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A few weeks ago I was asked by the Modern Languages department to come up with some options for creating a departmental website to benefit instruction. I met with the department head and then later with ML teachers to sketch out an idea of what they were looking for. I then went to work on what I understood was needed, presenting my creation to them at their next departmental meeting. And... they hated it. Well, hate might be too strong a word, but they saw major problems with my original designs.

I'd assumed that the department would want separate sites for each language (French, Mandarin, Japanese & Spanish) as well as for each section (Middle School & High School), as most subjects,  I assumed,  would want. But what they were asking for was a  "web-architecture" that mixed the grade levels within each individual language. 

Additionally, they needed not only a "public" site -- for students, parents and the general public to access -- but also a "private" area, part of the site restricted to language teachers only. Here they could communicate with their colleagues to post notes, access meeting agendas/minutes, and collaborate.

So I had to go back to the drawing board (literally -- web sites are often best planned by sketching-out the individual pages with pencil and paper). What I came up with this time might get closer to satisfying their requirements. But I'm sure there will be more tweaks needed -- and that's part of the challenge as we try to adapt helpful digital tools to our analog thought-processes.    

Please take a look around the site, and if you think your department might benefit from something similar, let me know. Notice that currently only the "Spanish" portion of the site has been created, and that's not the only rough edge.  The site is very much a work-in-progress, and really, that's how it always should be. 

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During the ETC conference in Borneo last week, tech presenter and fellow Bangkokian Jeff Utecht mentioned something  that I did not know to mention in my last Tech Tip: If you create a Ning for educational purposes, you can request that all advertising be removed from the site. This is common practice with many web-based services, but I had not thought about it regarding Ning.

In order to remove the ads, first create a Ning (for your class, department or club, etc.). Then follow the steps below, which I've borrowed from educator Steve Hargodon's blog:

1. Please sign in to the Ning "Help Centre" first: http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/ning_login.php.  This will also allow you to see the status of your "ticket" or request.  You can submit a ticket without signing it (use the "skip" link next to the "sign in" link), but you won't be able to track the progress of your request.
   
2. Click the "Contact Us" link at the top of the page.
3. The "Ask Our Team a Question" form then appears. 
4. In the first field (“I have a question about”) select “a network that I have created.” 
5. A new field with a pull down menu will appear (“I specifically want to know”) and you should choose “General Question.” 
6. A window will appear where you need to choose a specific topic. Please choose “other” at the end of the list.
7. You may skip the "I'm Feeling" field if you'd like.  
8. In the "Network URL" field please give the network address of the educational network you are asking Ning to make ad-free.  
9. In the message portion of the ticket, please specifically write that you are requesting an add-free network for education.
10. Click the send button!
11. Join the Ning in Education community to get help, hints, and tips for using Ning in educational settings.
12. Consider thanking Ning by placing a "Ning in Education" badge on your frontpage by following the link on the right side of that network that says "Get a Ning in Education Badge!" You can then add the HTML code into a text box on your network.
13. If your network isn't ad-free within three working days, please check the status of your help request at the same web address under "View Tickets." 
    

I've just completed the steps above for a Ning site I created for Ruamrudee teachers, called: ruamrudeeteachers.ning.com/  




Please sign up and take a look around. Maybe post a thing or two. Tell a neighbor. Let's see if we can build a community of teachers, and then think about how we might do something similar with our students. For more examples of educational Nings, be sure to check out my previous tech tip about Ning.

 "The new US CIO is a Google Apps Kinda Guy"

A tech tale to tell today... Not long ago I received an urgent Skype call from my dad in California telling me that their computer was on it's last legs. He reported that it took forever to boot up, took as long to shut down and was acting generally very sluggish. I noticed our Skype connection wasn't very good either,  so I shouted "Go to Crossloop.com and download it" before I heard his response of "okay..." dissolve into unintelligible garble. And then the line went dead.

What's Crossloop and why would I choose these final words to utter? Well, it's free software that lets you "take control" of another computer, wherever that computer is, as long as it's connected to the Internet. So I thought I'd try to fix their computer remotely in this way.

Reduced to using Skype Chat at this point (the Internet connection was pretty weak) he eventually informed me that he'd been successful in downloading Crossloop. As the software was already installed on my machine, I was able to lookup their Crossloop user name and request permission to "access" their ailing PC. Immediately they noticed my request "pop-up" on their computer, and with relief gave permission for me to take control of or "share" it.

A few seconds after they clicked "share," an image of their computer's desktop popped up on my laptop's screen in Bangkok, as though I was sitting in front of their PC at home in San Diego. They sat in awe (or so I'd like to think) as I moved their mouse all over their screen, clicking their icons and typing commands. They actually did comment later that the whole process seemed like "magic." And to be honest, it still seems a bit like magic to me too!  

