Blogging | Betchablog

3May/106

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

If there's one thing I hate it's when people assume I'm an idiot and try to rip me off.

So when I got home today I opened the mailbox (yes, the real one!) to find this letter from a company called the Domain Renewal Group. Their letter - which looked very much like an invoice - was addressed to me as the owner of the domain betchablog.com and kindly informed me that this domain was due for renewal soon and that I should pay this as soon as possible. The wording on the letter said that "the domain name registration is due to expire in the next few months"... and that... "Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity."

All of that is true. Betchablog.com IS coming up for renewal, and I DO need to renew it. The problem is that Domain Renewal Group are NOT my domain registrar, and they never have been. I happen to have all of my various domains registered with GoDaddy, and I've never even heard of this other mob.

A closer reading of the letter reveals that all of the statements in their letter are technically correct, but written in such as way as to be misleading and underhanded in their deceptiveness. The letter reads just like a regular renewal notice, but is in fact a transfer and renewal notice. By signing it and sending it back with payment it would authorise them not just to renew the domain, but to take the domain away from the current registrar and move it their overpriced services. How overpriced? Well, I just took a look at GoDaddy's site and it seems the going rate for a new .com domain is USD$10.69. Their price for a domain transfer with 12 months renewal is only USD$6.99. For the same thing, the Domain Renewal Group were about to charge unsuspecting or careless domain owners AUD$45 (about USD$41.50).

The thing is, there are many organisations where the bills are often paid by a different department to the ones that register the domains, that wouldn't even question such an invoice when it arrived. The wording is sneaky enough, and the format looks enough like an invoice, that many people would just pay it without even questioning it. I find this notion of trying to trick people into doing things they don't mean to do is an appalling business practice.

There happened to be a Toronto-based phone number on the form so I rang it using Skype. The guy who answered asked what he could help me with, so I told him that I was very unimpressed with this deceptive and misleading way of doing business. He sounded both surprised that someone would bother to call just to complain, but judging from his tone this was not the first time he'd had a complaint about it. His response was a careless, "Like, whatever", but he incorrectly assumed that there is nothing I can do about it other than complain.

He forgets that we live in an age where everyone is a publisher. He stupidly neglects to consider that the very customer base they are trying to mislead - those domain owners who own blogs and websites - are the exact same people who own their very own "personal printing presses" in the forms of blogs. If you're going to pull this scam-like crap on people, how stupid do you have to be to do it to people who can publicly tell the world about it?

My advice? NEVER do business with the Domain Renewal Group. Tell your friends never to do business with the Domain Renewal Group. And if I did have any domains registered with them I would be immediately transferring them elsewhere.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged as: domain, domaintransfergroup, registrar, renewal 6 Comments

20Mar/1011

The ACEC Conversation Starts Here

In a bizarre and unexpected turn of events, I had a call from the good folk from ACEC a couple of days ago asking if I'd be interested in presenting something at the Friday keynote session. Apparently there was a spot available and someone suggested my name. That was great news for me, since I really wanted to go to ACEC... not only does it sound like it will be an awesome conference, but there are so many people from my online world who will be there that I want to meet up with in person. Naturally, I said yes.

The hard part is that I was told I can talk about whatever I like. That's dangerous enough, but further complicated by the fact that I've been busy lately presenting some stuff for several other conferences and I don't really want to just reuse the same stuff. I realise that I'd be talking to a totally different group of people so it's not the overlap that's the problem, but I'd just rather come up with something specifically for ACEC.

My problem is that I'm such a dilettante and I tend to dabble around in so many different educational ICT-related things, that I have no real idea about what I might focus on. And of course, Friday is the last day of what will doubtless be a pretty full-on conference schedule, so the chances of me saying anything intelligent about anything that hasn't already been talked about by people way smarter and more eloquent that me is pretty slim.

I asked Tony Brandenburg from ACEC what he thought might make a good topic, or what gaps might exist in the program that perhaps hadn't been covered. His view was that although the conference has plenty of great stuff from lots of great people, much of that was from overseas visitors so it would be good to have a bit more of the Australian perspective. "Just give us a brain dump of whatever is on your mind", he said.

