Personalizing Firefox

I spent a happy twenty minutes or so this evening fiddling with the header of my Firefox browser using their new persona option. After the automatic download of the latest version of Firefox, 3.6.8, loaded a second tab opened tempting me to personalize the look of my browser. There are a significant number of options available, including film and television, music, nature, and sports.

I quickly narrowed my search to film and tv - Despicable Me minions, Toy Story 3, and Harry Potter - and sports - most notably Pittsburgh Steelers. After applying several personas, I went with the HP book cover for Deathly Hallows. Why? I liked the colors, so many options were dark and made it difficult to locate and use browser options. This option is significantly better than the recent Google personalization because it covers only the browser header as opposed to the entire open window. Additionally, there is no lag time when Firefox opens for use. All and all, I like their persona and will probably change my mind more than once.

Decision Made: MP3

I spent time working with my computers generic sound recording program to create the audio file for overviews. It worked, but saves the file in wav format that were huge and when opened in Angel defaulted to Windows Media Player. Since I need to have files that are dual platform compatible, I bit the bullet and downloaded Audacity to my laptop at home so I could create MP3 files. Here's what I used:

• Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder
• Audacity Downloads
• Audacity for Windows
• LAME MP3 Encoder

The Audacity download was quick and easy and took up very little space on my computer. The LAME MP3 Encoder was a short update, but it took me longer than necessary to connect the two products. If I had only read the directions.

After rehearsing the text, I recorded my spiel three times until I was satisfied with the audio file in it's entirety. It was simple to export as MP3 and I checked it in Quick time and Windows Media Player with success. The upload to Angel was quick and easy and I "announced" the file at noon today. I'm please and plan to move forward with the project. Time will tell if the students find it useful.

Browser humor

A morning message from my computer, is it harbinger of things to come?

Not the best way to start the morning, even my browser is tired. It certainly made me chuckle, I'm not sure my browser ever told me it was embarrassed before.

Maybe I'll finish the laundry and shop before messing with the IT course error that loaded 235 students into the class replacing the registered 52.

Still updating

A final link and spell check within the course yielded few necessary changes. Oddly enough, the spell check was more "productive" since many of the links were still active from late summer. In addition to new and/or updated assignments (spreadsheets and information portals), I was able to add a bit more on maintaining and building an online identity thanks to a new Common Craft video: Protecting Reputations Online in Plain English.

I have to admit, Statler and Waldorf paint a more succinct version of Internet content, but maybe not so educationally appropriate ...

Podcast or audio file

My new Netvibe videos are finished and posted in the content management system. I am definitely pleased to be able to offer students a choice for the assignment. All annoyances aside, I am relieved that Pageflakes hiccupped earlier this week prompting me to expand and adapt the assignment. The same thing happened this summer, the site went down for two days, and I was forced to delay the assignment due date; it put us behind for the entire term. Though the situation was a shining example of the imperfections of technology and allowed me to demonstrate the drop back and punt theory necessary when anything thing breaks during a lesson, a first assignment for an instructional technology class should provide success for the students.

I am still dithering about adding audio overviews for each assignment; something that would highlight important aspects in the rubric as well as provide a more human (though digital) touch to announcements for each project. To that point, I checked out three books on Thursday to do quick research on the topic.

• Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, 2nd ed.
• Podcasting at School
• Student-Powered Podcasting

Each title recommends using Audacity for audio editing and provides resources to upload and create rss feeds for a podcast. There appears to be an intrinsic difference between podcasts and simple audio files. Podcasts, to be podcasts, are posted on the web with rss feeds. Audio files are the backbone of podcasts, but standing alone they remain audio files. For my purposes, the audio entity is only for my students and it does not need to be posted online.

I am going to read and dither a bit more over the weekend before deciding to create the files or drop the idea completely.

Pageflakes & Netvibes

This afternoon I was putting the "finishing touches" on an assignment that requires students to create an information portal for their classroom using Pageflakes Teachers Edition; at least I was until the site went down for over three hours. I thought at first I simply typed in the wrong address to my Delicious account, then I tried using Firefox instead of IE, finally I started getting flashbacks to summer when the site went down for three days right before the due date of the assignment. Naturally, this is the introductory assignment for the course.

