Category Archives: wwwd

Mostly stuff to do with the classroom & Teaching and learning. Posts that fit with the site’s description: “Teaching, ict, and suchlike”

Posted on
by

This is a quick test of a alternative way to post to my blog.

I tend to blog from my MacBook. I’ve been testing various iOS systems for blogging on the go. I’ve also read a lot about blogging systems that use Dropbox files to produce a post. In the past I’ve experimented with posting to a blog with AppleScript and thought I could knit something simple together. This consists of several parts:

  • a folder on my Dropbox called BlogThis
  • a Folder Action AppleScript on this folder on my always on work mac.
  • The MetaweblogAPI enabled on this blog and supported by AppleScript.

When a file arrives on Dropbox and syncs to my work mac the Folder Action AppleScript posts it to my blog. It uses the first line of the file as a title. If the file is HTML it posts that, if it is markdown it converts it to HTML first.

NOCs

This post was created with [NOCs](http://www.wisd.com/) on my iPhone. Once I’ve finished a local, iPhone, draft NOCs allows me to move it to any Dropbox folder.

Extending

About 6 years show I was testing posting images via the MetaWeblogApi and it should be easy enough to use a Dropbox folder for that, or to script an FTP upload. This would mean I could add an image from my phone to my Dropbox. This would upload to this sit and could be encorporated into a post. Until the I could use Flickr.

I am not sure if anyone is very interested in this sort of thing. If they are I’ll be able to post more details from a desktop. This is about as long a post as I’d like to write on a phone.

Not quite perfect yet, I had to edit the img tag here. More fun to be had.

Update: it was like magic watching my home mac when posting this from my phone, growl told me that a file had been addd to my dropbox and almost immediately that a file had ben moved (by the work mac).

Posted on
by

Education Secretary Michael Russell has appointed the Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Muffy Calder to convene an ICT Excellence Group to consider the future development of the schools’ intranet ‘Glow’.

As previously indicated, the new ICT excellence group will draw on the experience and expertise of end-users, and educational technology experts to scope the long-term user-centred future of Glow.

from: Engage for Education » Archive » Glow – Schools IT Excellence Group set up (update 6 Jul 2021 link broken: archive.org)

The list of members  (archive.org) was posted yesterday. There are some great choices, personally the inclusion of Charlie Love give me great hope for the technology behind glow being flexible and adaptive.

I was a wee bit disappointed that mainstream primary education was not represented. I’ve also noticed, from the twitters a few other omissions.

@fredcoyle:

ICT Excellence Group – Am I the only one really disappointed in lack of Primary on this group?? We were pioneers surely ??

@atstewart:

ICT Excellence Group – Who on this group has a thorough insight into additional support needs and the role of ICT in support?

@Carolgolf

Very blinkered. There is more to ICT than Glow. Too many are excluded from Glow. FE, as usual, not represented.

@SusanMcAuley

ICT has massive positive effect on ASN pupils but their needs are different great to see teachers on panel can we ASN as well?

@atstewart

Make up and balance seems wrong somehow. No problem with those on group but it needs more balance, spread & depth

Of all the folk on the list I know, or have read/listened too, I would not want any to be omitted but the list could certainly do with some additions.

Posted on
by

Some posts that have stuck in my mind recently.

Posted on
by

Blogging Au Plein Air,  after Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
Attribution License

Glew is becoming more interesting everyday. The MetaWeblogAPI is now working. This is a big deal. The MetaWebLogAPI is the code that allows you to post to a blog through a variety of software rather than through the web interface. I am writing this post on my iPad using the blogpress app. This will publish this post via the MetaWeblogAPI. I usually use textmate on my mac to write blog posts. It uses the MetaWeblogAPI too. 
Recently I’ve been asking primary pupils about how many of them own an iPod touch, often in the upper primary class it is the majority of the class.
Glow blogs never managed to have this feature enabled. A great pity. The potential for pupils blogging on the hoof is a great one. Imagine a school trip. The teacher has an iPhone, this is set to be a hotspot. Pupils are posting pictures and text while they are on the trip. iPod equipped pupils could be updating their eportfolios by grabbing photos of their artwork as it is produced. Glew blogs can now also be public on the Internet, so you can see my first Mobile test made with BlogPress on my iPhone and a Blogsy test made from an iPad.  – Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Posted on
by

A controversial ban preventing a nine-year-old girl from photographing her school meals has been lifted following a storm of protest on the internet.

Martha Payne, from Argyll, has now recorded more than three million hits on her NeverSeconds blog.

from: BBC News – NeverSeconds blogger Martha Payne school dinner photo ban lifted

Martha’s Goodbye post has 1940comments after one day! and

£41,132.50 > raised of £7,000.00

from: Martha Payne is fundraising for Mary’s Meals which show that any publicity can be a good thing.