So, feeling a little daunted by the idea of it all, but really keen to have the opportunity to add something worthwhile to the ACEC conversation, I'm asking for some suggestions. If you read this blog at all, you know that I rave on about all sorts of stuff here. If you were going to hear someone speak on the last day of the ACEC conference, what sort of things would grab your interest? If you could drop any thoughts you have into the comments below, that would be greatly appreciated. I like the idea of a presentation for ACEC growing out of a conversation that starts here on the blog several weeks prior. To engage in some conversation here, which can then evolve into a presentation there, which can then be followed up with more conversation afterwards, seems to be a much more interesting way to do it.

I'm keen to hear what you've got to say... don't be shy.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Tagged as: acec, acec2010, conference 11 Comments

9Jan/103

A Fascination with Migration Information

Warning! Geek talk ahead. If you aren't into the techie stuff, you may want to skip this post...

A few people asked me about what themes, widgets and plugins I decided to use on the new blog site, so I thought I'd just give a quick rundown of what I'm using, bearing in mind that it's only been a few days and it's almost inevitable I'm likely to continue changing my mind about a few more things. One the whole though, I think I've got the blog running mostly the way I want. For now anyway.

The site is running the latest version of WordPress (currently 2.9.1) and PHP5. It's hosted with GoDaddy using their Hosted WordPress plan running on a Linux server. The domain name www.chrisbetcher.com is managing the actual DNS records for the site, but there are other domain names such as www.betchablog.com and www.betchablog.net that simply forward to it. The benefit of that is that there are several paths to get to the real site. These domain addresses used to point to the old Edublogs page, but I've just redirected them all to the new page.

The RSS feeds for both posts and comments have been created using Feedburner. The FD Feedburner Plugin was used to map all the hardcoded WordPress RSS feed links to the Google-hosted Feedburner feeds. The beauty of this system is that I just need to go to Feedburner and change the real feed URL for the new site and Feedburner remaps all the feeds to their correct location. This means that anyone who subscribed to the old site using Feedburner (which should have been pretty much everyone, since I set it up quite a while ago) will get an uninterrupted flow of RSS feeds from the new site. That was important to me, and one of the things that I was very conscious of getting right in the move to a new server.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've tried to make every decision about the new site in light of providing the best user experience for readers. As well as trying to keep things simple and easy to navigate, I've also tried to choose plugin features that help improve functionality and make it easier to interact with the content.

Here's a list of some the other plugins I'm using and a short rundown of what they do...

Akismet is the industry standard for managing comment spam. It matches blog comments against a massive database of known spammers and pretty accurately targets any comments that look spam-like. I used to moderate all comments, but I expect that Akismet will do a good enough job of looking after spam that I've removed comment moderation to provide a better experience for users.
Blubrry PowerPress is an advanced podcasting tool for WordPress. It allows media files to be added to any post, either as standalone media inclusions or as part of a proper podcast feed. It integrates directly with iTunes and other podcasting libraries, and does a great job of integrating media into a blog. You'll find the occasional Best of Betchablog post with an audio version delivered by this plugin.
Comment Ratings adds the ability of all blog users to rate any blog comment using simple like/dislike buttons. At the end of every comment are little thumbs-up or thumbs-down icons where participants can have their say and vote for what constitutes a good (or bad) comment.
Creative Commons Configurator adds a text block containing the relevant CC information at the end of every post, as well as to the RSS feed. It also adds the necessary machine readable code to the blog headers so that search engines can clearly identify the blog content as being licensed under Creative Commons. I really like this one.
Flickr Widget adds a widget for including an RSS feed of my latest Flickr photos. I'm in two minds about this one, and whether I should actually leave it there or not. It doesn't look all that elegant, and really, does anyone other than me care whether I have my photos on the page or not. I may take it off... I haven't decided yet.
Google XML Sitemap optimises the code for the blog by adding XML sitemap data to make it easier for search engines to find the site content and keep it regularly spidered. Users will never see any obvious evidence of this one, but the site should get picked up in searches much more reliably.
PageLinksTo adds a blog feature I've wanted for a while. I was after a page menu tab on the blog which would take you to my wiki hosted at Wikispaces, but a standard WordPress blog can only have page tabs that point to internal pages. By adding this plugin, the page menu tabs can now point to any URL, including external ones.
Popularity Contest generates the list in the sidebar that ranks the popularity of content, creating a list of the top posts. It uses a definable scoring system to rank content and can take into account the number of page views, number of comments, number of permalinks and trackbacks, etc to determine overall popularity. It also give a ton of useful statistics in the dashboard.
Search Everything modifies the code behind the standard WordPress search tool, making it more accurate and letting me decide what gets searched and what doesn't. It makes the search work much better.
Sociable adds a row of user-definable icons at the end of each post to provide one-click access to social services like Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and so on, as well as some more standard functions like Print, Email and PDF. It helps people share things they enjoyed reading.
Subscribe to Comments adds the ability for a visitor to subscribe to a particular comment feed so they can monitor the activity in any threads they take part in.
Ultimate Google Analytics adds Google Analytics to the site. It tracks it all in the background, so that I can get all sorts of interesting usage statistics without inflicted it on readers. I did include a few basic stats in the main sidebar using Clustmaps, Sitemeter and some basic subscription and Twitter stats, but these are well below the fold and much less intrusive than they were at the last site. I do like looking at the stats and find them quite fascinating. You can't get much more detail than what Analytics offers!
WP Favicon is just a nice simple way to add a custom favicon to a WordPress blog. You'll notice it in front of the URL in the address bar. It also get included in any tabs in the browser, making it easier to identify the site from amongst a series of inactive browser tabs.
WPTouch adds code to a WordPress site that helps it be identified by mobile devices. If a mobile browser is detected trying to access the site, this plugin will deliver a mobile-optimised version of the blog. The site now looks really functional, readable and usable on a mobile device... just try loading the blog in Safari on an iPhone. It looks pretty good I think!
YARPP, or Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, adds a list of related blogposts to the end of each post. It's helpful if you've read something and want to see other stuff I've written that may be related to it. I'm still fine tuning how it arrives at its recommendations, but it's a nice way to encourage people to discover older content that's been buried over time.

