Eric Mills

Feb 2012

• I was interviewed for a sound bite on “learning families” and the video can be found here.

Jan 2012

• My colleague Danny Medved and I redesigned our school’s study hall to be more forward-looking and data driven. You can read the writeup  on page 2 of the Teacher Leadership Newsletter or learn more about Teacher Leadership Academy.

July 2011

• I’m speaking on using free / open source technology tools in the classroom at the Colorado Language Arts Society Regional Conference on Sat, 9/24.
• I met with Selamawit Ghebremeskel from South HS while in California at the AVID summer institute in Sacramento.

May 2011

• My 8th grade student won the National Campaign to Stop Violence, “Do the Write Thing” contest. He and I will be traveling to Washington D.C. in July as Ambassadors. He’ll have the opportunity to present his views on youth violence to such national leaders as the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of the Interior, the Attorney General of the United States, the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and Members of the Congress. Here’s a behind the scenes look at his poem. And, here’s the school’s press release.
• I’ve been appointed Language Arts teacher at High Tech Early College where I will design a school-wide reading initiative and also teach college-level courses

April 2011

• Four of my 8th grade students are semi-finalists for the Do the Write Thing contest and will attend the annual awards dinner on Wednesday, May 11, 2011, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. at the Mile High Station in Denver.
• A student I mentor at the high school has been awarded the Sach’s Foundation scholarship.

March 2011

• I was asked to give a professional development talk on using Google Apps for the Middle Schooler, at Aurora South Middle School.
• My colleague, Lisa Baez, and I wrote a proposal for the Annual NCTE conference. It has been accepted. See you in Chicago this year. Our talk: Te(a)ch-nology in the Urban Language Arts Classroom.

February 2011

• My fellow TCs and I have the backpack for kids program up and running! We’ve partnered with the Food Bank of the Rockies and we were written up here in the PDS spotlight.

Ok, I could tell you all the myriad reasons why you should (or might want to) use Google Voice. But, a friend of mine basically said, “make me care.” So I’m going to tell you a couple real life scenarios where Google Voice just about saved my buttocks. If you don’t know what Google Voice is, you can start by reading this article and decide if you want to come back and let me convince you to use it.

Use case #1 – Telephone overload. My wife and I acquired a free baby grand piano. It’s sweet. But we already had an 1863 upright grand that has seen better days. We originally got the first piano on Craigslist under the free section. I thought, let’s give it back to the community for free, too, so someone else can have a starter piano (it’s not in the best shape, but would be a great candidate for restoring). Little did I know that 4 seconds after I added the posting to Craigslist, my phone would start ringing off the hook. (Sure, I could have said for people to email me, but let’s face it, when you want to arrange something to be picked up, email is not the best option). I received 47 calls about the piano within the first 24 hours. You do the math, that’s a lot of phone calls every couple minutes.

Solution: “Do Not Disturb.” By enabling the do not disturb mode of Google Voice, I was able to have the calls routed straight to voicemail and still transcribed and sent to me as a text. Getting a text once in a while is not nearly as bad as your phone ringing off the hook. (Especially when you have some parents or others around who can’t stand that some people actually ignore incoming phone calls, grab your phone, and bring it to you in the backyard where you’re busy weeding the garden).

Use #2: Texting. I text with some people alot. As in, we have the same amount of conversations over text as others would normally have over Instant Messaging. Here’s the deal: I have an iPhone, so I already sync my contacts with my gmail account, so getting all my contacts into Google Voice was a snap. Sending an SMS from Google Voice is simple: you start typing the name or number and it auto completes. And, since I work from the computer a few hours each day, I’m always around one. If I’m upstairs in my office, I can send a text. If I’m on the back patio where my laptop likes to hangout on nice days, I can send a text. In fact, it’s faster to open the laptop, fire up Google Voice and send a text than it is for me to find my cell phone (damn thing has a mind of its own), bring it down to where I’m working, and send a text over the phone. Are you a fast typer and do you hang out near a computer? If yes, get GV just to send some texts. Oh, and did I mention that your text messages and transcribed voicemail are kept in an inbox? Can you say searchable? Take a look at this screenshot, you can’t do this with your current voicemail, trust me.

Now, I know what you’re saying: Turning on “Do not disturb” might make me miss an important phone call. Well, if something is so important that you can’t miss it, you should still give out your real phone number, not your Google Voice number. Google Voice doesn’t support porting yet, so you’ll have to managed 2 phone numbers or tell your contacts to change you number. Then they’ll get all confused when you forget and call them from the older number. Especially now that Apple has rejected the iPhone app for Google Voice, GV is not a viable alternative to your real phone.

It is, however, a very powerful tool to have in your arsenal. Just like you have a need for Firefox and sometimes perhaps Opera or Flock as web browsers, you should grab a Google Voice number and hang onto it.