AKA Riptide Furse

Most of you who read this already know about the Win a Wireless Lab Sweepstakes going on again. I’ve heard a lot of people talking about reminders so they don’t forget. I created this little video (90 seconds) on how you can use Firefox to help you remember to enter every day.

If you don’t need to watch the video can handle minimal instructions try these.

1.  Have the tabs open to the pages you want to open EVERY time you open Firefox or when you click your Home button. In the example I use iGoogle and the Win the Wireless Lab entry page.
2. Go to TOOLS - OPTIONS and click on the Main preference button
3. Click the button labeled Use Current Pages

That’s it. Every time you open Firefox those pages will now open so it will be pretty hard to forget.

National Day of Listening

Jennifer Dorman is such a great resource for websites. I just got this from one of her recent bookmarks.

StoryCorps is declaring November 28 National Day of Listening.

In a nutshell it’s all about listening to other people tell their stories. No matter who you spend the holiday with everyone has a story. Take some time to capture their story before it is lost forever.

I remember growing up that I would spend most of the time in the kitchen with my mom and her sisters. They would tell the best stories about the time they had growing up. I wish they had made recording as easy as it is today. I would have our personal family stories to listen to over and over again. Family members would be able to listen to our own “Running with Scissors” story or “Down the Clothes Chute” story and even “The Never-Ending Stuffing the Turkey” story.

So don’t let those stories get away from you. It is too easy when you think about it. Use your computer or your phone or your mp3 device to get those stories this Thanksgiving and each one annually from now on.

They have Do It Yourself guides along with question generators. There is also a teachers’ toolkit and a library toolkit.

Some tools to use might include:

VoiceThread
Gabcast
Gcast

On my iPhone I have at least 3 different voicerecording apps that were free.

Do you know of any other ways that will make it easy to capture these stories? Let us know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: NPR, learn, participate, listen, share, storycorps, storytelling, recording, podcast

Feed the Pig Order Form

This is an order form to order free instructional materials for teaching tweens about money.

Anyone that knows me knows that I look down on anyone that uses Internet Explorer as a web browser. It’s klunky and slow and the main reason they give is “it came with the machine”. Soooo 20th century. Time to move on and up to a higher intelligence. Firefox alows you to do addons or extensions. This hopefully will show you how wrong you have been in using IE.

Foxmarks - Bookmarks and passwords synchronizer. Foxmarks is your perfect connection between home and work. An bookmark you make one computer instantly is a bookmark on another computer. They recently added password sync too. You make a login on one machine and it is synced so Firefox remembers it on your other machine. Just remember to load it on each machine you use wth Firefox.
http://www.foxmarks.com/

Autocopy - This is hands down the first addon or extension that I add to a new install of Firefox. Think about it. It’s so logical and makes so much common sense. 99% of the time you highlight something you copy it it right? YES so why not have that put to the clipboard automatically. This does it. Just highlight anything and you can paste it anywhere. Truly is one of the MUST HAVES.
http://autocopy.mozdev.org/

Adblock Plus - Are you concerned about kids clicking on ads and ending up someplace they shouldn’t? This blocks most attributes of ads on web pages so they almost never show up.
http://adblockplus.org/en/

Cooliris - Cooliris is well uh er just COOL. Any website that loads their code allows ou to browse or show picutres in a 3d sense. It is an awsome way to show pictures or to just browse and find a pic you want to use.
http://www.cooliris.com/

Tab Mix Plus - Last but again one of the first to install is Tab Mix Plus. This gives you so much conrol over your tabs it is unbelievable. Always want a new link to open in a new tab. You got it. Want a tab to reload every 3 minutes? You got it.Take control of your tabs with tab Mix Plus.
http://tmp.garyr.net/

Do you have a favorite Firefox extension?Let me know in the comments.

Technorati Tags: addons, extensions, firefox, browsers

Are you a brand new teacher? Are you an experienced tacher looking for new resources that the younger teachers alrady might know about. Here is a site that is part of Discovery that works both ways. Give yourself time to explore this web site. Loads and loads help and ideas.

http://www.discoveryeducation.com/survival/survival_tool_kit.cfm#a2

I like to try different tools all of the time. It’s an addiction. Anyway, I thought I would share five tools that you can use to grab a screen shot r capture from a web page to use when you post to your DEN blog.

