Holiday cookies

There are lots of things to over indulge in during the holiday season including late nights, fatty food and sweets. Most people don't think twice about the number of internet cookies they get into their system, though. In fact a lot of people don't even know what a cookie is or how it is used. Lets get that part out of the way first.

What is a cookie, anyway?

A cookie is just a small piece of text stored on your computer. It cannot gather data or crash your hard drive. It is just a short bit of text that a website sends to a browser like Firefox or Safari. That browser then stores that little bit of text for later. When you go back to the site, it will ask the browser to look up any cookies they might have sent you. The browser then sends the same text back to that site. So why do browsers do this? Well, look at what a cookie contains. Here's an example- ID=195AY2 www.website.com. In this cookie, the site just wants to be able to know that it's YOU coming back and not Joe Shmoe. That way they can say "Oh, hey Ben! Here are some new books we think you'd really enjoy." It makes the internet far more personal. Internet banking and online shopping depend on also cookies to function.

As with everything, there is an evil side to cookies. You don't necessarily want everyone knowing who you are all the time. You may not want Nike (for example) sharing your ID with Facebook to increase advertising revenue. It really comes down to an invasion of privacy. So what do you do? You may only want to get rid of cookies from a few websites you don't trust. Or you may want to delete all of your cookies and just start fresh.

A word of caution here... Don't delete all of your cookies unless you know the username and password to all of the websites you visit. If you go to a site that "just lets you in" it may use a cookie to do so. Erasing all of your cookies may prompt the site to ask you for your username and password. If you don't know them, you may be in for a few headaches!

Here is a list of three browsers and how you can delete the cookies you may have picked up during the holidays.

	Chrome Click on the little wrench on the upper right hand side of the browser. Go down to "Tools".  Next click on "Clear browser data". You'll be given the option to clear your history, cookies, passwords and the like. You'll also be given the option to erase the information from the last hour, day, week, month or the beginning of time.
	Firefox In the top tool bar, click on "Tools" then "Clear recent history".  From there, choose wich cookies you'd like to delete. Read this excellent tutorial for more.
	Safari This is the easiest browser to delete cookies from. Click on Safari, then go to Preferences. Go to the privacy tab. There you'll see how many cookies you have. Click on the "Details" button. You'll see this window pop up. Notice two things. You have the ability to remove ALL of the cookies if you want. Do this with caution. You'll also see a search bar at top. There, you can search for cookies from specific sites. Here, I've found a cookie from Facebook. To delete it, you could just hit "remove all" or you could choose the cookies you want to get rid of and hit "remove". You'll need to hit "done" when you are finished getting rid of the cookies you don't want.

Socializing productively

This has been a great break. It was wonderful being able to chat with family and friends, many of whom I haven't seen in ages. Now I have to buckle down and prepare some lesson plans get ready for the upcoming semester. I could sit down create new and (hopefully) impactful lessons all on my own or I could start socializing and let my online community help me out.

Socializing professionally is not like chatting with folks over the holidays. The goal here is to decrease work wile at the same time increasing student performance. Here are some tips on how to use the online community to reduce your workload and improve your teaching. There are three main ways to go social on the internet. First, you can get in with a group and just wait to see what goodies show up. That's what most teachers do. Second, you could interact with some of the people in your group by answering some questions or making a comment here or there. The third and most time consuming activity is to actually share some of your ideas, ask some questions or publish some lesson plans.

Consuming content

Like I said earlier, the majority of us use the internet as a sort of treasure box filled with goodies. We go in, find some wonderful ideas for a class we're doing and move on to our grading or call some parents. I personally like to get ideas over email. As a member of NSTA, I get to be on a listserve for biology, chemistry and technology teachers. For anyone not familier with the term, a listserve is an email service which lets you send and receive email to and from a group. I never read new emails. Instead, I treat it as an idea bank. When I need a new idea for an upcoming lesson, I go into the folder I've stored them in and just perform a key word search.  

Using Gmail, I can easily find what I need.

For example, when I would need advice on how to teach respiration, I'd go to that folder and search for all emails containing the word "respiration". I'd always find some great advice or a worksheet someone was willing to share. Since it all came from teachers who actually used the material in the classroom, I could have confidence in the material.

Reacting to content

The next most common way teachers use the internet is to interact with others online. This means going to sites to get the answer to a question you have or perhaps to comment on what someone has written in a blog or post. These sorts of sites about and include Yahoo Answers, Linkedin, or one of the many other sites found here. Perhaps my favorite place to interact with teachers is Edumodo.

This is a free, secure online social network designed to look and feel just like Facebook. However, it has several security features built in to make it teacher and student friendly. For example, the site does not have the ability for students to communicate with the outside world (except for their own parents). Instead, they can only hear from and write to their teacher and classmates. Really the only people interested in joining Edmodo are teachers and their students. That makes this site the perfect place to go when you have a burning question or an issue you'd like some advice on. Oh ya, did I mention you don't HAVE to put in your actual name? Use a pseudonym if you want some extra privacy and don't plan on using it for your students.

Creating content

By far the most rewarding thing that you can do online is create content. This means publishing your ideas, writing articles and advising other teachers. Of course, this is going to be the most time consuming and will require far more effort on your part. The benefits are huge, though.  Giving over your ideas will tend to prompt others to give you their stuff. It becomes a virtuous circle. If you are going to be sharing your ideas, I would use Blogger, Diigo or Edmodo.

I've already spoken about Edmodo. Diigo is a social bookmarking site, allowing you to save and share websites you find interesting with groups of people. Blogger is, of course, where you can set up and write a blog. Any of these would be a fine choice. Really, whether you are just looking in and getting good ideas or helping others get advice for their classroom, try going social this year. You wont regret it.

Really, whether you're just looking in and getting good ideas or helping others get advice for their own classroom, try going social this semester. You'll love the results!