Hopefully, this combination will work nicely together to help make it a better overall experience for readers.

Finally, the theme I've chosen is a nice simple one called Librio. It's got a bit of a Mac-ish look to it, and it adds a very obvious search bar and RSS link right at the top of the page. It's possibly a bit plain, but I think it has a very clean appearance. Perhaps I'm just really fussy, but I looked at many, many themes for the new blog and although they all had some nice features, I found it incredibly difficult finding a theme that had everything I liked. Some would have a wrong font (I really don't like serif-based fonts online), or the text was too small, or the spacing of the text in the widgets was too big or too small, or the graphics were too garish, or not garish enough. It was harder than you might expect trying to find a theme that had a relatively wide main text area - so many WP blog themes have a too-narrow column for the main text, making it hard to include graphics the way I like to include them. There were other considerations too, such as how comments were displayed, how colour was used in repeating elemants, and so on.

If I was better at CSS I could just take something close and hack it to suit but I really didn't have the inclination for that at the moment. Maybe something to play with later. For now, this one will do. It errs on the plain side, I know, but it makes it easy to see what's what.

Anyway, that, it for now. I'm sure I haven't finished with it, but it's functional, reasonably sharp looking and it does what I want. The goal was to make it a better user experience, both at the actual website, via the RSS feeds and on mobile, and I think it does that,

OK, geekfest over. We will now resume normal programming...

Image: 'Stereotyping'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23701579@N00/1347052621

PS: Technorati, this is for you. 7PDMG5YASHWK

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tagged as: design, plugins, themes, Wordpress 3 Comments

8Jan/1011

Less is More

Sometimes it's good to stop and take stock. To think about getting rid of some of the clutter that we allow to build up.

You may recall that I was thinking about shifting my blog to a new server and running a self hosted WordPress blog. Well, I had intended to think about it a little before I did anything drastic (I think that's called procrastination), but once you get started on these things it all begins to snowball so you may as well just get on with it. So here we are... the new online home for Betchablog.

If you're reading this in an RSS reader then you probably won't even notice a change (at least I hope not! Moving the old RSS feeds across to a new server was something that always put me off making the move, but I think I worked it out). I used Google Forms to ask for some feedback about the old blog and 41 people took the time to respond with some really useful comments. (That Google Forms is just so darn useful!) It's good to occasionally stop and take stock of some of the things we do - and although I've never really been one for focus groups or being led by the popular vote, it was good to get some feedback from others and see things from their perspective.

