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Greasemonkey: Intermediated Web Browsing...

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Cross Posted at eSchoolNews... Greasemonkey is an extension for the Firefox web browser that lets you add scripts to any webpage to change it's behavior when displayed in your browser. As stated on the Greasemonkey page, you can think of it as being similar to using CSS to control a pages style. User scripts let you control any aspect of a webpage's design or interaction.

For example you could write a script that would insert a link to your local library from any page on Amazon.com. Say you are searching for a book title on Amazon. The search pulls up the page with the Amazon content, but it also places on the page a link for that particular title at your local public library. (There are already a couple of examples of this particular use... I'm going to try to create one that will pull content from our local Multnomah County Library...) For a better explanation of Greasemonkey and what it means to the user experience, take a look at Simon Willison's post, Greasemonkey as a lightweight intermediary.

A few that I have been playing with include...

The New York Times Single Page script. It changes the article link from the New York Times page to point to the Single Page Format, rather than the default multipage view.

The Flickr: Photo Page Enhancer inserts a link to the original size jpg on every photo page, and an easy copy/paste textarea with html code for creation of a thumbnail link.

My favorite is the BoingBoing Butler. It displays the BoingBoing.net page with all the sidebar content stripped away.

These and others can be found at Jeremy Dunck's GreaseMonkey User Scripts Wiki

Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children

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Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children: "As cities are remodeled to match the tastes of people living well, they are struggling to hold on to enough children."

(Via New York Times.)

Today's New York Times has an article that strikes home. It details the decrease in enrollment in Portland schools while at the same time the city thrives with new construction and gentrified neighborhoods. Through a series of demographic and budget issues, Portland will be cutting over 300 teaching positions. While the demographic issues discussed in the article are a contributing factor, the main problem is the level of funding for schools in Oregon stays flat or decreases. In addition a 5 year local operating levy expires this year, and the school board has decided not to ask for an extension at this time. The result is school closures and staffing cuts... Lewis Elementary will have to deal with a cut of roughly one and a quarter teachers...

Hyperlinks in Print...

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if:book: hyperlinks in printifBook discusses David Foster Wallace's cover story about talk radio in the April issue of The Atlantic Monthly. The print version utilizes an interesting approach to footnotes and endnotes by including them along side the text. A screengrab of what this looks like in the print version is available on the if:Book web site. The online version at The Atlantic utilizes traditional hyperlinks. The full article is only available to subscribers, but if you follow the comments in the ifBook post you might find a link to the whole article in PDF...

Yahoo Acquires Flickr...

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FlickrBlog

Holy smokes, SOMEBODY out there is bad at keeping secrets!! Yes! We can finally confirm that Yahoo has made a definitive agreement to acquire Flickr and us, Ludicorp. Smack the tattlers and pop the champagne corks!

Well, guess we'll see if this turn out to be a good thing or a bad thing soon enough... Am wondering how they have hooked it into Yahoo! 360....

Guerilla room reorganization

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Guerilla room reorganization:

"LiveJournaler rinku has some simple but effective advice on how to get your space in order. Make a big pile of stuff that isn't where it belongs, and then tackle it.From that pile, everything that you don't need and will likely never use in the next 4 years or so, throw or give away. This includes valuable things, sentimental objects, cobwebs, and so forth. The bits about putting things where they contextually make sense - pen near paper, a clock where it's visible - may seem obvious, but the huge difference it makes when you grab a pad and need a pen is not.

the best way to organize your room [rinku's LiveJournal]

"

(Via Lifehacker.)

Ok, I'll give this one a try...

Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88

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Movies > Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88" href="http://nytimes.com/2005/03/15/movies/15wexler.html">The New York Times > Movies > Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88

Sy Wexler, an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose educational movies - from "Squeak the Squirrel" to "Teeth Are for Life" - flickered for decades in darkened classrooms around the world, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 88 and lived in Hollywood.

As a member of the Edison Elementary School AV club, I bet I showed a few of Mr. Wexler's films while in elementary school... The AV club was responsible for showing movies in classrooms. Teachers would request a film and then one of the AV Club students would be sent with the film and projector to set up and show the film. It was a great way to get out of class...

Libraries Are Essential...

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Libraries are an essential service, too | csmonitor.comWilliam Ecenbarger writes in The Christian Science Monitor about libraries and their essential place in our society.

But in fact, libraries are essential. Reading is still the most basic survival skill in today's information-driven society. Moreover, the gap between rich and poor is widening, and the libraries level the playing field.

Portland is very fortunate to have the Multnomah County Library as a resource for our families and students. They offer a wide variety of online and face to face services including book groups, story times, access to periodicals and encyclopedias, and homework help.

At Lewis Elementary we have shared with our families resources such as Jon Udell’s Library Lookup Tool. The Lookup Tool is a bookmarklet written in JavaScript code that extracts the ISBN number from the URL on a bookseller's page, then goes to a library catalog (in our case, the Multnomah County Library) and searches by ISBN. If the library owns the book, the record pops up. It allows our staff to point parents to our local library to find copies of popular books that are being shared in class.