Archive for November, 2007
DIY URL Shrinking: We don’t need no stinkin’ TinyURL
I’ve used TinyURL off and on over the years, but my usage of it really started skyrocketing when Twitter came on to the scene. When you’re limited to 140 characters, every single character is incredibly valuable! Shortening a URL down by even just a couple characters can really give you some breathing room.
For those of you that don’t know, TinyURL let’s you plugin in a really long URL and it’ll give you a teeny tiny shortcut to it. For example, if I wanted to tell my parents where to find photos of Aiden, I could tell him to go to http://flickr.com/photos/teach42/tags/aiden/ That’s a pretty long URL though. By using TinyURL, I can shorten that to http://tinyurl.com/2pbnyn It may not be pretty, but it’s MUCH easier to share with someone. And this can be particularly valuable when you’re trying to share a link to something like a Google Map of Wrigley Field:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q
=wrigley+field,+chicago,+il&ie=UTF8&ll=41.94812,-87.65532&spn=0.002055,0
.005879&t=h&z=18&om=1
Trouble is, many schools block TinyURL. Some are worried about people not being able to see what’s behind that URL until they click on it. Others consider it a method to get around filters (although that one has always boggled me a bit). And let’s face it, TinyURL is just so bland… Wouldn’t it be nice of there was a sleeker, shinier, more Edu-friendly way to shorten your URLs?
Well, just in time for the holidays I’ve got a little present for you! The Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker! Wouldn’t you rather have Teach42.com/go as a shortened URL than TinyURL? I know I would!
Some of you may be thinking… “But Steve, isn’t Teach42.com/go a few characters more than TinyURL.com? Well yes, but TinyURL adds 6 more characters to give you a unique URL. Mine will only add on 1 or 2 characters. So for the first 3800 URLs people shrink, it will be as small or smaller than TinyURL. So I think we’re in good shape for a while!
Oh yeah, and the Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker comes in two different flavors. The first flavor is the traditional, quick method. Plug in a URL, it gives you the Teach42 shrunken version of it. The other version has a few safety features for people who are concerned about security. When someone clicks on the URL, it doesn’t take them directly to the destination. Instead, it takes to an intermediary page that gives people a warning and let’s them see what the destination URL is before they decide whether or not to click on it. Same short URL, but a little more edu-friendly for the security conscious among us. Both flavors are full of Teach42 karma though.
I didn’t write the code for this. Full credit for that goes to TopHat Stuff Go! It was very easy to install and not too difficult to tweak to my needs. If you’d prefer to have your own URL shortener, feel free to download the code and install it yourself! Otherwise, go ahead and take advantage of the Teach42 Magic URL Shrinker. It’s there at your disposal. Oh, and for those of you worried about how long it’s going to be available, I’ll make sure that it’s up and active as long as Teach42 is around. And trust me when I say i’m not going anywhere 
Ouch, dissed by Wikipedia
Somebody I know created a page for me on WikiPedia, which I thought was pretty interesting. I suppose I could have gone in there and fleshed it out some more, but it was one of those things i just never got around to.
After seeing a tweet by Darren Drapper regarding his difficulty getting a page created for Marc Prensky, I thought I’d look up the ol’ Dembo entry. Low and behold, it was gone.
I did a bit of research and eventually found a way to search their logs of deleted pages, which also happens to list the reason why my page was nuked.
A non-notable biography / article about a person, group, company, or website that didn’t assert the notability of the subject.
Guess the article didn’t make a good enough case for why they should have an article about me in there.
Ah well, if there’s no article about Warlick, Prensky, or Stager in there, I can at least consider myself in good company 
Self-promotion: Where do you draw the line?
Update: The email which I mention in this post was intended to have its address list BCC’d and hidden. Please bear this in mind when reading, and definitely read through the comments people have left.
I’m a big fan of Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. I think she does a fantastic job of generating conversation and I consider her to be an expert in community building. However, that being said, something she did recently kinda sorta rubbed me the wrong way and brought to my attention an issue that has been on my mind increasingly lately.
We all want our online activities to be successful, and most often ‘success’ is defined by traffic (visitors/reads) and interaction (comments). In order to increase those numbers, it’s not unusual at all for people to do some level of self-promotion, which often includes promoting oneself on other social networks like Facebook or Twitter. In fact, there are several plugins that have been created expressly for this purpose. More and more often, I see posts on Twitter saying “New Blog Post” followed by the title. I’ve toyed with such a plugin myself although I have it turned off at the moment. I posted a quick Twitterpoll about this topic, and the very unofficial results are that most people don’t mind, with the next largest group saying that announcing a post is fine, so long as it’s hand picked and hand written. Auto-posting gets on several people’s nerves, particularly if there are several posts in a row.
