I was working with a colleague today on embedding a Picasa slideshow into our school web site (running on Drupal). This is a very kludgy solution, but it did the trick. The screencast was done mainly so I wouldn’t forget but might be of value to someone else. Let me know if you find this useful.

Note – I wrote this in the wee hours last night but couldn’t post it due to DNS issues with my web site (again – Grrrr!). I think that it might read like something weakly formed in the wee hours, and I thought about deleting it, but that would be contrary to the spirit of what I wrote. Second thoughts be damned – it’s time to hit “Publish” and let my weakly formed notions be forever frozen in existence! I was just listening to the latest EdTech Posse Podcast. Alec mentioned that his daughter, age 4, doesn’t get radio or any media that can’t be tivo-ized (I think that’s his neologism). My own kids are the same way – if they’re in the middle of a particularly gripping episode of Go, Diego, Go when it’s time for supper, they just … Continue reading »

I just read Alan Levine’s latest post about quitting blogging. Well, he’s not actually quitting blogging – he’s going to quit blogging about blogging, although he did blog that he’s not going to blog about blogging. It’s making my head hurt in a manner reminiscent of the “Small is tall” video.   I include the video just in case you find the rest of the post kind of boring, at least you’ll have that to make you glad you read this. Thanks for reading this, by the way. But I digress. I understand Alan’s feeling completely, especially the frustration with the feeling that one ought to be blogging. Not just blogging, but analyzing/discussing/reflecting upon blogging until one is absorbed into the black hole of recursive, self-reflective blogging. (And I realize that I’m doing just that right now, but I give … Continue reading »

Yesterday was the third Thursday of the month so 80% of the EdTech Posse (Dean Shareski, Alec Couros and Rick Schwier along with me), as well as many friends who joined us in the ustream chat room, once again gathered by the campfire for good conversation (Heather Ross is still on maternity leave but I’m hoping she’ll be able to join us again soon). That’s two podcasts in two months which, I think, is a record for us. We’re tentatively scheduled to get together every month on the third Thursday and if that actually works out, I’m hoping we’ll have some shows out on a more regular basis.Last night was another live streamed show with some friends who joined us in ustream. We’ve done this once before and apart from the cognitive overload (checking ustream chat room, checking twitter, monitoring audio levels) while still … Continue reading »

I was virtually present yesterday as Darren Kuropatwa presented to teachers from the Living Sky School Division. As I mentioned in my last blog post, we had originally intended to use Elluminate, but ended up having Darren talk to us on WiZiQ while we watched his slides that he had already loaded to Slideshare. I was once again impressed by Darren’s dedication to his students’ learning, including his willingness to teach out in the open with so many opportunities for interaction between his students and the rest of the world. Here’s the slides for his presentation for you to follow along as you listen to the audio.   A Day In The Life V3.2  View more presentations from dkuropatwa. (tags: pedagogy teaching) And here’s the podcast:

I just finished participating in an online presentation with Darren Kuropatwa (audio forthcoming) which almost didn’t happen. The presentation was to my school division’s in-school instructional technology support teachers (iSITS – gotta find a better acronym). Our fearless leader, Donna DesRoches, had arranged for us to gather in Elluminate for the presentation but there were problems getting Darren into the session. It was suggested that we move on over to WiZiQ to see if we could make the session work there, which it did. A couple of lessons emerge in my mind. First, the expensive tools don’t always work better. Elluminate, a paid for service, did not work as smoothly as WiZiQ, a free tool. Second, feature rich tools are great if you are trained in their use. If not, you can end up causing confusion or damage. Elluminate is … Continue reading »

Again, I find myself in the position of being a rabid Google fanboy, this time over the development of their new task list manager. First it appeared as a nice little add-on courtesy of Gmail Labs: But the Gmail blog posted recently that it now comes as an iGoogle widget: and – drum roll please – as an iPhone/Pod touch web app. Mmm – nothing like a new productivity toy to help me do some really serious PTO. Gmail also added something I have long been wanting via their new buttons. The two new buttons are Move to and Labels. I like the labels feature in Gmail. Anything that adds tagability to my life is a good thing. My complaint has been the lack of a keyboard shortcut. With the addition of the new button, there is now a keyboard … Continue reading »