Transitioning to edublogs

I had hoped to transition my thinkict domain to my blog on edublogs.org but I am still having trouble doing so. In the meantime, please just head over to http://thinkict.edublogs.org

We Are Visible Dot Com

I learned about an inspiring site today. It helps people who are homeless to use social media. Thus the site name: We Are Visible

A post on the site from someone with the Twitter name of @project5050 really speaks volumes. Kudos to her for posting it. Well said!

It’s time to pull the tape off the mouths of those who truly understand struggle in America, and hand them the microphone of social media.

Last year I helped a colleague at work to develop an online course about homeless education. What do I mean? Well, the course helps orient school district staff to the legal obligation of schools to admit children who are homeless, even if they cannot provide evidence of their residence and especially if they are an unaccompanied youth. This is based on the federal McKinney Vento Act which was created, in part, to meet the needs of kids who can be most at risk of dropping out of school.

So I will share this website with her and perhaps we will add it to the list of course resources.

Teaching a Leadership Course

I’m teaching a course at Plymouth State University called “Leadership in Educational Technology.” I’ve taught the course with a full class once before. This time around, I have to recreate the course because the university switched from Blackboard to Moodle. This is good because I wanted to do a bit of redesigning anyway. This is bad because I can easily obsess about exact placement of text and formatting issues on the screen.

So if you’re in my class, feel free to post here! I’d love to hear from you.

Learning Drupal

Free training app for iPad

I have been experimenting with Drupal, which is a web content management system. Another system commonly used is Joomla. Many of our school districts have converted their websites to a Joomla site. I am not aware of any districts using Drupal yet, but I suspect it’s just a matter of time.

Tonight I watched a few training videos on Drupal setup. I got to the videos through a free app downloaded to my iPad. If you want the same app, just run a search for Drupal in the app store. I am loving the capabilities of Drupal. Now it’s back to learning from the videos…

Edublogs or WordPress Dot Com?

How my blog looks on Edublogs

When I set up an account at Edublogs, I thought I’d get right to it and start blogging again. But yes, I did get sidetracked with other things, so here I am again, still experimenting with blog widgets and settings for my ThinkICT blog on Edublogs.

How my blog looks on WordPress.Com

I guess I haven’t decided yet whether to move my content from its WordPress.com home to this Edublogs home, although I’m fairly sure I will. It looks like Edublogs may have a bit more flexibility than my account at WordPress.com but that seems odd, doesn’t it? Perhaps it’s because I have a pro account at Edublogs and I just have the basic free account at WordPress. I like the themes and plugins available on Edublogs. It looks like there are some variations in what’s available between the two services, as far as customization is concerned.

Does this work?

After more than a year (maybe two) of near silence on my blogs, I decided some major intervention was necessary. Today I’ve been wandering within the blogosphere to see what’s new and what I want to use to make it easier and quicker for me to keep my blogs up to date. Using twitter was just a whole lot easier, so that’s what I’ve been using for awhile. And of course, there’s Facebook, LinkedIn, and so on.

I’d like to make my life simpler. So today I downloaded the “Press This” plugin for WordPress and this is my first post using it. Does this work?

Things Forgotten…

Yes, folks, if you’ve stumbled on my blog you’ve noticed it’s been forgotten by me. I’ve been immersed in other web tools and other projects since I last posted here. I’ve also been teaching grad courses in my spare time and tending to some family things, too. I can’t say I made any new year’s resolutions, but I did decide this blog needs to be refreshed and revived. Stay tuned… perhaps I’ll get back here yet!

Things Forgotten…

Yes, folks, if you’ve stumbled on my blog you’ve noticed it’s been forgotten by me. I’ve been immersed in other web tools and other projects since I last posted here. I’ve also been teaching grad courses in my spare time and tending to some family things, too. I can’t say I made any new year’s resolutions, but I did decide this blog needs to be refreshed and revived. Stay tuned… perhaps I’ll get back here yet!

Ties that Bind

Ties that bind… this phrase comes to mind as I think about the year just passed. We hosted a foreign exchange student from Moldova and today, she just went home. It seems odd that she won’t be sitting on the chair in the living room, laptop on lap, or wandering around the house doing this or that. She became part of the family. Nine months ago we didn’t know her name, didn’t know she existed. Nine months later, I found myself in tears that she was leaving. She’d just become part of our life. I think exchange programs should do this and were meant to do this … help strangers become family. We now have a connection between our family here and her family there that is most likely permanent. We don’t know when we’ll see each other again, but I doubt it will be never. It will most likely be a year, two, or three. And I think of the other exchange students that we got to know at various events over the year. No longer strangers. The world becomes much smaller and all seem like the neighbor next door, despite the fact that thousands of miles separate us. This is as it should be. We should recognize our oneness. One human family. “The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens” (from Baha’i Writings). We’ll see you soon, Cristy!

Let's Choose Peaceful Co-existence

I live in a country where freedom of religion is upheld by our constitution and our culture. Sadly, the same is not so in other places right now. The following recent news article from an Iranian source reminded me of this today. You can read about the ongoing and escalating persecutions of the Baha’is in Iran here and here. If you are reading this, I encourage you to contact your Congressional representatives (or if you live in another country, your corresponding governmental leaders) to ask them to tell the Iranian government to STOP this madness. This is ignorance, fear, and hatred at work. Our world needs peaceful coexistence for people of all faiths, not more hatred and destruction.

Here’s a recent U.S. resolution (H.R.175) about the matter.