Archive for June 11, 2007

Richard | June 30, 2007
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Face Time and Online Networks

While 35 of us attended a regional conference in Washington state, EduBloggerCon became one of the big stories at NECC. The two events had something in common — participants in online networks found added value in face-to-face meetings. PNAIS TechShare participants mostly communicate through a listserv. This week’s conference allowed us to put names to faces, meet old acquaintances, and intensively explore ideas that we had kicked around via email for months. EduBloggerCon participants expressed the same ideas. Bloggers who had spent the previous year reading and commenting on each others’ posts found great value in sitting down with each other for an entire day.

Ad-hoc organization is an essential ingredient in such meet-ups. Participants show up having only loosely framed some essential questions or lined up a couple of internal speakers. Conversations twist and turn among different topics, keeping a high level of vitality and facilitating participation by many. Any participant can take the conversation in a new direction by asking a question, throwing a curveball into the discussion, or driving the data projector for a while.

I and many other members of such affinity networks profess that they have greater value for one’s professional practice than traditional, highly organized conferences. Everyone seems to be doing it. BAISNet is a fine example of a group of education professionals who chat daily by email and then spontaneously organize informal meetings at one member’s school when one topic appears particularly hot. Paul Nelson recently organized a Moodle meet-up at the NWRESD. And those are just the networks that I have found out about first-hand! I look forward to more of this high-value professional networking.

Category: Tech Direction |
Richard | June 28, 2007
2 comments

Moodle By Fire

I tried a different kind of Moodle training today at the PNAIS TechShare conference. Leading a session on Installing and Managing Moodle, I decided to try for a proof of concept activity, much like we did a couple of years ago with K12LTSP. I set up my own Linux server for the first time (Ubuntu, in case you are wondering) and created a local account for each workshop participant. I then led them step by step through installing Moodle from scratch, including downloading it using wget, creating a database using phpMyAdmin, and editing the Moodle config.php file using nano. Nearly everyone made it within 75 minutes! By the end of the session, we had a dozen Moodle sites and a few disgruntled participants! In retrospect, I wonder whether it was the best use of our time, since it turned out that most of the participants run IIS web servers and would have benefited from more work on the admin menu options. However, it certainly proved that Moodle is pretty darn easy to install and configure!

Category: Software/web |
Richard | June 28, 2007
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PNAIS TechShare Is Flying!

We are wrapping up day 2 of the PNAIS TechShare conference just now with a playground session for toying with the software applications we have discussed all day. The conference format has been fantastic, allowing participants to freely ask questions and the discussion to range among a variety of topics of people’s interest. For a blow-by-blow account, check out PNAIStech.org.

One major point of discussion this afternoon was an effort to take the PNAIS Tech Directors online community to the next level. Partly, we planned to increase our participation in our email list to the next level. We also discussed posting regular content to pnaistech.org. I feel that it all starts with the email list. If we can build enough momentum there, then we might be able to carry over to the Drupal site.

In other news, Bill White has got a version of MoodleSpeex running on his 1.8 test site, but he doesn’t quite have the install process packaged in a way that others can use. The Moodle community is getting closer and closer to a working version of Speex for Moodle 1.8! I hope we will make it in time for the start of the school year!

Category: Software/web |
Richard | June 24, 2007
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Frappr Test

This is very nearly what I want. Does anyone have another favorite mapping service that will allow meeting participants to specify their locations on a map?

Category: Software/web |
Richard | June 23, 2007
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From Image::Size to Image::Magick

I recently moved a site from a shared server that had the Perl library Image::Size installed to one that had Image::Magick. Though Magick has more commands, I had trouble finding a relatively simple function: image size. I wanted to get the image dimensions so that I could create a floating div appropriately sized to an image’s dimensions. After many attempts at Googling and experimentation, I finally found the answer in the Get command. I hope you find this tip useful.

use Image::Magick;
$image = Image::Magick->new;
($width, $height) = imgsize("$file");

sub imgsize {
$image->Read(@_[0]);
$height = $image->Get('height');
$width = $image->Get('width');
return ($width,$height);
}

Category: Programming |
Richard | June 23, 2007
2 comments

Splitting iPhoto Library

I finally split my iPhoto library in two. My 13,000 photos had slowed iPhoto to a crawl. Unfortunately, I was duped into buying the pay version of iPhoto Library Manager, which offers the ability to drag-and-drop albums to split a library. Once I read more closely, I discovered that I didn’t really want to copy albums to another library — I wanted to copy all images shot between particular dates! The software wouldn’t do this, and I did it manually instead. I completed the following steps.