The results of the survey were interesting and essentially confirmed some of what I had been thinking myself... the previous site was ok, but it was a bit bland, the sidebars were a bit cluttered and it was confusing to find stuff. Regarding the look of the last site, survey respondents used words like "ugly", "unneccesary", "visual clutter", "text-book-look", "convoluted", "a bit loud" and so on, but the best one of all was "the sidebars represent Web 2.0 gone crazy!"

Somewhat more encouraging were the number of people who remarked that they enjoyed the quality of the writing and the content and confirmed this as the real reason they were interested in the blog in the first place. One commenter said "I come for the content, not all the bells and whistles", and I thought to myself "Good point! I should be blogging for the content and not all the bells and whistles!"

It's funny how we can often do things, not because we particularly need them, but just because we can. Most of the widgets and visual clutter on the old blog was there because... well, because they could be! The great architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe probably said it best with his famous phrase "Less is More". In the same way that music needs rests and pages need whitespace, sometimes the things we do can be more effective by what we don't include. From my own web browsing experience, I know how annoying it can be when you arrive on a site and it takes several minutes just to work out were the actual content is. So that was the first goal for the new site; to simplify it a bit and get rid of some of the stuff that really didn't need to be there.

The second thing that mattered to me was improving the site functionality. The last site had just grown organically, and although it helped me learn a lot about blogs and feeds and user interface issues and writing and layout and so on, I wanted to take some of those lessons and use them in the new blog. I wanted the new blog to provide better functionality for anyone who came to it, with a simple navigation and easy access to features like better search tools, improved RSS feeds, a mobile version of the site, and clearer ways to actually find what's worth reading here.

And thirdly, there is a whole lot of interesting stuff that can be done with WordPress when you have control over the server. Actually, it becomes an exercise in restraint... there are thousands of plugins and widgets and themes and things that can be added to WordPress, but I think the trick is to find those things that focus on improving the user experience and to resist the temptation to add them simply "because I can". I can definitely do more cool stuff on the new server than I could on the old server, but ironically, I've tried to exercise more restraint about what gets included. When I was thinking about moving to my own site I had all these ideas about what I might include, addition features, funky graphics and so on... but really, I think it's better if it's kept simple. It's just so easy to get carried away!

And although it's just a blog, it's actually been a bit of a life lesson.

Anyway, I hope you like the new site. If you have any thoughts on it just drop them in the comments. If you're more of an RSS type and rarely ever visit the actual site, I'd love to know that the feeds are working for you. I plan to write another post soon with a bit of technical info about the sorts of plugins and options I have used, just in case you're interested in that sort of thing.

Image: 'stones'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24532907@N06/3251916229

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tagged as: blog, design, minimalism, UI, Wordpress 11 Comments

4Jan/107

The WordPress Tango

For a few years now, this blog has been an important place for me to do my "thinking out loud", and in the process it's been extremely rewarding to have been able to share some of that public pondering with others. I've learned a great deal from the whole blogging experience and although the frequency of posting has sometimes varied with life's little circumstances, on the whole it's been wonderful to evolve this blog as my own little place in cyberspace.

I have absolutely no intention of changing the role of this blog as a place to think about, share and discuss ideas that interest me. Despite the rise of Twitter and other microblogging services, there's a lot I can't say in 140 characters so I plan to be writing here for quite a while yet.

The theme for this blog has been pretty much the same since I started it here on Edublogs. Almost from day one, I chose the Andreas theme, a WordPress theme designed by the incredible Andreas Viklund because it has a number of design features that are important to me - two sidebars and an "elastic" resizing that stretches the main column to fit any size browser window. It has the usual ability to embed various widgets and feeds, but most blog themes can manage that. And while it has a few customisation options for changing colours and so on, visually it's a pretty basic sort of theme. Some might even say it's a bit boring. I've often thought about changing it, but I'm wary of just swapping themes at random and besides, although Edublogs may offer 100 different themes there's only handful that I actually like.

Although I've said many times that I blog mainly for myself, it's still nice to think that there are readers out there who actually spend time reading this stuff. While it might be fun to just swap themes whenever the mood strikes me, I'm sure it would be a little off-putting for visitors if the site looked different every time they dropped by. For me, providing some visual consistency with the aim of building readership has been more important than simply swapping blog themes for my own amusement when I'm bored, even though I am often tempted to.

