Archive for February, 2006
Do you feel that ‘buzz’?
It’s 8:00am in beautiful, historic, St. Charles Illinois (I’m not sure what specifically is historic about it, but there must be something). It’s quiet right now, but in half an hour this convention center will be buzzing with the sounds of keyboards clacking, mice double clicking and most of all, educators learning.
Today kicks off the first pre-conference day of the IL-TCE conference. I’ll be presenting a full day workshop about getting started in the world of blogging. This is actually going to be my first time on the ‘other side’ of the projector, as a presenter rather than an attendee. Considering how many years I’ve been going to ICE and how much I enjoy it, I can’t help but wonder why I never signed up to present before. Regardless, this will be a rather fun way to kick the conference off. An entire day devoted to blogs, aggregators, RSS and a few surprises here and there.
What’s also amazing is how well the blogging community is represented amongst the keynote and spotlight speakers. David Warlick, Will Richardson, Tim Lauer, Tony Vincent and the team of Susim Munshi and Susan Switzer are all highlighted speakers who are either well known for their blogging endeavors or addressing blogging directly in their presentations. Certainly a timely subject.
Enjoy the conference, more to come!
Regaining what I miss from OSX – Magnification
I miss my Mac. Let me get that out of the way. There are plenty of reasons why I like Windows too, and wouldn’t dream of trying to say that one OS is better than another, but there are certain little features built into OSX that I miss quite a bit. Slowly but surely, I’m figuring out ways to accomplish the same sort of tricks on XP, but it just ain’t as smooth or pretty.
OS X is fantastic when it comes to screen shots. It’s incredibly simple to take a screenshot of the entire screen, your active window, or just an area of the screen that you select. I used that all the time while creating Power Points and handouts. Windows by default only allows you to take screenshots of your active window or the entire screen. I haven’t found a GOOD free way to do the selection part in XP, but I’ve invested a few bucks into a program called Snagit, which does all of that and way more. You can have things saved to the clipboard, or to file in just about any format you could want. It even has its own editor, pefect for adding quick little notes or arrows to screenshots before they wind up in Word, Power Point or an email. It ain’t free, but you definitely get your money’s worth with it.
Right now I’m preparing for a full day hands on blogging session that I’m doing at the ICE conference in Illinois. I love the way David Warlick uses the zoom feature of OSX to zoom in on web addresses that he’s typing in so everybody can see them really clearly. Quick, easy and very very smooth. With two keystrokes, you can zoom in and keep zooming as far as you like. So I did a quick search to see if I could find a way to do that with Windows. Turns out you CAN do it, but it requires a few steps.
Windows includes a program called Magnify. You can probably find it in the Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Accessibility folder. While it doesn’t zoom the entire screen in around the mouse, it creates a zoom window docked to the top of the screen (you can move it around though) that follows your mouse around. Using the options menu, you can choose how much of a zoom there will be. Since there’s no keyboard shortcut for zooming in farther, it’s a little cumbersome. It does work though.
However, you don’t really want to be roaming around menus in the middle of a presentation. So I did a quick search to see how to add a keyboard shortcut in windows to open a program. Once again, it isn’t exactly intuitive, but you CAN do it. Here’s how. The program you want to add a shortcut to has to be on your desktop or in the Start Menu. Yeah, I know that’s weird, but deal with it. Navigate to it and right click on the icon. Choose Properties. From there, you can go to the Shortcut tab and click on the line that says ‘shortcut key’. At this point, you can choose a keyboard shortcut. I chose CTRL-SHIFT- F1 for magnify. Now whenever I hit that key combination, magnify pops right open! Of course, to close it, I still have to right click in the window and go to Exit. As I said, it may not be as slick as OS X, but at least it’ll work.
Ok, next up is Expose! Anyone know how to mimic that on XP?
A highlight from the blogroll: The Tech Savvy Educator
It’s been a little while since I’ve gone through a lot of the feeds in my aggregator, but while doing some reading today one blog really stood out to me. Ben, over at Tech Savvy Educator, does a fantastic job of highlighting some very practical ideas for integrating technology into education, and also demonstrating ways that he has already done so. A few of the things that I learned about from spending about ten minutes on the blog were Tony Fraction’s Pizza Game, Comic Creator, and a fantastic project that he did about Ancient Egypt.
I started this blog entry yesterday, and in between starting it and finishing it, turns out I wasn’t the only one who was noticing just how exceptional this blog is. Turns out he was chosen as RedOrbit‘s site of the day! So congrats to Ben, and if you aren’t familiar with his site yet, check it out. Definitely worth a visit.
Technorati Tags: education, techsavvyed, technology, blog, science, dembo
Why did I have more time to blog when it wasn’t in my job description?
I think the title says it all. It’s a very strange phenomenon. One of my duties at Discovery is to read blogs, be aware of what’s going on in the edublogosphere and yes, to write blogs. And yet, I seem to have less time to do it than ever. Pretty weird.
Last year, I made it a priority to start every day doing my blogging. I’d do a little reading, write a few, and use that as the way I’d get the day rolling. No, it wasn’t part of my job, but it was my own personal professional development.
At Discovery, even though it’s my job to do it, there are so many other things to work on that it seems like Blogs are moving towards the bottom of the priority list! I mean, one reason (among many) that I haven’t had much time for blogging is that I’ve been spending quite a bit of time setting up, training and assisting all the DEN regional managers with their own blogs! Ironic, eh? However, they’ve really started to take off lately and people are posting some fantastic stuff. So that’s definitely a very good thing.
Not only that, but the new DiscoveryEducatorNetwork.com website is almost ready to be launched, which has been taking up a HUGE chunk of my time. But once it’s live, it’ll really be a fantastic resource so I’m pretty darn excited about it.
Then you throw in about a hundred other projects, including one project that might possibly tie directly in to one of the Discovery cable networks! I mean, yeah I work for the company that owns the Discovery Channel, but its one thing to work for the same company, and quite another to have some real direct interaction with one of the TV shows.
Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to turn into a ‘where did all the time go?’ rant, but I just found it incredibly ironic that now that blogging and podcasting are actually part of my job, I seem to have less time to do it than ever! Go figure, eh? I’ve got nothing to complain about though. On the contrary, I’m having the time of my life!
Telemarketing via Skype
I just had a very strange experience. I got a Skype phone call from a name that I didn’t recognize. This isn’t really all that unusual, happens fairly often. However, this call was from someone who was clearly telemarketing. He told me that he was a big fan of the podcast (I have no idea if this is true or not, I should have asked him some questions), but there’s no question that he was a telemarketer, just like the kind that drives you nuts in the evenings.
He was asking if I wanted to demo some new type of eBook software, and I do have to admit that the product itself sounded interesting. However, the manner in which I was contacted did not help his cause at all. Not only was he intruding upon my workplace, but it seemed as though he was implying that the fact that he was using Skype instead of a regular phone number somehow justified his doing so, that it would appeal to me somehow. For some reason, that feels even MORE intrusive than a typical person calling me up and trying to sell me something. To be honest, it just felt really sleezy.
Unfortunately, I imagine that this is going to become more and more typical. I hope I don’t have to remove my chat/skype names from the sidebar of the blog.
High compatibility
Was reading Cigar Aficionado on the plane ride to TCEA today, and came across a fantastic line. Page 43, a review of the Colibri M-Stick lighter. It’s a lighter with a built in USB drive, 128mb. I’m sure airport security would love to take one of those.
"The stick is compatible with Windows ME and Mac 8.2"
i’m assuming that they mean that’s the minimum reqs, but wouldn’t you think that Colibri, the author or the editor would catch that? made me chuckle anyway.