Spring Break

Spent spring break in Helena visiting my son and daughter-in-law - Pad and Nisan. I had a wonderful time- great little place.

My son is youth librarian at the library system in Helena. I discovered he had won the Little Miss Muffitt contest at the library (a staff function - assume an excuse for a pot luck and some laughs & creativity)

I was going to send pics to some of my co-workers at DMPS but they would have totally clogged up the e-mail system. Having NOT yet included single pics in my blog, it provided an obvious choice.

Spent Saturday at the Como Park zoo with friends, Rick and Sherry, and their grand kids. We saw giraffes, but NO elephants. Sent them these pics from Africa. The video is of Judy at a giraffe park; elephant picture is from our trip to Lake Manyara Nat'l Park in Tanzania in 2007.

My first slideflickr. The "Stop Math" pic uploaded from my computer from a digital camera, as are the xc skiing and church pics. A few others are from cellphone camera and sent directly into a flickr account using a flickr e-mail. Set up on slideflickr; it scrolls thru pics as a slide show. Don't think for a moment I figured this out on my own; I had help from Liz Kolb. She set up a great 5 minute tutorial using screen-cast-omatic; great step by step presentation - audio and broswer screen demo!




My first podcast using my cell, recording from NPR and uploading using Gcast. I chose auto play initially. I went back and changed to manual play.


Subscribe Free
Add to my Page

Cell Phones

Toys to Tools prompted me to play with some cell phone and web2.0 capabilities. Set up a pollanywhere account and started a cell phone based poll at school. Topic was on raising the age for staying in school from 16 to 18.
Slow to get folks to use. I felt like I had promoted - power point slides on our big screens, e-mailed staff. Didn't gaggle it to them nor use the FP wiki. Not a convenient way to discuss these things with people - either students or staff.
Seemed timely - a bill was introduced in Iowa legislature to ban cell phones in schools this week. Did a test Gcast using my cell. Considering doing a mass podcast on protesting the bill.
Explored signing up for Jott (cell call to text) capability. Didn't finish; seemed to have changed. Only 7 days "free" - if you cancel within 7 days. I thought I was going to sign up at $10/month. When I proceeded I got directed to $4 or $14 dollar options - seemed that the $10 one had disappeared. The cheaper one allowed a max of 15 seconds of recording. Also a max of 40 messages per month I believe; an additional charge if exceed. I proceeded. At some point it stated that Sprint (my cell phone plan) charged 20 cents for each voicemail to text. I wasn't looking for this "service", but couldn't figure out how to turn it off and avoid the charge.

My point, Jott has some features that are annoying. Most web2.0 applications seem to have a basic free service and then add-ons for a fee. Not so with Jott. I'll shop for an alternative and sort it thru. Buyer beware is still true. I also want to explore a cellphone picture to flicker slide show.

I had digital fun with Wordle, displaying an hour long online chat on Des Moines Dropout efforts in a basic "tag cloud". Neither "teacher" or "graduation" appeared; student was the most frequent word.

Signing off for now; hope to add links on this post w/in 24 hours.

Starting a Blog

Starting a blog - a piece of cake - quite easy. This blog is set up on Blogger, part of the Google suite of services. If you have a google account, sign in and set up your blog. If not, simply sign up; it is free, you'll need an e-mail address. Blogger is one of many "blogging engines". Here is a site the compares web-logs. Wikipedia's entry on blogs has an extensive including a list of notable blogs (this one is missing:-)) and a list of blog terms (with short definitions :-)).

A co-worker recently said, "I don't like blogs; they all look different. I can't figure them out." I knew what she meant. Initially, I was lost too. What I missed was that most blogs are personal expressions, creative outlets; of course they look different, people dress different too. We know the colors and terms for different articles of clothing. Blogs are new to many of us, we just need to learn what's in common in a blog. Here are some blogging terms. I'm going to use Blogger examples.

A blog Post is an entry into the blog - narrative, photos, video/audio link or a combination. Most blogs are made up of a series of postings. By far most frequently, only one person posts to a blog. That person owns his/her blog, deciidng how it looks and feels and what and when items are posted. Some folks blog daily; basically an online journal. The Blogger start page has "Blogs of Note" in the lower right corner. One is titled "A Tidings of Magpies" - this blog was started in early 2008 with 308 postings during 2008. As of 3/1/09, a total of 61 postings, right at one a day. You may wish to scroll through some of the "blogs of note" - appears to be about a dozen of them - they may change and I have no ideas how they are selected. If you scroll through some you'll get a taste of the variety of looks that a blog can have.

A blog Comment is also a part of most blogs; readers can comment on the post. The Magpie had a post this morning at 6:20 AM; by 2 PM in the afternoon, 11 comments had been made. Viewers/readers can usually post comments to posts. You may have to be a member to see/view a blog or to make comments. The blog "owner" can set the blog up so that comments are not visible until the owner was reviewed them.

Blogger uses 2 categories of actions to personalize your blog. Settings allow you to set up your blog's comments, to design how archives of past posts will be displayed and much more. Layout lets you modify how the page looks - several templates are provided. If you can write HTML, you can modify/add code to customize your blog look.

Summary - just do it may be good advise for setting up a blog. You can start with the defaults and then modify settings down the road. While you are reading other blogs, note features that you like. Experiment with them in your blog. If you have readers, ask them to comment on what they wished you had. Ask them to give you feedback after you've made a change. Good Luck - be creative.