Lately though, I am really getting itchy feet to do a site overhaul. There are some really interesting WordPress themes and plugins around at the moment, and I'm feeling the need to take advantage of them. Of course, this may necessitate a move from the legendary Edublogs service to a self hosted WordPress server. That makes it quite an emotional decision, because both James and Sue have been awesome in what they've offered to the global blogging community over the last few years. They have both been personally very helpful to me when I've had requests, needed assistance or I've just been able to hang out with them. The thought of not having my blog running on the Edublogs servers is hard to imagine.

But in the last few months I've had to get a bit of WordPress backend experience. We installed our own WPMU server at school after Edublogs placed restrictions on non-supporter blogs, and to be honest, managing the server has been really quite straightforward. It took a bit of fiddling to get some of the RSS running just the way I wanted, but once it's done it works just fine. I also helped my partner Linda set up her new self hosted blog and was quite stunned at the additional power and options she got from it.

The other thing I did which helped me understand how this stuff works was to install WordPress locally on my MacBook Pro. It's quite straightforward and takes advantage of the super-useful MAMP stack, a neat little bundle of tools that, with one easy click, runs Apache, MySQL and PHP on the machine, effectively turning it from a regular old laptop into a powerful web server capable of delivering server-side applications like WordPress and Moodle. By running MAMP and installing the WordPress code, I now have a fully functioning WordPress server on my laptop that lets me experiment and play with all sorts of themes and plugins from WordPress.org. If you're even only slightly technical, you should find it very easy to do, and extremely worthwhile.

If I do make the move to a self-hosted WordPress installation, the other thing I haven't really worked out is how to handle the subscribers feeds. The blogs currently has nearly 1200 subscribers and I'd rather not just lose them and start again. I do redirect my subscription feeds through Feedburner, so it may be as simple as just telling Feedburner what the new site URL is. Then again, it might not be that simple either. I need to take a closer look at how that stuff works.

Either way, moving from Edublogs to a new server, moving from the current blog design to a new one, are all decisions that I'm still wrangling with. It's easier to just leave things as they are, but perhaps it's time for a change.

So I'd really appreciate your thoughts... assuming I can look after all the technical backend stuff to get the same or more functionality from the blog, but with a nice fresh clean theme, what do you think? Should I make the change? Do you even care? If you could take a moment to do this quick survey I'd really appreciate it.

And thanks for being a reader!

Image: 'Do you Tango? [snag]'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/36613169@N00/378823

Popularity: 5% [?]

Tagged as: betchablog, design, Wordpress 7 Comments

16Dec/098

I am not a prostitute

In the past six days I've received six emails from various companies asking me if I'd please be so kind as to promote their services, talk about their products or otherwise just mention their wares in a blog post. This is not a new thing - I've been getting more and more of these requests over the past 12 months - but the frequency of them has been increasing to the point where it now sometimes averages one a day. In a weird sort of way, I guess this is an indication of some level of "success" in the blogosphere.

But to anyone considering asking me to be a schill for your wares, can I save you all some time? The answer is no. This is a blog, not a brothel.

Look, I'm sure your products and services are fabulous, and I have no doubt that someone, somewhere may be interested in them. I even kind of admire the fact that you "get" the power of new/social media enough to take the initiative of asking regular people like me to spruik the benefits of your products. It's nice that some of you couched it in terms of "take a look at what we do and if you think it's a good thing, perhaps you can tell people about it"... that's at least a respectful way of asking for promotional assistance. But the answer is still no. If I thought that a blogger was writing about something for any reasons other than their own, I would lose all faith in whatever they had to say, never being sure exactly where the line was between opinion and advertising. I'm used to being lied to in the traditional media, but I expect better from new media.

To that online university offering a 3 year degree program... it sounds like an ok idea, but no, I don't want to include a link to your site on my site. Actually, what is it with online universities? - I have had a ton of requests from quite a few of them, all asking me to include a "simple text-based link" to them, many even offering me reasonable cash payments to do so. The answer is still no.

To that multimedia organisation that is "creating a portal into the soul of humanity by championing the selfless acts of others"... thanks for asking, but no.

