Month: December 2012

  • FREE Playing with Media Meetups in Oklahoma City in 2013

    To share ideas, apps, and tools for creating different kinds of multimedia products with teachers, parents, homeschoolers and students, I’m going to start offering monthly “Playing with Media Meetups” in Oklahoma City starting in January 2013.

  • When Creative Musical Genius Meets YouTube

    There are some people in this world who have creative, musical genius that absolutely knocks your socks off when you hear and see it. Jon Cozart (Paint on YouTube) is one of those people. His 104 second video with himself, “Lord of the Rings in 99 Seconds,” has 1.3 million YouTube views to date. It…

  • Merry Christmas 2012

    Merry Christmas to you and your family. I hope this holiday season finds you with family and friends, counting your blessings and celebrating the holidays together. If you are separated from loved ones this holiday, I hope you will be reunited soon. As we continue to mourn the deaths of so many in Newtown, Connecticut,…

  • Setting Up a Skype Home Phone

    This evening I configured a Skype phone (an IPEVO SO10 Skype Desktop Phone I won in 2008 in a “What Skype Means to Me” contest) as a home phone. In this post I’ll briefly recap the whys and how-tos of this process. Since our most recent move in 2011 we’ve ditched our POTS line and…

  • Google Calendar Appointment Slot Double Booking Mystery

    We use Google calendars with appointment slots to let teachers book computer labs and other resources from our high school library. There is a mystery we need help solving: sometimes two teachers are able to reserve the same timeslot. Check out this short video for more details. If you have any suggestions or ideas about…

  • Al Jazeera, Arab Spring, & Opposing Extremism in Our Midst in the USA

    This evening I watched a wonderful, informative and challenging TEDtalk by Bobby Ghosh: “Why global jihad is losing.” This is an important TEDtalk to watch for several reasons. (It was filmed in September 2012.) According to his official TED bio: Bobby Ghosh is an Editor-at-Large at Time magazine, where he covers conflict, global affairs and…

  • AudioBoo Websites and Ports to Unblock on Your School Internet Content Filter

    AudioBoo is a fantastic, free website and mobile app for students to use to create “narrated art” as well as other kinds of short audio recordings about their curricular assignments. If you want to use AudioBoo on a school network, however, you need to be sure the following websites and “ports” are UNBLOCKED on your…

  • Setting Up Blogging Buddies with KidBlog, Excel and a Google Spreadsheet

    Since January of 2012 I’ve been working with teachers in Yukon Public Schools as an “innovative instructional coach.” One of the primary things I’ve been working with teachers on is interactive writing: Helping setup class blogs teachers can use to facilitate sharing student writing online. I help teachers configure their sites so they can MODERATE…

  • Publish a Free Digital Magazine with Zeen

    Zeen (@zeen_com on Twitter) is a free, online platform in beta for creating digital magazines. The website lets you quickly pull photos from Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, as well as videos from YouTube and integrate them into slick, multi-page online magazines. Today I created a travelog magazine about our family’s recent fall break adventures titled, “Boston…

  • Whacha Runnin’ on Yer Mac These Days? (Dec 2012)

    The past few years I’ve created comprehensive lists of all the software programs I run on my Apple laptop computer in December and/or January. Perhaps because of holiday downtime, this has been the month when I’ve taken the time to either perform a clean installation of my operating system and reinstall all my apps, or…