Test post from Class

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This is a test. This is only a test... Yesterday I taught my class at Pacific University . It is a survey course of technology use in education. It is for pre-service teachers.

As part of the days activities I introduced them to weblogs. Spent some time explaining what they are and how they work. Visited several education related sites include Will Richardson's Journalism class, and Pam Prichard's classroom.

Then had each of them set up a weblog on Blogger. By the end of the class a few of them were using their Blogger site as a note taking space. Example: Marlie's Blogger Site...

Only wish the free edition of Blogger generated RSS. Next term I'm going to have to talk to the IT folks about installing Movable Type for student use...

Searching My BlogSphere...

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Searching the BlogSphere
Will Richardson points to a post by Jenny about a tool developed by Micah Alpern that allows you to utilize the Google API to create a search form that allows users to search the RSS feeds I subscribe to. It does this by accessing a file called MySubscriptions.opml that is created by NetNewsWire . (For those utilizing Radio as your aggregation tool, it too creates a MySubscriptions.opml file). I have set it up and placed it in my right sidebar.

ASCD San Francisco...

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I had the opportunity over the weekend to meet several folks who I have known from their work on the web, but never had the opportunity to meet. Will Richardson and Pat Delaney are two educators doing exceptional work that utilizes the web as a tool for student writing and the sharing of ideas. Had dinner with them the other night along with Ilene Aginsky of Intel. ....

ASCD Presentation

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Will Richardson has a post about my ASCD presentation up on his site. During the session Will shared some of the work that he and his students are doing. Tonight he and I are going out to dinner with Pat Delaney... Has been great to have a chane to meet them.

Ben HammersleyMaking Feature-Rich, Movable Type RSS Files

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O'Reilly Network: Making Feature-Rich, Movable Type RSS Files [Feb. 28, 2003] The curse of metadata, once you get over the intractable issues of trust and standards and categorization, is that you never know how much to give. For the weblogging community, which produces masses of metadata, mostly without knowing it, this is especially true: we could be giving out so much more for others to play with, and with very little effort.

Ben Hammersley explains how to replace the default Movable Type RSS 1.0 template with a template that takes advantage of the many features of RSS 1.0 and Movable Type. This includes including comments and trackbacks (is that a word?) in your RSS feed.

Spring... Thinking of your desktop differently...

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Recently I have been playing with an application called Spring. Spring is a desktop alternative for OS X. You can create canvas areas with objects that represent people, places, RSS feeds... (hooks to NetNewsWire) just about anything. The developers also have a weblog. Andrew Orlowski of The Register...
Spring gives you a variety of panes, with object inside them that can be grouped. These can tap into the underlying infrastructure - the OS X address book, or AIM, or iTunes, or the Sherlock web services client - thanks to the much underrated power of AppleScript. It's exceedingly well done and Spring offers you a way of organizing your life, and files, as you wish.

The New York Times also has an article about Spring... Turning the Desktop Into a Meeting Place

[by way of... Jon's Radio]

Bridge Testing

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bridges_poster.jpg Yesterday I visited Mike Scott's 3rd grade classroom at Buckman. Mike and his students have been learning about bridges. Yesterday the students tested their bridge designs. Captured one of those tests with my Canon S45.... Click the image to view a short Quicktime clip...