Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.
* With legal barriers, we advocate for licensing of educational materials under interoperable terms, such as those provided by Creative Commons licenses, that allow unhampered modification, remixing, and redistribution. We also educate teachers, learners, and policy makers about copyright and fair-use issues pertaining to education.

* With technical barriers, we promote interoperability standards and tools to facilitate remixing and reuse.

* With social barriers, we encourage teachers and learners to re-use educational materials available on the Web, and to build on each other’s contributions.

Today is the official birth date of the Edublogs Magazine. It’s been almost a year from the idea-dancing-around-our-head stage, trying to come up with a way to create an umbrella blog that would bring together the exciting Edublogs community.

We wanted to feature bloggers and news from within the Edublogs Network represented by Edublogs, Learnerblogs, Uniblogs, and ESLblogs.

We wanted to provide a place where Edublog members could publish articles offering their special insights into education today, past, and the future of online education technologies.

This link will get you started. It includes the direct links to the RSS feeds for specific categories of interest or to the magazine as a whole.

• http://magazine.edublogs.org/2008/01/28/ the-birth-of-an-online-education-magazine/

I hope you enjoy an article I wrote as well as the rest of the mag.

• http://magazine.edublogs.org/2008/01/28/ 6th-grade-entrepreneur-wins-top-volunteer-award-for-splat/

click to enlarge

Note that this will only work for edublogs.org users. It will take you to your main blog, not any other but from there you can switch.

Uniblogs.org eslblogs.org and learnerblogs.org need to click on “students login here” (see mouse arrow in image) to be directed here, http://edublogs.org/student/

But really, the fastest way to get to your blog’s dashboard is to put this in URL your favorites or bookmarks or as a desktop shortcut–

http://blogname.edublogs.org/wp-admin/

http://blogname.uniblogs.org/wp-admin/

http://blogname.eslblogs.org/wp-admin/

http://blogname.leanerblogs.org/wp-admin/

Site Search Tags: edublogs.org, edublogs+tips, wordpress+tips

Scot’s Newsletter makes a good point.

3. Don’t unsubscribe because you’re going to use the RSS feed instead. The SFNL RSS feed is meant as a convenience service for subscribers only, not as a replacement for your subscription. Please, there’s no future for a newsletter in RSS distribution. If I were to focus on that, I would just transform the newsletter into a blog and send you a newsletter notification. I’ve polled the newsletter’s readership on that very point — and you’ve said loud and clear you don’t want me to do that. At the very least, keep your subscription and use it as a notification to check your RSS reader.

10 Things Good Newsletter Subscribers Shouldn’t Do
—————————
Scot’s Newsletter
—————————
Operating Systems. Broadband. Issues. Reviews. Info You Can Use.
July 2007 — Vol. 7, Issue No. 92

By Scot Finnie

Read the neater website version of Scot’s Newsletter!
http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/92.htm

Social Bookmarks:

Site Search Tags: scotsnewsletter, RSS, newsletter, Email, blogs

The bookmarks below were generated using the GreaseMonkey script from Social Bookmarking Helper 4 Wordpress.Com – A Greasemonkey Userscript July 7th, 2007 — Satya Narayan The bookmarks generated at other posts come from a modified bookmarklet from http://archaeoastronomy.wordpress.com/social-linking/

I don’t know if all these bookmarking sites are useful to readers and will have to figure out how to trim the script the way I trimmed the bookmarklet.

Wibowo at http://nooventures.edublogs.org/ started this discussion by mentioning www.skweezer.net. He added a whole group of interesting “Dial-up and Mobility Survival Kits” that he uses. Must see his list at http://edublogs.org/forums/topic.php?id=784&replies=5#post-3762

Skweezer can evidently act as an Internet portal but also strips the CSS styles off webpages. This makes for quicker access for dial-ups and those who pay minute by minute for Internet access. It struck me similar applications might include “tiny apps” or software on a “stick” or pen drive or other flash drive. If you use public computers, these can also protect your privacy. And why eat up that heavy laptop storage space when you could be using it for blog research and photos?

I haven’t tried all these out but they are worth exploring for those needing to remain publicly anonymous or to lose weight.