Martha’s dad added this:

Martha’s school have been brilliant and supportive from the beginning and I’d like to thank them all. I contacted Argyll and Bute Council when Martha told me what happened at school today and they told me it was their decision to ban Martha’s photography.

Obviously lots of interesting things to ponder. I am mostly thinking about the value or real tasks, pupil choice, audience and purpose.

Posted on
by

Like quite a few folk I’ve been kicking the tyres of Glew a wee bit over the last week or so. One very interesting feature is a plugin that Charlie has preinstalled into the wordPress blogs, FeedWordPress:

FeedWordPress is an Atom/RSS aggregator for WordPress. It syndicates content from feeds that you choose into your WordPress weblog; the content it syndicates appears as a series of special posts in your WordPress posts database. If you syndicate several feeds then you can use WordPress’s posts database and templating engine as the back-end of an aggregation (“planet”) website.

I’ve given this a quick test here: johnj (glew login needed, get one while it is hot!) where I’ve aggregated two of my blogs, my flickr stream and audioboo. The only one that doesn’t work too well is the audioboo one as the plugin does not grab the attachment.

I’ve only given this a quick test, but it seems to work very well. There are lots of options for adding categories or tags to posts from a particular feed too.

This could be used for either collecting things from a variety of publishing platforms to one blog, or perhaps be the holy grail for teacher struggling with the current glows e-portfolios: collecting all of your pupils post in the one place. The current glow solution of this is to have a list of links in glow that the teachers can click on to visit blog. I’ve told as many folk as I can that it is better to save a folder of bookmarks in their browser and open in tabs but this is not ideal.

FeedWordPress will handle a lot of blogs over in DS106 is pulling in over 500 blogs and spitting them out in lots of interesting ways (for example Dynamic OPML Files Generated from FeedWordPress).

For those interested in e-portfolios Glew also has the Mahara ePortfolio System, open source e-portfolio and social networking software built in.

Posted on
by

I have asked the Scottish Government’s new Chief Scientific Adviser, Prof Muffy Calder, to convene an ICT Education Excellence group. The excellence group will call on the expertise of education technology specialists and end users.

The excellence group will have the immediate task of scoping the long-term user-centred future of Glow. Their challenge will be to imagine a future for the service that provides a seamless user experience and connectivity on the one hand and an open pluralist range of tools and applications on the other.

The group will draw on the contributions made to date and further explore community generated contributions like Glew.

Michael Russell Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning from: Engage for Education » Archive » Glow’s Next Phase

My selection from todays announcement.

Two phrases standout for me: expertise of education technology specialists, I hope these specialists include Andrew Brown and Ollie Bray if they are interested ( in light of Glow plight – pride of Scotland or ‘zombie’ network?). and explore community generated contributions like Glew, so they should add Charlie Love into the mix.

Who would you have in a an ICT Education Excellence group? Answers in a comment.

Interesting reading about glow of late includes the above:

  1. Glow plight – pride of Scotland or ‘zombie’ network?
  2. Learning Environment – Components #EduScotICT #Glow2 #Glew
  3. Computing teacher bids to provide Glow’s successor – News – TES

    4. and listening:

  4. Radio #EDUtalk 6-6-12: Charlie Love on Glew, Glow and Google

In light of number 2, and a whole series of serious posts, I’d have Jim Buchan too.

Update Sat 9 June, post Google Apps for Education Summit:Ollie’s keynote confirmed his place in my dream-team. Today reinforced my feeling that we can get a great team for this form inside Scottish schools, fulfilling Jaye’s wish for free-thinkers and mavericks Adding pupils and parents too. Any of the folk I heard speak today fit and two I didn’t: Ian Stuart has a long standing involvement in deep educational change including technology and Fearghal Kelly is a deep thinker in all aspects of education.

The hard job for the Cabinet Secretary will be making a choice from such a rich set of folk.

Posted on
by

Ifttt Audioboo Dropbox

Just discoverd a nice IFTTT Recipe: ifttt / Recuperating the mp3 files from an audioboo RSS feed, This recipe will collect the mp3 files of an audioboo RSS feed and put them into a dropbox folder, it allows you to name the folder from item on the feed. I set it up for the boos tagged edutalk that we gather and post to EDUtalk. I’ve now got a local backup mechanisim.

Cleaver stuff, I wish, and have feature requested, that IFTTT could get enclosures from RSS feeds, but this is a great workaround for backing up audioboos.

dropbox of boos

I am also wondering how this could be combined with Wappwolf.