Well, fine.

Since I cannot with good conscience require students to use a technology with such a propensity to be unavailable, I determined they needed to have a choice, especially since many of the results for Pageflakes down time mentioned the reliability of Netvibes. I registered for an account this afternoon and duplicated the Pageflakes information portal resources on my Netvibes page.

Now I have two portals.

I did not want to completely abandon the Pageflakes option, I found it simpler to navigate and students last term enjoyed using the site. I did not want to lose the opportunity to provide the more reliable Netvibes for students this term. So ...

My students now have the option to use the 2.0 Internet portal of their choosing. I revised the assignment, added another page of information about the second site, updated the rubric to indicate either would receive full credit, and will create two short video tutorials tomorrow. I am once again ready for the term to begin.

While working between the two sites this evening I noticed a distinct change in Pageflakes Teachers Edition; when you log in to work on your site there is now an advertisement prominently placed on your page.

Well, fine.

Spring Term Countdown

Spring semester begins on Monday, which leaves the remainder of this week for opportunity to make progress on my continuous to-do list. Prior to the holiday break I placed orders for the juvenile collection and did a quick inventory on other collections and supplies. While I still have to create the physical orders, I know what needs to be purchased and will have time this week. Opportunity to teach an online technology course this spring meant a big part in today's list was updating materials in the content management system.

What to do, what to do? Links and syllabus updated, due dates changed, instructional videos uploaded to YouTube and then embedded within assignments (it's simpler than worrying about real player, quick time and windows media player options), and a bit of verbiage "tweaking" took most of the morning. I've been considering using Google Docs Spreadsheets for an Excel assignment, and after lunch I decided to move forward with the change.

The university uses Gmail as the student email provider, so general access to necessary apps is simple. I started my quest with a paper handout, complete with screen shots, but determined a series of short video tutorials would be a better option. Luckily the handouts were easily interpreted as a story board and I was able to produce a set of videos using Camtasia and subsequently post and embed them with the assignment; the most challenging aspect was getting audio in place without interruption (phone, questions, and patrons).

I am considering developing a set of short overview podcasts to introduce each assignment. Since they don't all have to be done prior to the start of the course ...

A new toy

This evening I am waiting for my Christmas toy, a Garmin nüvi® 255W, to finish it's discussion with my computer and download the free map upgrade attached to my registration. I tried yesterday, but after four hours the process stalled (yes really, four hours). I logged in again after work this afternoon and it is telling me there are still three hours left on the download. This better be a seriously fabulous free map upgrade.

I have several presentation's pending this spring, so the navigation will be useful going to the airport and locating hotels and conference centers in-state. It was amusing listening to it "recalculate" several times on the way back from holiday break as I did not go where it thought I should; a few back roads and short cuts made her a bit snarky.

Update: 1/5/10

I've had to restart the map upload process again and am not pleased. Here's hoping third time is indeed the charm, it is currently under one hour of download remaining for the first time.

day late, image short

Ironically, Wordle crashed my computer last evening (the blue screen of death on my new laptop, I was no happy) while attempting to create a new project for the post. I made the above image at lunch this afternoon.

nu jurnL nu toys

Or, in English, new journal new toys.

I picked up the September issue of School Library Journal late this morning while taking a break from web work before lunch. My plan was to take a few minutes to begin perusing the book reviews and place a few juvenile books in a cart for purchase. I didn't get very far; an impromptu visit from the boss took time, but did see their site of the month. Or, in this case, sites of the month. Two of them caught my attention.

transL8it!
"transl8it! (trans-late-it) is simple to use. Just type in your SMS, text, emoticon, smiley, slang or chat room lingo and let transL8it! convert it to plain english -- OR -- type in your phrase in english and convert it to SMS TXT lingo slang!"

Wordle
"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text."

I experimented with Wordle before (see A Picture's Worth) using blog posts to create word art. I included it as an emerging technology option for students to investigate for classroom use in a course this summer, some of the resulting posts were very interesting. Earlier this month I read a blog post that lead me to another interesting visual, 100 Days of Twitter Turned Into Pictures. Now I am wondering how a compilation of Twitter posts would appear as a Wordle.

