great connection with other readers you know and perhaps meet. You can start your own reading group…students use it and what a wonderful way of making more connections with those whom we see each day in the classroom outside the classroom.

Goosh.org
And this is a bit geeky, but perhaps amusing: interact with most of the Google services through the command line…yeah, that’s how I thought you’d respond. Anyway, it is amusing and somewhat useful…I think it continues the tradition of many ways to do one thing and I think that is a positive. So, instead of point and click, you enter commands (think back to the DOS 5.0 days w/o using PowerShell, et al). Hands are on keyboard and with a couple of commands, you are on your way.

Show Notes
What is plain text?
It’s a file that doesn’t have any other coding…it is only the letters and numbers and punctuation that is readable by humans…or at least normal ones. Basically, it’s only the stuff of your keyboard. When you use a programs, to say, type a letter or lesson plan or handout (like MSWord or WP), that programs allows you do format characters and the document itself so that when you open it up again, it’ll be consistent. But, you have to basically use that program to read that document and if that program goes through updates (like MS Word) the readable file format may change over the years. Most can import backward, but some formatting may change…no longer looks the same. Even RTF inserts code though many say it’s the next best thing to plain text. Plain text will remain the same as long as computers can read plain text files

How can you use it?
Todo.txt (Organizing your life through a text file)

• Some folks like the Getting Things Done (GTD) approach
• One way of doing it: (http://todotxt.com)

Lesson planning