Another common way of promoting your blog or website is to leave comments on other people’s blogs (hopefully on related blog entries) with links back to your own site and an invitation to come visit. This is fairly common practice and so long as the post is related to the post they left the comment on, I usually follow these back and will often participate on their blog as well.
Businesses are in the habit of sending out an email blast to bloggers as a form of marketing now, letting them know about new products or changes to existing websites in hopes that bloggers will pick up on the story and do some free advertising for them. With few exceptions, I delete the vast majority of these, unless the email itself was addressed to me personally. If someone takes the time to write me personally, I’ll take the time to follow up.
This leads me to the email I got from Sheryl this morning.
Please come converse with me about the future of reading through my most recent blog post on TechLEARNING. It was inspired by recent conversations on TLN and includes a deep dark confession. I’d love to read your comments as we discuss these important concepts…
If this were a personal email to me, I’d have no problem with it. However, this was sent to 422 people. I’m not sure where she got the list from, but for some reason it feels like it’s crossing a line to me. If she had sent it to 4 or 5 people, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me at all. If the email had been personal to me, it definitely wouldn’t have bothered me. But sending it to 400+ people out of her address book certainly feels like spam in my book. I’m not sure where the line gets drawn, but sending a mass message to a group of people who did not opt-in seems to be pretty close to it.
I’m sure that she feels this post is especially relevant for people, but don’t most authors feel the same way about the majority of their posts? Would you condone everybody sending out a blast to the EdTech community at large whenever they write a blog post? Yikes. Would get messy awfully fast.
I understand why the email was sent. And it’s actually a post that I’m interested in and will probably comment on. However, the way that I learned about it rubs me the wrong way. Sure, it’s an effective way to generate some conversation. After all, would that blog post have 12 comments on it already if the email hadn’t been sent out? Who knows… I’m guessing it would, but it probably would have taken more time to get there. A well written post tends to take care of itself, and this certainly qualifies.
Am I against people promoting themselves? Definitely not. I fully recognize that due to the nature of the blogosphere, you HAVE to do some self-promoting in order to make your mark. That being said, I’m seeing more and more often what I consider to be fairly blunt tactics that turn me off. For example, leaving links on a blog post that is completely unrelated to the post they are commenting on (unless there is no other manner of contact available on the site). Or leaving mass-comments in MySpace that aren’t personal at all, the equivalent of targeted email spam.
I don’t want anyone to think that I’m just launching a volley of stones here. I’ve used Twitter to promote the heck out upcoming webinars that I thought people would be interested in. I can imagine some people getting fairly irritated by that, and if people have I’d want to know. I consider there to be a fine line between such actions taking place in the Inbox vs. taking place on a social networking site. At least there is in my mind.
I’m really curious to hear what you think. Would getting an email like that bother you as well? Why or why not? Also, do any self-promotional tactics get under your skin?
Let me know your thoughts on the matter.
Poll Everywhere: Tap into those mobile phones.
This just may be in my top 5 Web 2.0 tools to date. I ran into these guys at a networking event in Chicago. Since then I’ve used this in a few presentations, but will definitely be using it in many many more.
Poll Everywhere is a site where you can create a basic poll. What makes it so cool is that people can vote on the pool using their cell phone! They provide a number to send text messages to, and then people vote via SMS. The poll can be viewed on the web, or embedded into a Powerpoint. No way to embed it into your own web page yet, but I’m guessing that’ll be coming. Don’t have a cell phone? No worries, they’ve got you covered. You can also vote online via any standard browser.
So why is this so cool? Besides being a great way to get instant feedback, this could be a viable Classroom Response System with a little tweaking. Instead of buying hardware, you can just have the students use the cell phones they’re hiding in their backpacks right now! Slick, eh?
When you signup for Poll Everywhere, you get 100 votes for free. Once you’ve used those up, you can buy more votes for 13-16 cents per vote. This is where I hesitate to say it’s a perfect solution for educators right now. Vote packages can get pricey, and once they’re used up, they’re gone. You don’t want to have to be frugal with the questions you ask your students! So I’m hoping that they figure out some sort of subscription package. Where a school can pay $400 a year for unlimited votes or something like that.
Until then though, I still highly recommend you check this site out. This is the future of response systems in action.
