IT Folks [view: normal]

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/03/23/nbchs-goes-drupal/

I recently updated the NBCHS website to Drupal. Although I had planned the change for some time, the final impetus for getting it done was a mass IP address renumbering throughout the school division, which broke some of our existing links and DNS entries.

So far, the site is pretty basic. I haven’t changed from the default Garland theme, but it looks pretty good and matches our school colours. I’ve only added a few modules - Marksmarty, Pathauto, Scheduler and Webcal. The Drupal part of the site has a bit of content that I’ve brought in from existing pages, but is mostly used to link to existing content. The best things about using Drupal (so far) is the ease of adding important information for the community to the main page, and having the daily announcements set up so that it is easy for other staff in the building to edit. My goal is to avoid being stuck with the webmaster role in which everyone in the school gets me to add content. I’m planning on working with some of the early technology adopters to start using the system, then demonstrate to others that it is worth their time to learn how to add content. Teachers don’t have a lot of extra time to spend learning new technology skills, unless there is a benefit to our students.

I have a few other plans. I don’t think we are ready to offer blogs for every student, but I hope that teachers would start by at least using a blog as an assignment page. I’d like to see some of the student groups starting to use the site. I’d really like to start adding some photos to the site, although I’m not sure about the best way to handle that.

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/03/22/testing-markdown/

Update/rewrite I just installed the PHP Markdown Extra plugin in the blog, and it seems to be working

My main reason for wanting a Markdown plugin is to use the offline blogging capabilities built into Textmate, especially with the introduction of the new Blogmate plugin. If the site blows up … well, I guess if it blows up, you won’t be reading this anyway.

Oh - you might be wondering what Textmate/Blogmate connection is. Textmate is the coolest text editor in the world (although I know the emacs zealots will disagree) which has built in blogging capabilities. Blogmate is an extremely sweet plugin for Textmate that gives the blogging capabilities a nice GUI. I could use straight HTML with either of them, but both have the capacity to work with Markdown, and Markdown is a much cooler way of formatting text as you type.

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/03/13/walls-med-project-principle/

I am deep into must get project completed mode, since it is due in 2 weeks (although I am pretending that it is only one week until the deadline). As I work on this project I have noted a strange but deeply meaningful phenomenon, which I have dubbed Wall’s M.Ed. Project Principle (Wall’s Principle, if you want a shorter version).

The project will always be ready in 3 weeks.

This is true regardless of the amount of time spent working on the project, or the time until the deadline. When starting, one thinks This should only take me about 3 weeks. When in the midst of the project, one thinks I should have things wrapped up in another three weeks. When the deadline is 2 weeks away, one thinks Gosh, I wish I had another 3 weeks instead of only 2. Even when the project is complete, one thinks Hmmm - I could really make this a lot better with a few quick revisions; It would only take me about 3 weeks.

I’d like to refine this principle if I can. I should have it all worked out in about … well, check back in a while and we’ll see how things are going.

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/02/23/roger-and-me-a-tale-of-spam-

It’s a great feeling when something you’ve done is so interesting to spammers, that they contact you personally. I received a comment to moderate in my e-mail this morning from Roger (I’m not giving a last name, and I’m definitely not going to put an URL up here) asking about my scuttle spam-proofing hack. Here’s the comment that Roger tried to leave:

I tried this with one of my scuttle sites, and I don’t see any difference. I must be doing somthing wrong. After I made the change what should I see when I log in as user with id 1? I checked sc_users and the Id I am using to log in is the user ID 1. Plus if you can help me limit the max tags per post. I am getting spammed to death…

The irony here is almost too much. Really, Roger, did you think I’d allow a comment - even an inocuous one before checking up on the commenter? Leaving the link to the web site - an installation of scuttle that is used for “internet marketing” was enough to mark you as a newbie, but to give your e-mail address so I can check the site for your “internet marketing company”. That’s just not thinking, buddy.

