8 June 2009

Sharing is Caring


Back in April I mentioned that I started a feed of my Shared Items in Google Reader for anyone who’s interested in reading the same stuff I am on psychology, special education, technology, etc.  Today I’d like to let you all know that after multiple failed attempts, I think I’ve finally found a use for social bookmarking site Delicious that suits me: I’ve taken all the sites I’ve bookmarked for myself pertaining to special ed, assistive technology, and school psychology and uploaded them to my own Delicious account.

Please feel free to either subscribe to my Delicious RSS feed or just bookmark my page; have a look at the tag list on the right-hand side of the screen for categories that may interest you (e.g., Organization, Reading, Math, ADHD, etc.).  I hope you and your colleagues can find something useful there, for yourselves or your students.

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4 March 2009

Portfolios & Digital Identity


Some time in late fall or early winter, I got the bright idea to re-vamp my professional portfolio.  Little did I know at the time what kind of a rabbit hole I’d be going down, but now that I’ve (more or less) come out the other side, I wanted to blog my thought process (as well as the design/implementation process) in order to:

  1. present my thoughts to you for pushback, tweaking, challenge, & discussion
  2. provide a model to anyone who is considering making the leap to an online portfolio (including all the undergrad education majors and graduate students who’ll be finishing their degrees in two months and on the job hunt)

I’m planning on covering a number of facets of this process over the course of four or five blog posts in March, so I hope you’ll follow and contribute your insights to my experiences.  As I’ve learned is so often the case with all things “ed tech”, the technology isn’t much without a supporting philosophy.  I’ll expound on that more over the course of the month, but whether you’re putting together your first online portfolio, or, like me, have one but are in the mood to try something new, I hope you’ll join in the conversation.

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18 December 2008

My Wikis: Let Me Show You Them


In case you haven’t noticed (or subscribe via RSS), the “Pages” part of my blog layout that was absent from my last theme is now back, located in the upper right hand side. I’ve updated the “My Wikis” page, and I think it could be a useful resource for folks who want to dip their toes in the wiki-water, but might be overwhelmed by the enormous list of examples over at Wikispaces.

If any of your colleagues are considering wikis as part of an upcoming project, please feel free to direct them to my little annotated wikiography. Although the wikis there deal primarily with English literature, the ideas and examples can certainly be applied to other disciplines.

Hope you find this to be a useful resource.

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7 July 2008

Twitter’s Identi.ca Crisis


I’ve been actively involved on Twitter for almost a year now, and I have a lot to thank it for.  I’ve been introduced to some fantastic folks via Twitter, some of whom have even made guest appearances in my classes.  I’ve developed a PLN around Twitter that has heavily informed not only how I use technology in my teaching, but my entire mindset regarding education irrespective of technology.  I talk every day with smart, funny people who care a great deal about kids, learning, and teaching.

So why might I jump ship?

Identi.ca is the new microblogging kid on the block, and at first glance, it not only seems similar to Twitter, Pownce, Plurk, etc., it actually seems like it has less to offer.  No replies buttons or tabs, no search bar, just a steady stream of messages and the ability to ‘subscribe’ to one another.

What entices me about Identi.ca is the fact that it’s open source.  While Twitter has been having trouble staying on its feet lately (it has been better of late, to be fair), I wonder how long it would take for Identi.ca users with some technical knowledge to diagnose and attack the underlying problems.  Seems like a good thing to have “more hands on deck.”  There’s more to be said about it, but Mike Bogle covered it in pretty good detail in his post and follow-up comment here.  With add-ons and other contributions from the Identi.ca community, I’m seeing the potential for Identi.ca to play Firefox to Twitter’s IE – highly customizable and community-based.

I also like Identi.ca’s commitment to the OpenMicroBlogging protocol.  Essentially, conversations could take place across services, so there’d be no need for a Twitter account, Plurk account, etc.  One protocol to rule them all, so to speak.  There is already a plethora of services for cross-posting to multiple services, but nothing to aggregate responses and facilitate discussion.

To me, the discussions and exchanges of ideas that take place on Twitter are by far its most important factor, and why I won’t be deleting my Twitter account anytime soon.  Identi.ca may evolve into something great, and I’ll definitely stick with it, unlike a lot of other microblogging services.  Without the people who make up my network, however, it won’t be of nearly as much value as Twitter, broken down and everything.  Ultimately, it’s the people, not the tools, that give the network its value.

In the meantime, I encourage folks to try out Identi.ca and see if it suits you.  I’m @damian613 on both Identi.ca and Twitter; feel free to subscribe, follow, or just read.

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3 May 2008

Party Like It’s 1989 – Turn Your Computer into a Fax Machine!


Although this probably sounds about as appealing to most of us as turning our cars into horse-drawn carriages, the reality of business communication today is that the fax is alive and well. Until the rest of the business world catches up with email, scanned documents, digital signatures, and the like, you’ll likely find yourself faxing forms to a health insurance provider, government agency, or some similar organization at least a few times this year. I refuse to purchase a machine that I would use so infrequently, but getting to Staples to send faxes is inconvenient for me (and not cheap, either). A little digging around on the web has turned up the tools necessary to meet most people’s basic faxing needs (for free, of course).

File-hosting site Drop.io just added a “fax this” option – you can send any DOC or PDF file you store there directly to a fax machine (sorry, no ODF support yet). It’s similar to the service that FaxZero provides, but Drop.io’s restrictions are much more lax: 20 page per fax limit w/no stated daily limit on faxes sent, as opposed to FaxZero’s 3 page fax max, twice per day (with an ad on the cover page, too). There is a process by which you can receive incoming faxes to your Drop.io account, too, but the process is a little more involved (but still free).

Whenever I have to email important documents (e.g., my resume), I always prefer to send a PDF (no real justification; it just feels right). CutePDF offers a free utility that installs itself as a printer option. Just hit “print” from your document, spreadsheet, web page, etc., and select “CutePDF” from the dropdown printer menu. Your document will “print” to a PDF file that you can now send to Drop.io to be faxed (of course, if you were using OpenOffice you could just hit “Print to PDF” and not even need CutePDF in the first place).

My recent purchase of a scanner (finally, I know), along with these free utilities, has significantly reduced, if not eliminated, the odds of me having to send another costly fax from my local Staples’ dodgy fax machine ever again. It’s the small victories in life that make it worth living.

Next time, we’ll explore jailbreaking your iPhone to use as a corded rotary landline.

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