As for transL8tit, I used it to create this post title.

It works!

The ten-year-old dinosaur running windows 98 with dial-up Internet connection has finally been relegated to bill paying and other internetless functions. My shiny new HP laptop arrived approximately ten days ago and after dithering relentlessly over an ISP, this evening I successfully connected my Verizon DSL account and am surfing at five bars of connectivity.

Just in time to catch-up with the Penguins, I would be a lot happier listening to fabulous Mike Lange announce the games if they could manage to win one against the Caps.

Irony, computer style

Joyous email news on Thursday alerted me my laptop had shipped and would arrive in five to seven days (choose free shipping = longer wait).Yipee! I received my printer and extended warranty package earlier this week ; a bit odd, but not without merit.

This morning I turned on the reliable dinosaur to pay bills and back up a few files (photos, etc.) and discovered my monitor was toast. Just in case, I turned everything off, walked away for an hour, and tried again. Zip, zilch,nada , just an unblinking black screen that appeared to be metaphorically sticking out it's tongue. Fine. Too annoyed to go on an extended shopping spree, I went to the local devil store and located an HP monitor for my budget analysis price of $150.

It's really lovely, a well designed 20 inch flat screen that takes up significantly less room on my desktop than the previous monitor. It set up easily and is compatible with the dinosaur, but as is the case with mixing new with ten year old technology the end result is not perfect. The old computer does not have available settings for the recommended 1600 x 900 display; everything is stretched oddly across the screen. I can live with it and will be able to back up the desktop on CD. In fact, I planned on keeping the desktop anyway.

Now it's time to begin researching a new Internet service provider.

Chewing on Technology for Lunch

Contrary to popular belief, especially considering the last post here was the 16th of February, I have not abandoned my blogging roots. Honest.

I am currently reaping the rewards of an overachiever multitasking; presenting at a local conference last week, preparing to present a poster at ACRL next week, surviving midterms for two classes (one completely online graduate level), finessing a plethora of web page updates, and - let's not forget - actually performing my librarian duties. While updating my vitae this morning, I spent time convincing myself it would all be worth it in the end. Right now it's a hard sell.

I haven't ordered a juvenile book in weeks! I have four journals awaiting my perusal and subsequent selection (aka collection development). On the plus side:

• The recent slow down on ordering allowed invoices to clear. The acquisitions librarian will have an easier time processing my records of spending against her records.
• After the ACRL conference, I'll have a clear picture of remaining budget lines and be able to to allocate remaining funds where they will do the most good.
• I have another presentation to add to my vitae.
• I have another poster session to add to my vitae (a first with ACRL).
• I have another grad class to add to my vitae, along with the lab class.
• I refreshed skills with PowerPoint and Publisher.
• I learned how to use Google sites and created a web site to supplement the online course, using Google sites to teach about Google sites.
• I learned about all sorts of cool new web 2.0 technology at the recent conference including Pageflakes, VoiceThread, Voki, Animoto, Jing, Photofeedd, Photobucket, and Prezi.
• I had technology refreshers in Flickr, Picasa, and TeacherTube.

Now, if only I had time to read a book. I miss my lunchtime children's literature reading hour.

A picture's worth

A post this morning on LJ Insider reminded me that for some time now I have wanted to take a closer look at Wordle: Beautiful Word Clouds. Similar in nature to tag clouds, where the image is generated to illustrate the number of times a term is tagged in a blog or other application, Wordle creates a cloud from all of the words. They say it best:

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

I created two Wordle's. For the first, I entered this blog's URL and naturally played around with font, color, layout, and generally anything they would let me do because I could.



For the second Wordle I used yesterday's post with different results. When I used the persistent URL to the post it generated a picture almost identical to the whole blog. The second time I cut and pasted the text from the post and got this:



My guess is it was generating from the whole feed as opposed to a specific portion. Either way it is an interesting visual and could be an interesting tool for classroom use under controlled circumstance as they have a gallery freely accessible and no filters.

