EdVentures in Technology
teaching, learning and change
Archive for March, 2006
March 29, 2006 at 8:15 am · Filed under Creativity, Random Thoughts
Today our local elementary school celebrated Read Across America and I was invited to read in my son’s multi-age kindergarten/first grade class. I chose three books: Maurice Sendak’s classic “Where the Wild Things Are,” Audrey Penn’s “The Kissing Hand,” and Jane Yolen’s “Owl Moon.” Of those, I was able to read both “The Kissing Hand” and “Owl Moon.” (I didn’t want to get the kids and myself all riled up acting out the wild things!)
I forgot how much fun this age was for me, and is today for my son and his classmates. As I read, I watched their faces – they got lost in, no more like they were transported into, the stories and for a few minutes we were all in another world. We joined a little raccoon on his way to his first day of school, holding his mother’s kiss in the palm of his hand. We went on a walk in the woods at night with a young girl and her father as she embarked on her first owling trip. And I was lucky enough to share this journey with them. The power of the written word never ceases to amaze me.
It brings to mind the fact that these young minds are insatiable and that as educators, it is our role, our responsibility, to not simply nurture but to inspire and ennervate their own creativity.
I was still buzzing from the excitement as I drove over a frost-heave riddled back road on my way to work. I thought back to how much I loved, and still love, reading. I thought, too, of the passion I once had for creative writing – my outlet for managing the frustrations and stresses of my young life – and wondered why I had ever stopped. Did I succumb to my inner critic?
I might pull out some of the pieces I’ve written. Maybe I could read them, or get someone with a better vocal presentation to read them, and turn them into podcasts for my kids. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a podcast for a while now but just haven’t had the inspiration (never mind the time) to jump the fence.
Thank you Mrs. Pettiti, for giving me the chance to relive my childhood through the eyes of your students. Please don’t ever lose your passion for your work! And thank you, Hunter, for constantly reminding me of what’s truly important in life!
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March 20, 2006 at 9:20 pm · Filed under TechTalk
I’ve been modifying my theme and in Flock and Firefox the blog background is was entirely black, yet in Internet Explorer, the background of the post area is was white and the area surrounding the blog content area is was black. Not quite sure what the issue is was but it’s an interesting problem to say the least.
UPDATE: Ok, so Matt rocks! He gave me some hints on how to improve my code.
The problem is that your theme is floating the content div left and floating the sidebar left. In CSS – on Mozilla browsers – a floated element does not influence the height of the parent element. In your case, the div “container” is the parent element and because it effectively has no height-adjusting elements, the “container” div (which is what has the white background) does not expand down the page.
1. Keep it Div – This one can be a pain.
Make one of the divs (either the content div or the sidebar div) not float. The easiest way to choose would be the one that will always be the longest in length…most likely the content div. Once you have removed the float, you may need to fiddle around with the width of the content div to prevent the sidebar div from wrapping to the bottom of the page. The drawback is this: Sometimes your sidebar may be longer than your content.
2. Go Oldschool – This one is archaic but functional.
The fact of the matter is, div layouts are a pain to fiddle with to get working with all browsers all the time. I still haven’t mastered it and it takes a lot of tweaking. What you can do is use a table:
[table]
[tr]
[td valign="top" style="width: 550px"]Your content (divs and all) go in here[/td]
[td valign="top" style="width: 200px"]Your sidebar (divs and all) go in here[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
The oldschool way would be the easiest to implement with the quickest results. The drawbacks? Well, its an oldschool way of doing things…layout with tables. Its frowned upon by some, but lets face it…tables are extremely functional and should be used where necessary to keep the end user’s experience consistent across browsers.
I won’t say that I understood all of it as I am still learning the finer points of CSS coding but the bottom line is that I removed the float from the content div and now all seems to be well.
March 17, 2006 at 9:30 pm · Filed under Higher Education, TechTalk, Web 2.0
Coming up in April, an un-conference – HigherEd BlogCon.
From their website,
HigherEd BlogCon
Transforming Academic Communities with New Tools of the Social Web
April 3-28, 2006
This brand-new, all-online event aims to bring together in a single Web space many of the leading players who are transforming academe with their use of the new tools of the Social Web.
All presentations will be made available on the event website at no charge to participants (with the exception of the live, web/audio CASE Online Speaker Series events).
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March 17, 2006 at 2:13 pm · Filed under TechTalk
This came across one of my
feeds from Albert Delgado. Seems like the same fine folks who brought you the Performancing plug-in for
Firefox have also created a traffic monitoring process called
Performancing Metrics. I configured my account this morning, so we will see what the day brings us.
March 17, 2006 at 1:58 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts
March 17, 2006 at 1:56 pm · Filed under Higher Education
I was asked by a member of our faculty to speak with a group of graduating studio arts majors who are interested in having an electronic presence on the web to either serve as an online gallery or as an electronic portfolio of their works for future employers. This post is a list of the resources I used in the presentation.
In a pre-session meeting, it was established that all of these students wanted the freedom to configure a professional site that allowed them to employ their artistic talents, so the cookie-cutter web hosting solutions were out. We did have a brief discussion on the merits and challenges of an image hosting site such as Flickr for those folks who seek to make a living from their art and would therefore be protective of their intellectual property rights.