I was happy to see that you are up to date on all the latest social software, though. At least you’re staying on top of the latest web trends. Nice to see that you are offering advice on using social bookmarking and RSS to market a product. The software you offer sounds really interesting:

If you want to learn more about social bookmarking, or need a tool to automate the posting to many social bookmarking sites visit one of my other sites called XXXXXXXXXXX and learn more about social bookmarking and automation software…

Wow - you wanted me to give you more info on my hack so you could incorporate it into the next version of your software. I’m touched - really, there’s a small teardrop running down my cheek, I’m so overcome with emotion. But the irony of a spammer asking me advice for stopping spam - ROTFLMAO!!! Stop, Roger, my ribs are hurting.

The other irony here is that my hack is no longer effective against spammers, so the site has been shut down. Roger, you sly dog - were you the one who figured out how to spam my school’s bookmarking site? Or were you jealous that someone else figured out how to do it first? Sadly my hack is no longer effective - school’s get kinda touchy about someone leaving the kind of links that you left, Roger (or some other sleaze-ball spammer, whoever you are).

I’m not going to leave Roger’s full name here, or any mention of his site, or his “automation” software - sorry, Roger, I’m not going to give you any of my google-juice. But if anyone else in the edu-blogospere wants the above information, I’d be happy to let you know via e-mail. I’m at robwall@gmail.com (sorry, Roger, the gmail filters are pretty darn good at keeping you away from me). If I know of you, or you pass my scrutiny, I’ll send you the info.

And Roger, one more thing - spam this, buddy:

..|..(’_') ..|..

and give this a big smooch:

( )x( )

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/02/21/they-dont-care-how-much-you-

I should be working on the project, but I have to shine some light on this piece by Christopher Sessums (brought to my attention by Stephen)

Christopher D. Sessums :: Weblog :: Intellect, Emotion, Spirit, and Will: Another Side of Connectivism

His post is an exploration of some of the ideas of/quotations from The Courage to Teach (is this worth reading? - comments welcome on this), and its connection to connectivism. One thing that Christopher says

teaching is not about the methods you employ, but instead about the personality, the disposition, and scruples one brings to the learning environment

Too right! I’d even add one more item to the description of what teaching is not about - teaching is not about the content, its about the process - what we do much more than the course/subject/teaching. One of the difficulties teaching at the secondary level is that we tend to lose track of this, misdirected by being “subject experts”, whereas Kindergarten teachers seem to do the best job of this. Perhaps that is why Kindergarten is the place where we learn all we really need to know, at least according to Robert Fulghum. The Kindergarten teachers I’ve met all understand that teaching is about process.

I attended a teachers convention last week (brief aside from the depths of my addled brain - why are they called teachers conventions instead of teaching conventions? Perhaps that is where our focus begins to be misdirected). There were actually two teachers conventions in the same building, and I followed the crowd into the other opening keynote address. The speaker (sorry - name is forgotten) was talking about the power of media in the lives of our students. I appreciated her emphasis that we are not helpless or unimportant in the lives of our students. In fact, she said that the greatest predictor of school success is a strong connection with a caring adult. That connection is a greater influence in a young person’s life than all the media that permeates their lives. (This was in the week following the fabulous online connectivism conference, so the word connection had a particular resonance.)

Often, that caring adult will be a teacher. What an incredible responsibility! Years ago, in one of the schools I taught at during my “temporary contract” career phase, there was a great thought written up on blackboard in the staff room - they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. That’s a thought I try to keep in my head as the faces turn toward me when the class bell sounds.

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/02/08/a-little-geek-humour/

I’m going to post a link to a you tube video. I vowed it wouldn’t happen, but I can’t resist this - if you grew up geeky (and if you are reading this, there’s a pretty good chance that you did), you’ll love it. Don’t watch if while you have a beverage in your mouth - cleaning up your keyboard and monitor is time consuming.

Via Brian Lamb - a Monty Python/Star Trek mashup

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/02/07/edtech20posse20podcast202520

The EdTech Posse Podcast 2.5 is out. Heather Ross and I had a great conversation about wikipedia and stupidity (not implying any connection, but you can draw your own conclusions).