Below is one final image, because I have another ten minutes on my lunch break and wanted to play. This is the image of Wednesday's post with a little more color variation (I used mostly black on the others so it would show on the green blog background).
I found it interesting, or maybe telling is more appropriate, the words ACRL, accepted, conference, and national are very prominent (yes, yes, it works like tag clouds and the more a word is used the bigger it displays ... but still). Over all, it kind of looks like an acorn.

Redding up

If you ever had any doubts I am from Pittsburgh, the title of this post should clarify things greatly as it is a bit of Pittsburghese. I rarely use the term "red up" without remembering a college room mate asking me why I wanted to paint the room red. Sure I use gum bands with regularity, but I refuse to say younz. Trust me.

Today was clean my office and resource center day of piles before vacation. Upon return, I have one week before the students arrive. During that week I need to interview, hire and train a graduate assistant, hire and train at least four student workers, prepare the resource center, and create work schedules for GA's and students. To make those tasks less daunting, today I finished my "before school" technology related to-do list ... and got rid of those piles.

Now I know that the university web master will update the library template so the links are external as opposed to internal. I will then be able to apply said template to library web pages that may live on other servers; the catalog and library faculty web pages, including my course pages, reside in different locations. Everything will look pretty together when the page goes live later this term.

I emailed furiously throughout the late afternoon contacting authors submitting articles for a special issue of a journal I am editing, setting up interviews with graduate assistants, verifying student workers who had applied early for job openings still wanted to work and had federal work study hours, updated the web committee team members, and assured another course facilitator she could look at my stuff to update her information. Everything in my in-box was answered and anyone on my list was checked.

I'll not mention the amount of inter-library gossip I indulged in during the late afternoon. Best to leave some things alone.

With one last glance inside the resource center to assure myself the roll-top laminator was unplugged, I gleefully locked the doors and left the library.

If only I had checked out a book.

Dumb luck? Okay

Yesterday I determined the remaining three days of this week would be sufficient to transfer my course from the old management system platform to the new one (Angel). The plan? I do love a great step-by-step plan. Prepare by saving and exporting existing course information to a zip file and at a later date simply un-zip, copy, and paste my way to completion. To finalize the plan, a cherry on top of my personal sundae, I would have sufficient time to update assignment tutorials for the course and my student workers, prepare updates and tweak the course web page, and create lovely new handouts for class visits.

It would have been great had I only zipped the most recent files.

Still liking that plan? Not so much.

This morning I was resigned to entering text for each assignment when, on a whim, I decided to see if I could ... perhaps ... log in to the old course management system. The system was to be off line beginning July 1st, the first day of our current academic fiscal year. A message on distance learning portal link claimed the old system was gone, anyone wanting to create course materials had to request set up with the new. But, the link was still live. I checked. My login still worked. I waited and waited and waited and waited for the system to load. Viola! Spring 2008's course materials were at my fingertips. I gleefully spent the day copying and pasting and updating and chortling to myself.

As of the end of today's work day, I had only two short pages to create and two items to be transferred by a qualified IT person (a-hem).

Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Some day's dumb luck wins.

I'll take it.

Cruel (cruel) summer

Two weeks from this coming Monday, August 25th to be precise, is the first day of the fall 2008 semester. Like many teachers, I am helplessly looking back over the summer months wondering how it got away from me. My "to do" list is as long now as it was in May. Among other things, my regularly scheduled summer weeding projects of checking activity books, curriculum textbooks, materials kits, and adjusting the shelves on the back half of the juvenile collection, remains untouched. The one thing I had high hopes of completing, the thing I put everything else on the back burner for, is far from done. Yes, I am referring to the library web site -- still screaming "get me content" -- on the inside.

This afternoon the song Cruel Summer by Bananarama kept running through my head. It was one of those things, like the smurf song (la, la, la la la la, la, la la, la laaa), it just refused to go away.

Soooo, here's the video link to YouTube - Cruel Summer, Bananarama. At least I refrained from posting yet another embedded video here.

My summer has been a technology challenge of web site building, learning a new "2.0 content management and information sharing system designed specifically for library's" - LibGuides, and moving my course over to Angel Learning Management System recently adopted by the university. Don't get me wrong, these are great tools for the library and I am thrilled to be using them. But right now I'm 2.0 tired of my computer, hence the sparing posts through the summer months.