Perhaps the most challenging aspect of this process will be finding a name for their domain! Which brings us to step one…
1. Find and register a domain name
With the popularity of the web booming and cybersquatters snapping up as many obvious domain names as possible, it can be frustrating to find an available name that is easy to remember and conveys your marketing message. So, expect to spend some time exploring and re-exploring naming schemes. As artists, it may be easier for you than most to view your domain name with a creative eye.
I’ve listed a few name registration sites, but it is always good to shop around. The price for a domain name can run from as low as $8 to as high as $35 annually. As with magazine subscriptions, better deals can be had if you register your site for a longer period of time.
Keep in mind that this process may be combined with the next step, find and subscribe to a web host, as some name registrars also offer web hosting services. This may reduce your costs, or at least simplify the process somewhat. Each of the vendors below provides hosting services, but with a great range of pricing schemes.
(Legal caveat: These links are for reference only. I do not make any guarantees or assumptions about their pricing or quality of service!)
2. Find and subscribe to a web host
After registering a domain name, the next step is to find and subscribe to a web hosting service. As mentioned above, many name registrars also providing hosting. But which services/features should you look for?
At a minimum, I recommend the following:
- - Full e-mail service (some hosts just provide incoming mail service and require you to use your Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) SMTP server to send e-mail.
- - 1 GB of network storage – This should provide adequate space for most artist’s needs, unless your site is extremely rich in multimedia.
- - 10 GB of bandwidth – This means the amount of traffic that goes to and comes from your site. As you grow in popularity, and based on the size of your multimedia elements, it is best to start with this bandwidth knowing that you can always upgrade should you need to.
- - PHP and mySQL – for hosting blogs and other interactive site features. Most hosts now provide this by default but check to be sure.
- - Multimedia support – Flash, Real Player, streaming audio/video
Another feature often found as part of a hosting service is a neat management tool called CPanel. My host, HasWeb, provides CPanel which allows me to configure the various components of my site. But even better is a tool they integrate with CPanel called Fantastico.
Fantastico allows you to add other web services such as blogs, photo galleries, shopping cart functions, and much more. This is a boon for those who do not have either the time or the inclination to get tech heavy (although it is always good to have a technical awareness!).
Blogs
One alternative to hosting your own site right off the bat is to use blogging technology to present yourself. There are a number of free blog hosting sites out there which can be employed to serve as your electronic portfolio, either by themselves or in conjunction with other resources, such as Flickr.
I’ve listed a few of the more popular blog hosting services below.
Web development Resources
I have developed a tutorial on creating webpages at Plymouth State University using their resources. It is a work in progress, but may prove useful as you begin the process of creating your very own web presence.
Good luck!
March 17, 2006 at 1:53 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts
Ok, so I made some mod somewhere in my blog config that entirely blew out my theme and then tried to perpetually redirect the URL so that I couldn’t log in. Out of sheer frustration, I blew out my old installation and re-installed v2.0.2 from scratch. Thankfully I only had one or two original posts that I can recreate and Zach’s remote_rss script allowed me to import my WordPress blog entries so I’ve recovered most of my data but I am concerned that I have no idea what caused this snafu in the first place.
Ah, technology!
March 15, 2006 at 2:47 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts
Visit us at our new home:
http://www.whitemountaintech.net/wordpress
March 13, 2006 at 9:17 pm · Filed under Random Thoughts, Web 2.0
Note: This post is from my former WordPress account and came over in the import.
I’ve outgrown what my WordPress.com account can offer. Turns out I want to play with widgets and scripts and such, go figure. But I like the WordPress environment so I visited wordpress.org and downloaded and installed v.2 and imported, successfully, my posts from this blog.
So far, so good. I’ve got a long way to go to figure out themes and PHP but now I can experiment with my own installations – how dangerously exciting!
Here is the new URL and feed for my new blog hosted on www.whitemountaintech.net
New blog URL: http://www.whitemountaintech.net/wordpress
New blog feed: http://www.whitemountaintech.net/wordpress/feed/
I’ve also tweaked the blog a bit to include the following plug-ins:
bsuite – a stats program courtesy of Casey Bisson
podPress – a podcasting encapsulation plug-in
Just a note, I plan on leaving this up until WordPress decides to deep six it so any links that currently point here will not break. But if you do find this blog, please visit my new home and link to these posts there.
March 7, 2006 at 9:07 pm · Filed under Higher Education, Learning Theory, TechTalk
No sooner had I received the feed for Will Richardson’s post on his excitement over the first delivery of his newly published book then I ordered my own copy.
I have just cracked it open but I am excited about its prospects, particularly since I am working on a culminative project for my M.Ed. which is the development of a graduate level course in current EdTech tools. Between Will’s book, and the syllabi posted by Ulises Mejias in his Social Software Affordances course and Terry Anderson in his Emerging Issues in Educational Technology course, I am excited to start diving into the course’s creation.
Congratulations Will, and thanks!
technorati tags: will, richardson, book, blogs, wikis, podcasts, edtech, web, tools, classroom
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