After about 30-minutes of trouble-shooting in this way, I was able to get their machine to behave nicely again. The source of the problem was too many applications automatically opening at start-up, and then not turning off completely while the PC shutdown... but that's beside the point: Though you may never have the need (nor the want) to use Crossloop in particular, it's an example of a growing number of free and easy-to-use applications that allow us to communicate, collaborate and solve problems globally. And as an added bonus, these tools can sometimes even make us believe in a little bit of magic. 


 
Currently, Crossloop works only with PCs. Mac and Linux versions are said to be coming soon.

While showing a DVD in class, or watching one at home, have you ever wondered if it might be possible to put those movies and video segments on the hard drive of your computer? Well, many of you probably haven't; you've got plenty of other important things to ponder! But I bet at least a few you have thought about the advantages of doing this: You teachers are called "geeks." And to you, I present HandBrake.

This free download allows you to "rip" DVD/CD content and put it on your hard drive. It then allows you to "compress" that video into a variety of formats, such as .mp4, aka MPEG-4. This popular format is the one that iTunes requires to play video on iPods, iPhones, etc.

As a teacher, there may be some real advantages to ripping your DVDs to a hard drive. Say you had an extensive collection of DVDs and you wanted to make it easier to sort through and carry it. You could rip all of your discs to your laptop or external hard drive, and store them there on that one compact device.  If you wanted to go a step further, you could compress each video to .mp4 and then drag it into iTunes. From there, you could sync it with your video iPod. Then bring your iPod to school, plug it into your school computer or projector and show the video to your class. This is just one idea, and I'm sure you can think of many more.

As you might imagine, there are some legal gray-areas here. For example, no one anywhere is in agreement that it's ok to rip a commercial DVD so that you can watch it on your iPod or computer, or show that content to your students. But most of my sources in the tech world seem to think it's fine; people should have the right to view the content they paid for through whatever medium they choose. (My sources are not DVD producers, movie-production companies, etc.) In any case... I'm just the messenger.

My next project is to rip a bunch of old home movies that a few years ago I converted from Super-8 film to DVD. I'd like to be able to upload these films to my YouTube channel, and enable the sharing of them with family members scattered around the world. HandBrake is the perfect tool for the job.

HandBrake works on both Mac and PC, and here's an article from Wired with more info about it.

Here's the second part of the Google Calendar story that many (any?) of you have been waiting patiently for. If you recall, last week we attached the RIS/RIST Events and RIS/T 8-Day Cycle calendars to our personal calendar. But in order to make these useful, we have to visit our calendar page everyday to actually see the calendars.

Luckily for those of us who don't have the discipline for that, there is another way: We can have our calendar actually email us every morning with a chronological list of our daily events, called the Daily Agenda. It's kind of like having an automated personal assistant who tells us what's happening and when.

To give you an example, here's a screen shot of the email that was waiting for me this morning:

You can't see the line about tonight's HS Valentine's Dance, since it doesn't start until 7pm, and so is located much further down the page. Notice also that the email is a compilation of all of my calendars; you see both the personal events that are only meant for me, such as "Meet w/ Tony, IT Manager" as well as school-wide events like "French Camp," etc.

So, here's how to set-up  your personalized version of the Daily Agenda:


Notice that "SMS" is an option here as well. It's very easy to set up your phone so you get calendar notifications and reminders sent to it from your calendar. I have my calendar send me "reminder" texts to my phone 10 minutes before all meetings. So the next time I tell you "Gee, I forgot about our meeting," (well... maybe I shouldn't have told you this.)

Here's a helpful, 5-slide presentation on the basics of using Google Calendar: http://www.google.com/intl/en/googlecalendar/tour.html

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A short "Holiday Edition" tip for you this week... Lot's of questions in last weeks' workshops about Google Calendar for RIS/T. How does it work? How do I add stuff to it, how do I see what's going on school-wide, how do I use it for my classes?

Well, I can't answer all of those question here, but one easy thing you can do for starters is to add the main RIS /T school calendar to "your" calendar. To do that, click the link below and wait a few moments for a box to pop up that asks "Do you want to add this calendar to your calendar?" Click, "Yeah!"

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=cmlzbS5hYy50aF9iMHI3azRqOGkyOWd1azJwZGx2aGpoZ3Q2OEBncm91cC5jYWxlbmRhci5nb29nbGUuY29t

Here's a link to the same place, but it's 86% shorter!: http://is.gd/izoO (Regular "Tips" readers will definitely know how I did that).

Well that was so easy, let's add another important RIS/T calendar to "our" calendar. This one tells us if it's Day 1, 2,3 or 4, and for ES teachers, whether it's an A or B day:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=cmlzbS5hYy50aF85YTVrcDZ2Nm9jNjZqaDhpYzAzMWIzNTk2b0Bncm91cC5jYWxlbmRhci5nb29nbGUuY29t

or, http://is.gd/izsT (For not-so-frequent "Tips" readers, Here's how I did that.)

Next week, we'll do two more easy steps that will enable our calendar to email us every morning at 5, sending us our daily agenda. Almost as easily, we can set the calendar to text our phones with that information... but let's just take small steps for now.

Have a great long weekend everybody!