To the flashcard company that wanted me to review their product on my blog, no, sorry. Actually, after looking at what your product and educational philosophy is all about, it's probably better I don't write a review for you. Any tool that focuses on creating better ways to do rote learning is not something you want me to review, trust me.

To the other flashcard company who also wanted me to write about their "unique free services" in one of my upcoming posts, thanks but no thanks. Again, I'm less than impressed with services that help me learn better at the lowest end of Blooms taxonomy.

To the childrens' book online website that was keen for me to write a review of their product in exchange for a 6 month premium subscription... nope. Thanks for thinking of me, but asking me to blog about your product, and then telling me how much my readers would benefit from it is a less than subtle way of disguising how much you think you might benefit from it. Thanks, but again, no.

And to the commercial blog run by an online school that was interested in me reposting one of their recent posts, because it would "appeal to my readers", thanks for thinking of us all, but no. If the content is compelling enough, people will find it without my help.

Like I said, I appreciate being asked (although you can all stop asking! The answer is still no!) and I suppose it's nice to think that other people might consider this blog to be worthy or influential enough to ask for a bit of free publicity. If this happens to me, I can only imagine how many of these requests are made to other bloggers with some real influence!

The bottom line is that Betchablog is, and will remain, independent. I'm not interested in writing about anything other than what I'm interested in writing about. I don't take money in exchange for opinion. I won't write about anyone's product or service unless I want to do it for my own reasons. I certainly won't put links into my posts that I've been paid to put there. I'm flattered to be asked, but even thinking about doing it makes me feel dirty.

Image: 'Soho Street'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/86821409@N00/3479744130

Popularity: 4% [?]

Tagged as: Blogging, commercial, prostitute 8 Comments

11Dec/090

Vote Early, Vote Often!

Yes, it's that time of year again! The annual Edublog Awards are in full swing, and after a few weeks of people making nominations for various blogs, tweets, wikis and social networks across a really broad range of categories, I'm extremely honoured to have had not one, but two of my online projects - Betchablog and The Virtual Staffroom - mentioned for an "Eddie" this year.

These awards (which are great to be considered for, but hopefully not to be taken too seriously!) aim to highlight and recognise some of the great work taking place in the online educational sphere. Education is certainly one sector that seems to have really embraced the use of blogging as a tool for reflection, sharing, helping others and generally assisting teachers and students to "find their voice". I know that I've personally found the act of blogging to be critical in helping me "think out loud", processing ideas in a public space where they can be exposed to the scrutiny, support and suggestions of others. Having a blog has certainly helped me find my own voice and given me a platform from which I can share easily and freely with the world, whether it's some resource I've found, a tutorial I've made, or just some vague idea that's been floating around in my head looking for a place to be expressed. I blog for myself first and foremost, and the idea that someone else might also find some value in any of it is just the icing on the cake, although it is certainly very tasty icing! I really do value the sense of community that my blog has created for me and although I say that I write just for myself, I must admit that it would be quite a hollow experience without the wonderful support of those who read, comment and engage with me.

To those that nominated Betchablog or The Virtual Staffroom this year, thank you! To those that might consider casting a vote for either of them, thank you to you too. But mostly thank you to everyone who reads (and subscribes) to some of these things I've been doing online over the last few years... you are the ones who make it all worthwhile for me.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged as: awards, betchablog, edublogawards, virtualstaffroom No Comments

5Nov/092

The Value of Thinking Out Loud

At the recent ULearn Conference in Christchurch, New Zealand, I was asked (along with many other educators, I hasten to add!) to be part of the EdTalks series. Naturally, I was thrilled to have been asked and readily agreed, although I must admit that in the flurry of preparation for ULearn I really didn't think about it very much until I got to Christchurch. Sitting in the foyer of the Chistchurch Conference Centre, quite by accident, I bumped into Matt Tippen, one of the brains behind EdTalks, who said "Oh, so you're Chris Betcher. Are you ready to record your talk?" I wasn't, but I did it anyway, and essentially just made it up as I went along.

EdTalks is a project of CORE Education, a leading New Zealand educational consulting and training organisation, and is described on their website as "a growing collection of videos featuring New Zealand and International educators talking about learning. EDtalks is CORE's contribution to your professional learning; a free database of short video interviews with leading educators and thinkers." It's one of those wonderfully simple ideas - use video to capture teachers talking about what they do, then sharing that with other educators on a completely open, accessable website.