Want to try it out? Click the image below to see a poll I created. Use your cell phone to vote! No cost to you besides typical text messaging costs (usually a nickel if you don’t have a package). The vote will show up magically a few seconds later! You can also vote on the web here.
Geek Toys that’ll give you geekbumps
Simulblogged at TechLearning
I don’t really consider myself cheap, rather I’m just very very choosy. I don’t spend much money on software or subscriptions or gadgets unless I truly feel it’s worth it. When I have a chunk of money to spend, I really take my time, do my research and try to make the most informed decision that I can.
So, with the holiday’s quickly approaching (especially Black Friday), I thought I’d share some of the gizmos, gadgets and things that are giving me geekbumps this holiday season.
For my money, the eStarling Digital Picture Frame is the top of the digital frame mountain. There are cheaper digital picture frames. There are larger digital picture frames. But I have yet to find any other digital picture frame that has built in WiFi, supports pulling in photos via RSS feeds, can have photos emailed to it, and will display text messages. Yes, this is the picture frame that geeks dream of. You upload your photos to Flickr, they magically appear in the frame. Take a photo with your digital camera and via email you can make sure that the photo is in the frame by the time you get home. Once you set it up, no computer connection or SD cards or cables are ever necessary again. Oh yeah, and no subscription fees either. Available in black or white, 7″ or 8″ screens for $199 or $249 respectively. When it comes to features, there quite simply is no better digital picture frame on the market.
What exactly is a Chumby? Wonderful question. It’s sorta like a beanbag, but you wouldn’t want to toss it around. It has a touch screen, speakers, built in Wifi, two USB ports, a squeeze sensor and an accelerometer. It can pull in widgets via Wifi that will do all sorts of things, like show you eBay auctions you may be interested in, display your Flickr photos, tell you what time it is, show you ads off of Craigslist, display the latest blog posts from TechLearning, and all sorts of other things. Plug in your iPod and it’ll play your music for you too. Oh yeah, and it’s completely hackable. Open source software, open source firmware, open source hardware. You want to tweak it, they encourage you to. One person already figured out how to get CoverFlow on it! So what exactly is a Chumby…. Well, to be honest I dunno, but it’s pretty cool. $179 in your choice of colors.
Don’t ya hate breaking out your laptop, firing it up, waiting for it to boot… and then discovering that there’s no wifi in range? Well, that will be a thing of the past with this Wifi detecting T-Shirt! Yes, you heard me right, this T-Shirt will display how strong a Wifi signal is in your vicinity. No signal? No bars! The electronics and battery pack are easily removable for washing (you do NOT want to forget to remove those). Trust me, everybody at the conference will know you’re hardcore when you show up wearing this. And let’s be honest, this could be really useful for tech directors! Great way to see where your wireless network has weak spots. A stocking stuffer at $30.
I just discovered this one recently, and it certainly deserves another mention. The EyeFi Wireless 2GB SD Card is an SD card with built in Wifi. Let me say that again. It’s an SD card with built in Wifi. Just take pictures with the camera, and whenever it’s within range of Wifi (you can check with the T-Shirt above) it’ll send the photos to your location of choice, most likely a folder on your computer or to a photo sharing site like Flickr. No more messy card readers, no more filling up the card before you finally break down and transfer your photos. You just worry about taking pictures, the EyeFi card will get them where you want. Comes in orange and orange, for $99.
Want something for yourself but also want to do something charitable? You can’t go wrong with the OLPC XO Give One Get One program. For $399, you get one of the first OLPC XO’s, but you also donate one to a child in a developing nation. Need something to sweeten the deal? Everyone who participates will get one year of free T-Mobile HotSpot access. That means free Wifi at any Starbucks across the country (hear that Warlick?). It’s one of the more interesting machines of our time, and an incredibly worthy cause. Doesn’t get much better than that.
One of the most interesting gaming phenomenons of the last few years is the tossing away of the joystick in favor of getting your entire body into the game. Between Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii, gaming no longer needs to be a sedentary activity. However, the one that’s get me out of my seat is the upcoming release of Rock Band. In the box you get a guitar/bass, a microphone and a drum kit. Add on another guitar and you’ve got yourself a full Rock Band, ready to kick it! Everyone plays together and you get points based on your accuracy. Don’t have three friends to play with? That’s ok, you can play online as well and hook up with people that way. The set list is incredible, and while you may not actually be playing those instruments, it certainly makes you feel like you are. Oh yeah, and during those long instrumentals during Don’t Fear the Reaper, your microphone can be used as a cowbell! $169 for the game, microphone, guitar and drum kit.
