5 Things You May Not Know About Me

Tom Barret tagged me with this ‘5 things about me’ meme, so here goes.

1. I was born in Nadi in the Fiji Islands, but immigrated to Toronto, Canada with my family when I was two years old. I have not been back since, but would like to visit Fiji, New Zealand, and Australia, where I have a few relatives.

2. My middle name is “Bellmondo” – enough said.

3. I helped pay for my undergraduate university degree through four summers of treeplanting in Northern Ontario and Northern British Columbia. At my peak, I was planting between 2000-2500 trees a day, would work 12 hour days, and slept in a tent for 3 months of the year. I almost died on an isolation contract (where we were dropped in by boat, and supplies by helicopter) reading a letter from the bi-weekly mail delivery from my girlfriend (now wife) and walking briskly down a trail towards a black bear.

4. I enjoy working with my hands, building wood furniture and doing home renovations.

5. I’m married to Laura and have a son “Darcy” who is 2 ½ years old. We have another child due in June.

Tagging:

Steve Hargadon
Paula Boon
Konrad Glogowski
Dean Shareski
John Evans

December 28, 2006 | | 6 Comments »

Teaching Hacks WordPress Plugins

First – Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas everyone!

If you use WordPress for your blog and are interested in the plugins that I am using, then the following list will be useful to you.

  • The Amazon Media Manager for WordPress – Tracks my books and other media that I am reading or reviewing.
  • Anti-Spam Image – This plugin inserts a security image for the WP comment page, requiring the poster to enter the right characters in the image.
  • Category Cloud – Template tag to display a categories in a tag cloud.
  • Kramer – One of my new favourites – Implements Technorati inbound links to a post as Pingbacks. Also provides a template function to display general inbound links.
  • PodPress – The podPress pluggin gives you everything you need in one easy plugin to use WordPress for Podcasting.
  • Social Bookmarking Links – Add social bookmark links to your posts – I modified this plugin to add del.icio.us linkbacks on posts.
  • Translator – Translates blog dynamically (from English) to eight languages.
  • WordPress Email Notification Plugin – Allow People To Sign Up For E-Mail Notifications.
  • Feedstats - RSS feed statistics.
  • Search Meter – Keeps track of what your visitors are searching for.
  • Editor Monkey – Turns the normal WordPress textarea into a WYSIWYG editor using TinyMCE or FCKeditor. Also integrates spell checking into the editor interface.
  • Survey Fly – Creates Multi-Style Surveys.
  • Google Sitemaps – This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.

Love to hear about WordPress plugins that you really like.

Update:
I forgot about the Semiologic theme and CMS which has quite a few built in plugins.

December 21, 2006 | | 6 Comments »

Animal School

You might have seen this before, but if you haven’t it is really worth a look. Geared to parents, it gives everyone something to think about. (Privacy Alert – There is an email collection form at the end)

Opening Screen
(Click On Image)

December 19, 2006 | | 4 Comments »

PBWIKI Gets A WYSIWYG Editor

It’s about time PBwiki:

We recently rolled out a test of our new WYSIWYG editor, which lets you edit just as you see it–bold, italics, images, and many other things are much easier to manage. (Click refresh on your wiki a few times and you’ll see a preview in the bottom-right corner of your wiki.)

Here’s real, live feedback from early users:
* “Brilliant”
* “Love the editor!”
* “This is a HUGE improvement and I hope will greatly increase participation in my wiki. Can we start using this NOW on our pages? Sorry to be overly anxious, but this is a major leap forward that I welcome.”
* “Just one word: AWESOME!!!!”
* “This is great — so much easier to use!”

We’ve now released the new editor for new wikis, so if you create a new wiki through http://www.pbwiki.com you’ll see the option to choose our new editor. Try it!

After the holidays, we’ll give everyone the option of switching their wikis to WYSIWYG.

December 14, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Psiphon Has Been Released

VLCWelcome to the brave new world for free and open access to the internet in school districts, it is time we focused on Education, Education, Education because our crutches are about to be taken away from us.

It has been over a week now since the open source personal proxy serverPsiphon has been released and web filters are never going to be the same again. I mentioned psiphon a few months ago. After a quick download of the software and about 5 minutes of setup you can have your own proxy server running on any internet enabled computer. If you are having trouble installing the software there are psiphon support forums.

A couple of things to note about the software:

  • If you use a Dynamic DNS service like DYNDNS you can keep a static domain name associated with your IP address, like yourname.is-a-geek.com.
  • If you are behind a router you can use port forwarding to allow access to the proxy server from any available port.
  • The connection uses https to transfer data, similar to what you would use for internet banking
  • Access is provided through username/passwords that the end user generates
  • You can log activity on your personal proxy server

I am really interested to see how the web filter companies are going to react to this new software. I also think high school students will find a personal proxy server easier to setup then most of their peer-2-peer file sharing software or an MMORPG.

Just a little note of warning too, I don’t want anyone getting in trouble. Accessing a proxy server might by against your school district’s Acceptable Use Policy.

December 12, 2006 | | Comments Closed

Accessing Streamed Satellite Channels for PD

My computer has increasingly become my all-in-one media box for music, movies, interactive content and more recently live satellite television. I have enjoyed Jumptv and my new favourite Streamick , although the legality of these web sites seem dubious the easy access to streamed online satellite channels is great, until I get my own Slingbox these web sites will have to do.

Streamick states that their service will always be free and that the service is legal. Here is their explanation:

Streamick.com will remain forever a totally FREE service. All this is perfectly legal. The TV channels which can be found on the website are free video streaming available to anyone on the internet. There are no paid channels, which we can’t show due to copyright issues. Streamick.com doesn’t broadcast or reply any video content (at the moment), all the video streams comes directly from the original broadcasters servers.

You have maybe noticed few “big names” in the channels list. Those TV stations are legal and legit. Most of them (such as ESPN or HBO movie channels for instance) are broadband mirrors of Asian (Chinese or Taiwanese) content providers which have obtained the rights to transmit those TV on the internet. For further information please refer to the original broadcasters websites.

Streamick has an educational section where I have been able to access the Annenberg channel. This has been great tool in helping me to access literacy professional development resources for some peers.

I don’t get any of these satellite channels at home, so if anyone out there is getting these channels, can you tell me if the streams are delayed or is it really a live stream – just curious?

December 11, 2006 | | 2 Comments »

The Collaborator vs The Isolator

I was jotting down a couple of thoughts around different criteria of educators that are collaborators and those that are isolators. It can be a real challenge to move educators towards being collaborators, rather than isolators.

Venn Diagram of Comparison


Click on the Image for a Readable Sized Image

December 8, 2006 | | 10 Comments »

Del.icio.us LinkBacks

LinkBacksI have recently installed a nice bit of javascript from Snap.com that allows preview images of urls in blog postings. A handy tool on its own.

I have also been wondering about how many people have bookmarked different posts in this blog on Del.icio.us, so I added a little image and code on the bottom of each post that will give me its url history. I added a bit of code to the wordpress loop (basically http://del.icio.us/url?url=Permalink) and viola! A click on the link will start me down a new path around social bookmarking connections to a particular posting and the users that saved the bookmark. I really like that Snap allows me to preview the Del.icio.us search without going to del.icio.us.

Compare the Del.icio.us Linkback history of this post to 100+ Web 2.0 Ideas for Educators and you will see what I mean.

December 7, 2006 | | Comments Closed
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