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/02/05/my-cheesy-scuttle-hack/

I’ve had some requests for my admin_delete_users_bookmarks_and_tags for Scuttle that I hobbled together some time ago. After going through all the files in my scuttle installation, I realized the only hack was that I changed the function isAdmin in the services/userservice.php from this:

function isAdmin($userid) {

return false; //not implemented yet

}to this:

function isAdmin($userid) {

if ( ($userinfo = $this->getUser($userid)) ) {

if ( $userinfo['uAdmin'] == 1 ) {

return true;

}

}

return false;

}

This a really cheap and dirty hack because all it does is give admin privileges to the user with userid 1 in the database (which just happens to be my userid - substitute your own). All the other code was Scuttle 0.7.1 already, just waiting to be used. I don’t even know if this is a hack - more like a piece of duct tape over a leak in the hull of a boat. But it works. If anyone has a better hack, and honestly - a monkey sitting banging his/her head on the keyboard could do better than this - please leave it here or let me know.

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/01/30/oreillycom-online-catalog-ho

I noticed that O’Reilly press has come out with a new short cut publication entitled How to Build an RSS 2.0 Fee

The description they give is This Short Cut will give you the hands-on knowledge you need to build an RSS 2.0 feed. Well, I suppose you could pay $8 for this information, or you can go read Stephen’s guide to RSS creation for free. The O’Reilly publication does not, to the best of my knowledge, have any mention of beer. (Read Stephen’s How to Create an RSS Feed With Notepad, a Web Server, and a Beer for details)

http://stigmergicweb.org/2007/01/22/and-i-for-one-welcome-our-go

My name is Rob Wall, and I for one welcome our Google overlords!

I’ve just been using Google Reader to read Wes Fryer’s Using Google Notebook, Google Reader, and Firefox and it made me think about how much I use Google, and how I use Google. Shortly after reading this, I was using Gmail to read and respond to an e-mail from Donna confirming our plans to work on another Ten Things to Know podcast, our next one being about Google services (and Google’s information dictatorship, but that’s another discussion). Google is everywhere in my life! A big chunk of my information is managed using Google through Gmail and Google Reader, not to mention the personalized Google home page.

Every time I open a web browser, the first thing I see is my Google home page.

I’ve always wanted a Star Trek like console that consolidated all the information I needed to know - and here it is!

While I’m on my Google home page, I might take a look at some of the recent posts from various RSS sources on my Google Reader.

I can choose to look at all unread items from the RSS feeds, items that I have starred, or items from sources that have been given tags.

One thing I absolutely love about Google Reader is that when I click on the title of any of the posts, a widget opens up where I can read the post, or even go to the original page.

I can also click on the Google Reader (Labs) title, which takes me to my Google Reader page.

I could list all the ways in which Google Reader has it all over Bloglines, but that’s another post for another day.

As for Gmail … well, its just the best. Nuff said (and I have no screenshots currently).

All the above photos, by the way, I’ve uploaded to my Picasa Web Albums, another cog in the Google machine. When I was using Windows as my primary OS, I used Picasa to organize my photos. Its a great app - whenever someone asks me about an iPhoto equivalent for Windows, it is my first suggestion. If it was available for the Mac, I’d have to give it serious consideration as an alternative/supplement to iPhoto. Once Picasa was acquired by Google, Picasa Web Albums was created. It’s designed, I suppose, to be a Google competitor to Flickr. A main difference between the two services is that Flickr is based around sharing and social networking, whereas Picasa Web Albums seems to be set up as a place to put digital photos online so they can be embedded in web pages, with sharing via albums as a secondary function.

It’s tough to know how to feel about Google. Their control over so much of our information is scary, despite their motto of “Do no evil” - I feel comfortable with their use of my information so far, but what happens when there is a change in management that decides to use the information to do evil. As an open source, open content, open thinking kind of guy, I have mixed feelings about the Goog. I’m uncomfortable with a lot of their proprietary web services (or any web services) since my life is pooched if they ever go out of business or I am unable to access the services. I don’t have a universally usable data archive of the work I have created, since it’s all stored in their servers. At the same time, when I am asked what my favourite operating system is, my response is Firefox. With web based services like those provided by Google, I don’t need many additional apps for my day to day work.

Maybe we need a support group to help people come to term with their Google addiction. I’ll start - my name is Rob, and I’m a Google-holic.