And what do you get for the person who has everything? How about a Flickr Pro account! Or a year’s subscription to Animoto! Or Premium access to Picnik! Or a few thousand Lindens for Second Life! There are so many great sites out there that may be free to try out, but have extra features or functionality available for a few bucks. Most of them are fairly reasonable, and you’re geeky friend/family member will really enjoy having that extra access. Additionally, those subscriptions are what keeps those sorts of sites going. So if you like it, it’s a great way to support it.
So there you go, my top 7 geek toys for the 2007 shopping season. Am I missing something? Another gadget out there giving you geekbumps? Share it with us!
Smart Pen from Live Scribe
This just may be one of the most impressive implementations of technology for education since…. Hrrrm… Well, in a long time.
Via Tim Childers on the Tennessee DEN Blog
The official description is:
The Livescribe smartpen revolutionizes the act of writing by recording and linking audio to what you put on paper. Tap on words or drawings in your notes, and the smartpen replays recorded audio from the time you were writing. Transfer notes to your PC to backup, replay, and share them online.
But that doesn’t do it justice. You should really watch this video to a demo. Essentially it records what you’re listening to and notes what you write and when you write it. So if you click on a line of your notes, you’ll hear what the professor was saying at the time you wrote it. Of course, you can also rewind, fast forward, speed up and slow down.
This would have been a dream device for me when I was a student. I was always sloppy with my notes and would often spend hours trying to figure out why I circled three times “War/zoo analogy”. Seemed important at the time, but when it came time to study, I’d have to put on my Sherlock Holmes hat and try to figure out what the heck it meant. With this, I could double click, rewind a few minutes and just hear it again.
And that’s just the beginning. You can email the notes and audio, record and upload drawings, and much more. It does seem to use special paper, but it says on the website that the notebooks will cost about the same as a standard notebook.
For $200, I think it’s a pretty darn useful piece of tech. Can’t wait to see one in action.
More donations and more thanks…
If 100 people each donated $10, we could make a $1000 contribution to Habitat for Humanity this holiday season. How hard could that be?
It seems like nearly every day I get another email from someone making a donation or thanking me for choosing Habitat to raise money for. I had no idea how many connections I had to Habitat besides the Big One. Many people also shared that they loved how easy it was to make a contribution and that they’d be much more prone to contributing more often if it was always this simple and personal. I have to admit, I love how easy ChipIn makes it, so I wrote a blog post about it on Digital Passports. Nothing fancy, just a few ideas for how people could use it for school fundraisers and collections.
And now, a few more thank you’s. And what a group of people they are! The reason I began this campaign, a major influence on my early blogging, a close friend from BLC and Michigan, and one of my buddies from when you could count the number of EduPodcasters on two hands!
- Beth Kanter – I’ve mentioned Beth a few times before on the blog in recent weeks. She’s the very reason that I began this campaign! Her blog is about how non-profits can make use of social media, but what she’s really an expert on is leading by example. Right now she’s collecting for Creative Commons and you’ll notice that she’s changed her profile images all over social sites to a photo of her wearing her CC T-Shirt. She also has a great wiki for how you can start your own personal fundraising campaign that helped me out tremendously.
- Anne Davis – What’s so special about Nov 3, 2004? That’s the day I first moved to WordPress and marks the oldest blog post I have in my archives. That post happens to be about Anne and her Bloomin’ Bloggers. Anne Davis was a profound influence on me during my early blogging period, and continues to inspire me today. She’s currently working on some research that we’re all anxiously waiting to see the results of. She’s always on my “Must Subscribe List” whenever someone asks me who is worth subscribing too. Can’t thank her enough, for the donation, but also for helping me stake my claim in the blogosphere.
- Jim Wenzloff – Just thinking about what to say about Jim brings a smile to my face. Two things come to mind when I think of him: Cutting edge conferences and dark, seedy bars! He’s an amazing educator, and my favorite thing about his presentations is that people walk away from his sessions thinking, “Wow, that’s something I can actually USE on Monday.” Great ideas rooted firmly on the ground. That’s during the day though. I’ve been out a few times with Jim in several different cities. And someone everywhere we go he knows a tiny little bar, that’s sort of out of the way and yet he knows it as if he were a regular there. If you’re ever in Michigan (or just about anywhere else for that matter), you can’t go wrong asking him for a suggestion.