  • Quit iPhoto

  • Create a new, empty folder within Home -> Pictures to serve as the new library folder
  • Copy as many of the photo folders (the ones named by date) and all of the supporting library files into the new folder, leaving a copy behind (hold down the Option key when you copy).
  • Launch iPhoto, holding down the Option key. Choose the new Library.
  • Delete all of the images from the earlier years not included in your copy operation, and empty the trash.
  • Relaunch iPhoto with the original library and delete all of the images that you moved.

Now I have two library folders, one with the newest images that loads quickly, and a larger one containing older photos. I hold down the option key when iPhoto launches in order to change libraries. I did this with iPhoto 5.

I would love to hear your iPhoto library management suggestions.

Category: Software/desktop |
Richard | June 20, 2007
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Summer Is Here

Students and teachers are all gone, and we are off to a quick start with our summer projects. The entire list is too long to reproduce here, but we have set an ambitious and optimistic agenda. We won’t shed a tear if we don’t finish some of them. We have a lot to show for just a few days into summer.

  • Two veteran summer interns (Kaitlyn and Eric) on board

  • 46 MacBook and 10 ThinkPad orders placed for incoming ninth graders. The families have been superb with getting their orders in on time, and the ratio of Macs to PCs is a huge swing from the previous class.
  • Faculty/staff workstation transition plans complete
  • Follett Destiny library system installed and running, with a few tweaks left to make
  • The family directory for next year exported from Education Edge and ready for publication
  • Sonicwall VPN concentrator in pilot phase. This works brilliantly as a web front-end to VPN — no more client software to maintain!
  • Admission inquiry web software in pilot
  • Curriculum map data ported to mySQL as proof of concept
  • Dant house data and signal cabling approved and installed. Projectors for Dant and Humanities have arrived, and I found a great Rolls mixer/amp for the classroom installations.
  • Middle School summer reading forums set up for student conversations
  • David H.’s wedding planned and ready to go!

I can’t wait to see what next week will bring!

Category: Tech Direction |
Richard | June 20, 2007
One comment

Replace Carriage Returns in Excel

While migrating some data from Excel to mySQL, I came across the following life-saving tip.

create a second column =SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),”"),CHAR(10),”
“). This will handle both UNIX and Windows carriage return-line feed combinations.
source

Category: Programming |
Richard | June 11, 2007
5 comments

Safari for Windows — why?

I am curious about Apple’s announcement that they will produce a Windows version of Safari. I have had lots of bad experiences with Safari. Most serious Mac users I know have dropped Safari for Firefox. With IE 7 and the superior Windows version of Firefox available to them, why would anyone use Safari on Windows? What does Apple have to gain from giving away a free Windows version of a Mac browser? It must have something to do with the iPhone. If Windows users adopt the iPhone in the way they have the iPod, and developers create Safari-based applications for the iPhone, then Windows Safari users could run the same applications on their desktop computers. Now if only Apple would fix Safari …

Category: Software/desktop |
Richard | June 11, 2007
3 comments

How Are osCommerce and ZenCart Related?

I have deployed osCommerce storefronts three times in the past few years. Now, I have created a ZenCart site for our school auction, because ZenCart has an auction product type, whereas osCommerce does not. In my first experience with ZenCart, I was suprised to find that many parts look exactly like osCommerce. On the whole, ZenCart appears more fully developed: more modules, proper admin authentication, more product types, and so on. Some of the code also appears to use the same conventions. It appears to me that either the code split into two projects at some point, or else someone copied many of the features of one to create the other. Do you know the history of these two projects?

Category: Software/web |
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