Category: blogs

  • Self-Censorship, Echo Chambers and Civil Political Discourse

    It’s been an even more tumultuous and troubling week for the United States government than usual, in a presidential term characterized by constant controversy and disruption. The announcement that our chief executive is pulling out all our military forces from Syria without prior consultation with his cabinet or military advisors, and the subsequent resignation of…

  • A Creepy and Troubling Hidden WordPress Hack

    It’s almost Christmas and our family is again planning to celebrate with a special dinner of prime rib. This has become a holiday tradition but is a big deal for us, since this is the only time all year I do any cooking of prime rib meat. Today before going shopping, I searched our family…

  • 16 Years of Web Hosting Changes with WordPress and Other Web Platforms: The Lessons Continue

    This past December, I started the laborious and often stressful process of migrating my 40+ websites (mostly running WordPress) to a new web host. This time, I’m moving from a VPS (virtual private server) with Site5.com to a VPS with LiquidWeb… I’m not done with this migration process, but I’m about halfway finished, and have reached…

  • Daily Blogging and an Ode to RSS

    One of my favorite Twitter lists which I follow regularly in Flipboard is “Gigaom Vets.” The list includes people who previously worked for GigaOm magazine, which has been rebooted but unexpectedly fired all its staff in March 2015. They were an amazing group of tech and tech culture journalists, and they still are, except now they…

  • WordPress OKC February 2017 Learning Points

    This evening I had an opportunity to attend a monthly WordPress OKC Meetup (@okcwpug) for the first time in many months, and as always I learned a bunch of new things. I archived my Tweets from the evening, shared mostly with the hashtag #WPOKC, in a Storify archive, which I’ll embed below. After many years,…

  • Podcast 440: WordPress Security & 2 Factor Authentication

    This podcast is a recording of a presentation by Dr. Wesley Fryer on February 29, 2016, titled, “WordPress Security & 2 Factor Authentication” at the WordPressOKC meetup at Oklahoma Christian University in Edmond, Oklahoma. Check the podcast shownotes for links to referenced resources, including the Google Presentation shared during the session. Link to those slides…

  • Why and How of Outside Sharing with KidBlog

    Yesterday afternoon I had an opportunity to share a workshop with teachers at my previous school, Independence Elementary in Yukon Public Schools, about configuring and using KidBlog websites as classroom blogs. I titled this presentation, the “Why and How of Outside Sharing with KidBlog,” and am embedding my Google Slides which I used during the…

  • Podcast 439: Best Day of Classroom Blogging Ever with Shelly Fryer

    This podcast features an interview with 3rd and 4th grade teacher Shelly Fryer on January 29, 2016, in Oklahoma City. Shelly teaches in a 1:1 iPad classroom at Positive Tomorrows, a special school for homeless children which also serves their families in multiple ways. Shelly has been using blogging websites with her students for three years,…

  • Taylor Swift’s Letter to Apple and Digital Citizenship

    Our 15 year daughter is understandably taken with Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13). Last night we were considering joining Apple Music so she could watch Taylor’s 1989 World Tour Live show, which is exclusive to Apple Music. As a result of those conversations, this morning I watched Taylor’s 20 minute interview with Zane Lowe (@zanelowe), which is available within…

  • Advice for Teachers Starting with Classroom Blogging

    Today was the first day of EdCampVoxer, and I’ve loved the conversations in several of the rooms including “Making as Learning,” “Let’s explore blogging- writing and reading for professional growth!,” and “Green Screen Videos.” This morning and afternoon, I collected many of the shared links from the Green Screen discussion and organized them in a Google…