Kwout (quote)
http://kwout.com

Kwout offers a couple of ways to activate the screen capture process. One is via a Firefox extension and the other, the one I use most often, is by bookmarklet.

Click the bookmarklet and it loads a copy of the web page you were just on. Select the part you want to capture by dragging to highlight the selection. Then click Cut Out and you get sent to the next page. There you get to choose what to do with your capture. You can post to your blog using the embed code or post to several photo sharing sites or email it to your self or others.

Here is a sample from just posting it to your blog.

kwout | Firefox add-on via kwout

Screengrab

http://www.screengrab.org/

Is another Firefox extension. It puts an icon on your status bar at the bottom of your screen. You click this and have the option of copying or saving the complete page, the visible portion of the page or selecting the part of the page you want.

Here is an example of one that I saved and then uploaded to Flickr to use here.

Abduction

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3408

This is a nice neat little Firefox extension. On any page you only have to right click and choose Save Page as Image…
You then get a new window where you can make your selection. Save the image and you can upload it to a photosharing web site for putting it in your blog.

Here is a sample from Abduction.

WebShots
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6168

This is another Firefox extension. You activate this one by going to View-Sidebars-Webshots. It takes a screenshoto of the whole page. You can then save it. Then upload to your favorite photosharing site and use the pics in your blog.

Picnikhttp://www.picnik.com

I saved my personal favorite for last. Picnik is an image editing program that works online. It’s integrated with Flickr so editing images on Flickr is easy. They too have a Friefox extension. When you are on the page you want an image from just right click and select Send Page to Picnik…
Then when you are in Picnik you can crop or resize or use any of the many tools they have there to edit and perfect your image. Then you can send it again to one of the many photo sharing sites an post to your blog.

So what do you think? Give these a try or if you use something different that I should look at please let me know.

Technorati Tags: screencaptures, images, firefox, addons, extensions

Here is a rundown of what we covered in the workshop held in Second Life on Sept. 7, 2008.

The first thing we did was explore the Environment Editor in the Second Life viewer. To get to the editor follow these menus: WORLD -ENVIRONMENT SETTINGS - ENVIRONMENT EDITOR

When editor window pops up you can click Advanced Sky and another window will pop up. At the top is a drop down presets menu currently labeled DEFAULT. In the workshop we just changed the settings to the presets and took pictures to show how it changes what we see.

We then talked about post processing our pictures. There are many photo editors out there now. The 3 that I use the most depending on where I am when I need to edit are Picasa (Windows and Linux), iPhoto (Mac) and Picnik (Online).

With almost every photo or picture I upload to Flickr I do 3-4 basic edits. CROP - EXPOSURE - SHARPEN - and sometimes SATURATION.

Here is a series of pictures so you can see the difference each makes. This is the one photo I remembered to take yesterday and the edits were made with Picasa.

Environment Workshop 3832×2312

Here is the original picture taken within Second Life.

Environment Workshop 3832×2312 cropped 2361×1943.png

In this picture I cropped the picture.

Environment Workshop 3832×2312 cropped 2361×1943 exposure 2361×1943.png

I changed the exposure a bit on this photo making the tree a bit brighter and also changing the blue of the water for the better.

Environment Workshop 3832×2312 cropped 2361×1943 exposure 2361×1943 Sharpen 2361×1943.png

With this picture I sharpened it a bit to bring out the texture of the rocks

Environment Workshop 3832×2312 cropped 2361×1943 exposure 2361×1943 Sharpen 2361×1943 Saturation 2361×1943.png

In this last edit, I changed the saturation. You can notice the difference in burgundy sweater I am wearing.

a quickr pickr post

Koshland Science Museum - Upcoming Event: Free Family Day: Mosquitoes and Larvae and Ticks, Oh My! (06/21/2008)

Date: Saturday, June 21, 2008
Location: Koshland Science Museum

Time: 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM

Cost: Free

Do
you know how to identify insect pests when you see them? What should
you do to help protect yourself and your family from getting West Nile
virus and Lyme disease? Do people get dengue fever and malaria in the
United States? Dr. Jorge Arias and Fairfax County Health Department
staff will be here to give demonstrations and answer your questions.