- Bud Hunt – So long as we’re going Old School, it’s only fitting that I take a moment to thank Bud the Teacher. Bud started blogging right about the same time as I did. In fact, we both started podcasting right about the same time too, pretty much from the very beginning. And we both have a penchant for carcasting! I have to admit though, he certainly hit the peak when he recorded his keynote for the 2006 K12 Online Conference… while commuting. His posts are sometimes amusing, other times profound, and often profoundly amusing
So there’s four more people who have participated in this fundraising campaign, all of whom have had quite an impact on me in the past, and once again with their generosity.
Want to see your name listed? It couldn’t be easier! Just click ChipIn on the widget in the upper left corner and make a donation to Habitat for Humanity. Every donation counts, no contribution is too big or too small. And every contribution will be thanked publicly!
Ever drooled over an SD card?
I never have till now. Introducing the Eye-Fi Wireless 2GB SD Card. An SD card with WiFi? Heck yeah! This is brilliance. Let me lay it out for you step by step.
1) You stick the 2GB card into your digital camera.
2) You take a whole bunch of digital photos.
3) While you find other things to take pictures of, the SD card connects to your network and sends your photos to your computer or the photo sharing site of your choice.
4) Shampoo
What’s missing from that process? Namely getting out the SD card, finding the SD card reader, plugging it in and hoping that your OS finds the card, navigating to the folder that holds your images, copying the images to your computer, and FINALLY uploading your images to your site of choice (mine would be Flickr).
This is perfect for lazy people (like me), wives (nothing personal honey, but I *do* wind up uploading all of our pictures), parents (who just don’t seem to understand why online is so much better than a printout), teachers (who never remember how or where to save their images), kids (who try to jam the camera into the DVD slot) and anyone else that seems to have difficulty with the process.
I’m in love. And it’s pretty darn cheap, only $99 bucks. Considering that it’s a 2gb card with a full WiFi radio and built in antennae and all, I think it’s a darn good deal. Learn more from the EyeFi website, or Paul Stamatiou has a great review of it.
17% to goal!
Despite a big slow down (to be expected I guess), I did still receive a few other donations yesterday. I’m embarrassed to admit how often I check to see if any donations have come in! I know it’s going to take a while, that’s why I set what I think is a very realistic goal of doing this by the end of the year, but still… I was kinda hoping that the pace of the first day would keep up and I’d be done in little over a week! Aaaahhhhh, back to reality.
I do want to take a moment to thank a few more of the superstars who made a contribution. If you don’t see your name, just be patient, trying to spread them out!
- Teryl Magee – Teryl is a STAR in every sense of the word. She has been spotlighted on the DEN website and is the blog chair for the Tennessee leadership council. Her class is currently participating in an online math collaborative along with Martha Thornburgh in Washington. Ordinarily I’d never say something like this, but since she was generous enough to make a donation…. Go Vols! (Now I need to go gargle)
- Amy Vejraska – Amy mentioned in an email that she also volunteers her time to Habitat for Humanity too, so a double heaping helping of thanks goes out to her! She’s a fledgling blogger, and her blog DoUCWhatIC is already generating some conversation. Stop by and leave a comment of your own!
- Matthew Smith – I have no idea how Matthew and I are connected, besides that we follow each other on Twitter and that he was generous enough to contribute to the campaign! After some searching, I found his blog, Bogosity, and was surprised to find it revolved largely around religious themes! I’m a proud card carrying old testament tribe member, but I have to admit his soul searching posts really hit me. Well worth a visit, but don’t plan on just scanning through the posts. You’ll probably be there for a while.
- Charlene Chausis – Charlene is a good friend from my neck of the woods. She’s a STAR and a blogger who writes primarily at Educating Educators. She also happens to be my go-to-expert when it comes to Moodle. If you want to find some really fantastic resources, look no farther than her list of presentations and workshops (check out the diversity there) and the staff development page she keeps up for Stevenson High School.
Major thanks to these four for making a contribution! We aren’t done yet tho, more links coming tomorrow! Will YOUR name be listed there? It’s easy to make that happen! Just click on the “ChipIn” link in the badge in the upper right corner of this blog and make a donation. No amount is too high or too low! Every little bit helps.
Caption Contest
Ok, a chicken and a dragon walk into a bar…
Surely you can think of a better caption than that! Add a comment with your caption of choice for this photo taken from our Halloween party. Best caption will win something off of my desk! Could be an action figure, could be Jolt mints, could be a copy of Inspiration, could be a waterbottle…. who knows!