Anyway, as I said, I wasn't actually prepared for it, and really hadn't given much thought to what I might talk about. The topic of interactive whiteboards came up, and next thing you know I was recording a piece about them (Curse that book! I'm getting typecast!) While I do think that IWBs have a worthwhile role to play, and I think I've given a fair amount of thought to how teachers might use them sensibly and effectively, I don't know that I really want to become known as "the IWB guy". Anyway, for what it's worth, here's the EdTalk I recorded.

The more I think through the arguments for and against IWB technology, the clearer I think I become about it in my own head. It took me a while to get to this point, but I do believe that IWBs are a worthwhile addition to a classroom. I also don't think that my opinion is simply based on having drunk the Kool-Aid of the whiteboard vendors, who too often promote the technology as an instant panacea. It's not. I think it's taken me a long time to get it clear in my own head just where the value proposition lies for IWBs, and where their true strengths are.

Of course, it's not just IWBs. The same process has applied to so many other area that I've developed a considered opinion about. It's really only been this process of "thinking out loud" in public spaces like my blog, my podcast, or in various other online forums like mailing lists and Nings, that I have managed to hold some of these debates in my own head and come to conclusions that actually make sense to me. There is enormous value in being challenged by others who hold contrary views and who will debate and raise the level of critical thinking so that the end result, at least in my own head, is something that I can feel happy with. You know what they say... if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

It makes me wonder... I know many people who don't/won't take their thinking into a public space and expose it to the scrutiny of others. How do those people decide where they stand on controversial issues if they don't blog or write about or somehow share their thinking with the wider audience?

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged as: core-ed, edtalk, iwb, ulearn, ulearn09 2 Comments

26Oct/096

Getting an Ad-Free Ning

Quite a few teachers at our school are starting to see the advantages that a Ning community can offer. We have been using Nings this year with several classes, and I'm finding them a really good, really easy way to get teachers interacting with technology in ways they might not have done otherwise. Ning provides a visually rich, yet secure, environment for students to collaborate and socialise in, with a range of tools that are both useful and fun to use. Because Ning offers many of the same kinds of tools that Facebook offers - discussion, video, pictures, chat - students find it easy to adapt to. It also provides a few things that Facebook doesn't - blogs, music and page customisation - so it allows teachers to modify the Ning toolsets to meet their individual educational needs.

Although Nings are proving incredibly useful for educators, the Google ads that appear on the right-hand menu are problematic for many educational purposes. As good as the Ning environment is, with the ads in place (and in a new Ning the ads are often for inappropriate things like weight loss, online dating, work from home schemes, etc) Nings become largely unsuitable for school use. While it's possible to pay to remove the ads, the cost and red-tape involved in doing this in a school setting also make it less likely that educators will pursue it as an option.

Realising this, the good folk at Ning very generously offer an ad-free option for k-12 educators. Simply ask to have the ads removed, and they will remove them for you.

The problem is that the instructions for getting the ads removed are not obvious. They require you to write to them and ask for it; a nice personal approach, but not just a matter of clicking a simple checkbox in the same way that Wikispaces offers ad-free wikis for educators. With Ning, you need to know where to direct your request for ad removal, and that information is not all that obvious. If you Google "removing ads from a ning" you will find instructions to do it, but I've found that the instructions can be out-of-date or do not always match what you see on your screen... it can be a little confusing.

I just applied this morning to have a Ning made ad-free, and managed to work my way through the confusion. If it helps anyone else, here's how I did it.

Go to http://help2.ning.com/AskUsAQuestion
Fill in the URL for the Ning you want made ad-free
From the "Select a Topic" dropdown, choose "General Question"
In the "Describe your Question" field, write a short request for your ads to be removed... as an example, this is what I wrote... "Hello, I'd like to request that the above Ning be made ad-free for education. Our school is doing a collaborative project with our sister school in Japan and would like to use the Ning environment for these exchanges. Our students are aged between 13 and 17 and the Ning will be used only for educational purposes. Thanks!"

They say it takes about 3-4 days to get approved.

Thanks Ning-guys! Hope you get a great big serving of Internet karma as reward for your generosity!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tagged as: ad-free, advertising, free, k12, ning, web2.0 6 Comments

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