Dr. Jorge Arias, an expert in vector-borne diseases of the Americas,
currently serves as the Environmental Health Supervisor of the Fairfax
County Health Department. In this role, he is responsible for directing
the Disease-Carrying Insects Program for Fairfax County, Virginia,
which focuses on West Nile virus and Lyme disease. His fascinating
career has spanned medical entomology in Brazil to various infectious
disease positions within the Pan American Health Organization,
including Professor, Advisor and Consultant. Dr. Arias received his
Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees from Whittier College
and his Ph.D. in entomology from the University of California at
Riverside.

This family day event is free to the public. Fairfax County Health
Department staff will be on hand to show visitors live insect specimens
and answer questions.

Contact the Koshland Science Museum at 202-334-1201 or ksm@nas.edu for more information.

Here is a great resource for those that are or are thinking about doing a news show in their school. Here at my school we do a daily live news broadcast that appears throughout the school district on cable TV. We also do a bi-weekly news show that is broadcast out over the internet via Ustream.tv

Check out this resource for new ideas or even just basic introductions.

School Video News - TV Video Production for K-12 Teachers and Administrators via kwout

I gave my first intro to Twitter to my colleagues the other day together with Heather Hurley. I missed some very good advice that I might not have missed if I had a check list. So in a post for “don’t do as I do” here are some tips for new people to Twitter.

• Fill in your bio section. If you are an educator make that clear. Many of us, me included, won’t follow someone if they don’t have something to contribute to my personal learning network (PLN). *Please note that I follow some people outside of education because my PLN expands outside of education.
• Change your settings to see all replies. This is important because if you tweet a question and someone that you don’t follow answers your question, you won’t see it. You want to see all replies in case you don’t follow someone that may reply to your tweets. If you get a tweet from someone that is helpful it is good karma to follow that person in return.
• Follow others! Choose a person in your network and look at who they are following. You can build your network by following those that can be the most use to you. DON’T FOLLOW EVERYONE UNLESS YOU WANT TO AND KNOW WHY YOU ARE DOING IT! Some people follow others to increase heir numbers for marketability. When people reach into the thousands of people they follow very little info is used. they are just working on their numbers. Twitter is about learning and gaining useful info not about noise.
• If Twitter is blocked, consider using one of the Instant Messaging systems to get tweets and also tweet from. Twitter supports the major IM services and also offers extra features using IM. One such things is tracking keywords using IM. You can keep an out for people tha use certain keywords in their tweets. I have added many people to my PLN by tracking the keyword “smartboard” through IM. Unfortunately this doesn’t work for the web site or through applications like twitterrific or Twhirl. AIM yes and Google Talk yes.
• Your icon is your association. People do become familiar with your icon. Make sure you make it representative of yourself. I change my icon quite frequently. That’s me and it says something about me. Others choose a representative picture and stay with that as how they want people to view them. Any way you look at it CHANGE YOUR ICON from the default brown square with circles.

So those are the tips. I’m sure others might want to add to this and I welcome their advice either in the comments or via twitter. In addition, I have uploaded some tiles or backgrounds that you can use for your twitter web page background. Take a look and tell me what you think.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/krossbow/sets/72157604288361250/

Once again we look at making a web browser work better for you and once again that brings us back to the Add-ons of Firefox.

This time I needed a way to keep up with the feeds in my Google Reader. Up to help me with that need is Google Reader Notifier extension. Here’s how to install it.

Another thing you may want to add to Firefox is the Google Toolbar. This extension adds easy access to many of the Google’s services such as search, news and Gmail. There is also a form filler and a “send to” button for easily sending a page link to either Blogger, Gmail or as an SMS message to a cell phone. Make sure you read all of the agreement sections and then take time exploring and experimenting with the different options that this one add-on has to offer.

Ok I was going to focus on creating a howto on installing a different extension for Firefox to go along with the previous one for Del.icio.us but I was going crazy with the all of the ads on the web pages. Adblock Plus is one of the first extensions I install when I do a new installation of Firefox. Therefore I am not used to seeing very many if any at all advertisements on web page. If you follow this tutorial, you might end up the same way too.

If you have a favorite Firefox extension let me know in the comments.

Firefox allows you to add extensions. What these extensions do is make the browser your own. You can pick and choose the extensions or addons you want that make your browsing more pleasurable and more productive. If you have ever said to yourself “why can’t the browser do this?” or “There has GOT to be an easier way!” most likely there is and you just have to find the extension for it.

Here I have made a howto on how to add the Del.icio.us extension to Firefox. It allows you to easily tag web pages for your del.icio.us account.