Our family is up in Kansas this weekend for college football and a family wedding, and as usual we’ve swapped a few technological tips and tricks amidst our conversations about family and food. One I’m most interested in, which I learned about from my mom, is the availability of audio books for checkout from the
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This video podcast features a tutorial screencast explaining how to use the free web-based software installation tool Fantastico to install the open source learning management system Moodle onto a custom sub-domain of a website you pay a web host to use. I use the web host Siteground, which permits me to create an unlimited number
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Podcast275: Installing Moodle via Fantastico from CPanel on a Custom Sub-Domain [ 9:24 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3873)Yeah Ryan! The WordPress Akismet problem I blogged about on August 25th has been resolved. Before: After: What a relief! It is disheartening to see that our K-12 Online Conference blog attracted over 3000 blog spam comments in just 5 days this past week. Previously we had been running version 2.2 of WordPress along with
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Like many other parents around the United States this fall, my wife and I dutifully attended “back to school night” at our local public elementary school this evening. Our two oldest children are now in 5th and 3rd grades. This was a difficult experience for several reasons. I want to preface this post by noting
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John Peters, Vicki Allen, and Rob Jacklin joined me this evening for a sixty minute online meetup via Ustream.tv and Skype (thanks again Ryan Gordon for the instructions) to discuss the StoryChasers project. I recorded our conversation on Ustream and also archived the text chat, which includes a few links as well as ideas for
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I’m working on creating a curriculum DVD for the Gaylord-Pickens Museum of the Oklahoma Heritage Association, which will be shared with teachers and students before they come to the museum for face-to-face field trips this fall and spring. Thanks to grants from the Dell Foundation and the Inasmuch Foundation free field trips for hundreds of
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There is nothing quite like a U.S. Presidential election to highlight the importance of media literacy, critical thinking, and NOT taking media messages at face value. I recently purchased the revised edition of “How to Watch TV News” by Neil Postman and Steve Powers. This book needs to be further revised for our YouTube media
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If you’re looking for creative ways to utilize collaborative technologies to bring funding for technology projects into your classroom these social networking websites focused on classroom project fundraising may be useful. I spoke with Karen Montgomery this morning briefly on the phone, and she shared several new websites she learned about after talking with Heather
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I’ve held my breath and crossed my fingers this evening updating the K-12 Online Conference blog from WordPress version 2.2 to the latest version 2.6.1. Everything seems to have gone smoothly (dare I say that) except when I try to delete identified Akismet spam comments I get the following error: Warning: Invalid argument supplied for
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My knowledge of Liberia has been pretty limited to date. I learned about the Liberian Renaissance Education Complex talking to Dr. Dennis Harper (founder of Kijana Voices and Generation YES) at NECC in 2007 as part of a podcast interview. Before our conversation I had not heard of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the current president of Liberia
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Well, this is a bummer. The Ning Terms of Service agreement explicitly prohibits anyone from creating any Ning social networking sites “targeted at children under the age of 13.” I was aware of COPPA and knew I’d have to get parent permission for students to participate in an online community I was creating for a
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This podcast is a recording from our third online brainstorming session for the StoryChasers project on August 21, 2008. I was joined by Cheryl Lykowski, a 5th grade teacher from Michigan as well as James Sigler, a 3rd grade teacher from Missouri. We will convene a fourth brainstorming session (and hopefully our last one before
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Podcast274: StoryChasers Brainstorm #3 from 21 August 2008 [ 1:17:00 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2440)
I noticed this evening a new link (at least for me) in the left sidebar of WikiPedia pages under the “toolbox” heading: “Cite This Page.” The citation assistance page begins with the following advice, which I think could potentially please even the most WikiPedia-skeptical librarians: IMPORTANT NOTE: Most educators and professionals do not consider it
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Sometimes it’s very handy to keep older computers around. Last week I was elated to obtain for work a one terabyte Maxtor One Touch 4 Plus external hard drive. The drive is Mac and Windows compatible and supports both Firewire 400 as well as USB 2.0. Even more amazing than the fact that this much
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This is a cross post from the TechLearning blog. Keyboarding is an important skill. I reflected a bit on cursive and keyboarding on the TechLearning blog a year ago this month in the post, “The New Cursive.” Perhaps my comparison of cursive writing to keyboarding was not appropriate. The relevance of cursive to successful living
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Please join me this evening on EdTechTalk’s “Teachers are Talking” webcast at 7:30 pm eastern / 6:30 pm central time. Our conversation will probably range far and wide, but the following are some focus questions Cheryl Lykowski sent me to prepare for: 1. Tell us about K12 Online. 2. What is the K12 Online unconference?
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THESE ARE MY NOTES FROM THE GREATER OKLAHOMA CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE “STATE OF THE SCHOOLS” LUNCHEON ON 21 AUGUST 2008. THESE ARE COMMENTS BY KIRK HUMPHREYS AFTER TO LUNCH. KIRK IS THE NEW CHAIR OF OKCPS Kirk Humphreys was elected to the OKC school board first in 1998, is one of the fathers of
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THESE ARE MY NOTES FROM THE GREATER OKLAHOMA CITY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE “STATE OF THE SCHOOLS” LUNCHEON ON 21 AUGUST 2008. THESE ARE COMMENTS BY BURNS HARGIS PRIOR TO LUNCH. The announcement yesterday by Devon Energy is further evidence of the contributions they are making to the state of Oklahoma If an of you have
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THESE ARE MY NOTES FROM FROM DR. PEDRO NOGUERA’S KEYNOTE AT ALAN NOVEMBER’S 2008 BUILDING LEARNING COMMUNITIES CONFERENCE. THE TITLE OF THE SESSION WAS “CHANGING THE CULTURE OF SCHOOLS: CREATING CONDITIONS THAT PROMOTE STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT.” I DID NOT ATTEND BLC08 IN PERSON, BUT THANKS TO BOB SPRANKLE MAKING THIS AMAZING PRESENTATION AVAILABLE VIA PODCAST I
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I love railroads. Had I lived in a bygone era, I feel certain I would have been drawn to work around or on railroads when they were the primary “connecting technology” which brought people together and made geographic places seem far closer. I’ve reflected several times in the past on the similarities between physical railroads
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