A Way Around

Well, I guess I've done my complaining and whining about my now canceled activity for the coming school year. Now I have to start finding ways around all of the blocks that have been appearing. I need to get some new ideas and ways to do what I planned in some format. Without the blogs and no Publisher, it won't be the same for sure. Ideas are welcome here :)

Blog Issue

Today I write about a little issue that occurred this week. When I was in my school checking out the new computer and seeing what things I needed that were not yet installed, I found some problems. The big thing was the lack of access to my UF class pages and the blockage of the blogs by our school filter. I had some plans for utilizing the blogs this year. When I talked to my principal, he was now concerned that there is a legal issue here, using the "social networking" pages in or for school is potentially illegal. I'd really like to here from some others that are using these in the school setting to see how they are dealing with this issue. I remember reading about some schools that were using the MySpace to communicate with the student body and maintaining a presences there. The other issues are pretty minor really (I don't have Publisher on my computer yet and none of my stuff was backed up from my old computer. There was a simple button to click that was to back up all that was contained on it, but somehow mine wasn't even though I clicked the button and waited a PAINFULLY long time for it to complete it's work. It's fortunate that have no trust in my tech coordinator and backed all of the stuff up myself on my portable hard drive for just such a happening :) ), but losing this blog aspect will greatly hamper my ideas for this year...at least my wiki is still not blocked. Hopefully that will stay too!
If you or someone you know is currently using blogs as part of school, I'd like to hear from you. I'm looking at defending my request and would like to have some positive examples to help with my own vision of their usage. Thanks,
mark

Back Online

Things were nuts last week, leaving me very little time for work online after Tuesday. The annual invitational shoot that I work every year was put on. I had roughly 60 hours in this shoot Wed-Sun. I was non-stop beacuse things were "scaled back"---which meant 3 people instead of the normal 5, but with the same amount of work as usual. It was rough. I write this in the Ed. Tech blog because it really brings up a good point: This online stuff can really make life easier.
Learning about, and using RSS, has made it easy for me to catch up on the news that I missed last week. The online bookmarks would have helped me to keep up a little bit better on my class work, but doing the UF work on dial-up quickly proved to be too time consuming for the few 20 minute breaks that I could work in. I did show others some pages that I had at delicious for some parts customers were looking for. While I'm still not proficient in the creation of web pages and using CSS, my second job is patient and waiting for me to get them a decent web presence, which I'll most likely work on now that classes are over.
The more I learn, the more things I can do, and the more time I can save. Other than starting the last class 3 weeks late, I think it went well. Advancing in the tech realm is helping me in places other than my teaching and really proving to be worthwhile. I hope the classes I have coming up will be as useful!
For now, I'll most likely not be posting here much for the next couple of weeks and will be starting my summer now. I think I'll pretty much take a week off and not do much that I don't want to and enjoy myself.
Good luck in the Ed Tech adventures!!

Home

Well, I'm still struggling with some CSS use, but I think I have a decent home page, using some of the CSS commands. I still have work to do, but this seems to be OK. After this class is over, I'll remove the last link in the table as there is really no reason anyone else will need to see what's there. I'll use what I've learned, but not that page. That brings up the question of methods to remove some of my stuff from the sever. I still don't know how to approach that yet. The latest, but not the last, rendition is located at my Team Viking Science home page. At some point, I imagine that this will have to be housed on my school's server and monitored through their system. If that occurs, I'll pass that new page on down the line.
Now it's time to fight the last of the CSS assignment.

CSS

Today, I found and fought with a CSS template. I found one that I thought really worked well with my intended use as a home page for my students. It was called Eclipse and looked pretty cool. Every time I saved it, the picture at the top disappeared, which was the main reason I chose the template. I've been at this for a long time today, after working on other UF stuff. I'm tired and ready to give up for now. For the first time, since I tried my first blog for UF, I'm really confused and a bit more lost than usual despite my efforts. I'm tired. It's been a long summer full of classes and computer work. For now, I need to move a little: too many hours staring at the screen and trying to find my mistakes and implement CSS into my web pages. Maybe later this evening I'll get a second wind.

Embedding

This week, I placed my first video online. It's not complete(microphone issues), but I wanted to try just to figure out how it worked before I needed to use it. This link was most useful so far. This Embedded HTML Generator is easy and requires just a little knowledge. You'll need to use an FTP program to upload the video to your server, but that's not too bad either.
At some point, I need to complete the video and get that taken care of. Things are winding down in class and it's about time to complete all those last minute things.