I have, with no exaggeration, spent entire eight-hour days that have rolled into weeks, and possibly months, building the new web site from scratch; learning how to use Dreamweaver templates, creating spry widget menus, and managing the web committee with sometimes less tact than I should have displayed. These have been great tools for me to learn and the end will be worthwhile. Progress has been made, but the site will not debut at the beginning of this fall term.

LibGuides is great; you should have seen the line of interested librarians for their booth at ALA. The system is pretty much idiot proof, it's a drop, drag, click environment, with a wonderfully professional end product. Currently, librarians are responsible for content in their liaison area. I took a short break, a breather really, from web site work and in the last several days have created several guides. Yep, it's fun. Check out a listing of libraries, public and academic, using LibGuides. As to Angel, I started that today. It is replacing our previous course management system WebCT / Blackboard. Seems straightforward, time will tell.

On that note, time to chill out with Project Runway ("make it work") and then Shear Genius (my attention is wandering with the same old hair each week). Yesterday was another new episode of Eureka! And the new cast for Dancing with the Stars is to be announced at the end of the month. Rumor has it that a few of the names have been leaked ... gasp!

My keyboard ... it's a sign

I have 28 more author information pages to complete before moving on to the next section of the resource center web page/library template project. It is well within my grasp to finish the entire conversion, create a menu include, and send it to the preview server (something I recently learned I have access to) this week; especially since I am scheduled to work Saturday (sigh). As I trudge along my merry way creating new template pages using keyboard shortcuts, I noted the advance decay of my laptop keyboard ...


and have been thankful for one summer school session during my youth when I learned basic typing and keyboarding skills. Because of this I "know" what key is positioned where and am not soley reliant on the visual. Yes, there are letters missing, worn-off from use.

U, I, O on the top row
H, K, L, on the second row
N and M on the bottom row

The space bar and "mouse" pad both look a bit worse for wear as well. An IT student technician ordered me a replacement keyboard, it was under warranty, and just recently told me it arrived several months ago; no word on why it's living there instead of on my computer. Go figure.

It's just me

A quick perusal of myBloglines account uncovered this post courtesy of Infodoodads, Is that site downforeveryoneorjustme? It is a way to see if a web site problem belongs to the site, or if it is inherent to only your computer. Naturally I had to try it, first with Amazon.

Not quite the response I was expecting, so I tried Blogger.

Great, I was just getting ready to post about this site and Blogger is reported down (it wasn't as this post proves). Now that I am batting a thousand, I decided to try Bloglines since I was successfully reading feeds from my account. Finally ...

All was not lost, it was fun to play with and thanks to Infodoodads I learned what it means to prairie-dog your cube neighbor. Since two of the sites said they were down when I had them open in other windows, I am left to wonder (and wander after lunch).

Paperclip technology

Beyond their traditional use, clipping papers together, I have found paperclips to be versatile, malleable, little tools. In a pinch, a paperclip will hold a skirt or slack hem in place. Unbend it and use the straight end to open a jammed CD drive on a computer. Though a golf tee works better, I have stuck large paperclips into the laminator to over-ride the fail safe and load film. Sure I am careful not to "stick it" anywhere inappropriately, but there are always a couple to be found when you need them.

This afternoon, however, is the first time I have used one on a computer monitor. Shortly after lunch, I had a student inform me a monitor was broken. The computer was on, you could see the green button glowing gleefully on the keyboard, but some genius had pushed the power button with gusto and it was jammed into the monitor casing. She kept telling me, "I don't understand, it's not that hard to turn on the screen." Be that as it may, it was well and truly stuck in the off position. Unwilling to place a help ticket for repair, thus condemning the computer workstation to innumerable days with an out-of-order sign, I tried using my keys. Alas, even the smallest was too big for the job. Not to be thwarted, I grabbed a paperclip off of the desk, unbent it, and used it to successfully free the button.

The students working nearby were oddly surprised (smile) and the potential freshman and her family touring the library and resource center at the time were suitably impressed. This is why I went to grad school, eh?