——————————————-

Gizmo’s Support Alert Newsletter Issue 145, Premium Edition, 24th May, 2007 , lists replacements for an on-the-road computer– the thumb drive (or camera flashcard) including windows XP on a USB Flash Drive http://techsupportalert.com

——————————————–

from Fred Langa of LangaList now Windows Secrets Newsletter at http://windowssecrets.com/comp/

http://www.TinyApps.org/

a collection of very small PC apps, from email clients to operating systems, under 1.44mb, though most are *much* smaller (in the 100-200k range). Miles Wolbe http://www.tinyapps.org/blog/

Flash-Drive Software , Kim Komando’s site at
http://komando.com/shareware_show.asp?showID=9675

http://www.lifehacker.com/software/thumb-drive/

http://portableapps.com/

searched using Google: http://tinyurl.com/s2uak

“More OS-On-A-Stick Options”
http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-02-09.htm#3

and a step-by-step article on Windows XP On Your USB Thumb/Flash Drive
http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=177102101

——————————————-

applications that are small, portable (i.e. no registry dependencies, relative pathing, etc.) and, ideally, free or low cost. http://www.usbapps.com/

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Social Bookmarks:

Web4Lib is specifically aimed toward librarians and library staff involved in World-Wide Web management, but anyone is welcome to join the discussion.

Guidelines for Appropriate List Behavior

The following guidelines are offered as advice for how to best participate in this discussion in a manner that will both contribute to the experience of all readers and also reflect well on you.

* Say something substantial. Simply saying “I agree” (in so many words) or “I disagree” (in so many words) does not meet this guideline. Specific technical questions are, however, quite appropriate, as are brief answers to such questions.
…
* “Getting the last word” is for children. We’re all beyond the age when we should be concerned with being the one to end the argument. Just because you are the last to speak doesn’t mean you won the argument.
* Agree to disagree. The likelihood of convincing someone to change a strongly held opinion is nil. State your case, but give up on the idea of converting the heathen.
…
* Remember that you are being judged by the quality of your contributions. No matter whether you are employed or not, or a certain age, or have a certain education, you can create a good professional reputation by how you contribute to a large electronic discussion like Web4Lib. On the other hand, you can ruin your reputation even faster and easier.
…
* Respect the rights of others. An electronic discussion is a commons. Your right to post ends at the right of others to not be insulted, badgered, or to have their time needlessly wasted.

http://lists.webjunction.org/web4lib/

Social Bookmarks:

See also Sitemeter work-around

and check out Lorelle vanFossen (see sidebar)

The Pew Internet and American Life Project announces the release of:

Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace

The majority of teens actively manage their online profiles to keep the information they believe is most sensitive away from the unwanted gaze of strangers, parents and other adults. While many teens post their first name and photos on their profiles, they rarely post information on public profiles they believe would help strangers actually locate them such as their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of teens with profiles (63%) believe that a motivated person could eventually identify them from the information they publicly provide on their profiles.

A new report, based on a survey and a series of focus groups conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project examine how teens, particularly those with profiles online, make decisions about disclosing or shielding personal information.

Some 55% of online teens have profiles and most of them restrict access to their profile in some way. Of those with profiles, 66% say their profile is not visible to all internet users. Of those whose profile can be accessed by anyone online, nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information. Teens post fake information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly.

Here is a link to the complete report:
http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/211/report_display.asp The Pew Internet Project is a non-profit, non-partisan initiative of the Pew Research Center that produces reports exploring the impact of the internet on children, families, communities, the work place, schools, health care, and civic/political life. Support for the non-profit Pew Internet Project is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Please feel free to forward this email alert to colleagues, friends, or family members who might be interested in it. If you have received this message from a subscriber, you can sign up to receive your own alerts at: http://www.pewinternet.org/signup.asp

Social Bookmarks:

====== In The News ====
>From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout Project 1994-2007.
http://scout.wisc.edu/

19. Code of conduct proposed for blogs (click here for hot links)

Web pioneers say code of conduct needed to clean up manners online
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=547872007

Bloggers disinclined toward suggestion of Net civility
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/10/BUGH4P5G1S1.DTL

Bloggers code of conduct
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/BCC

Blog 100
http://news.com.com/2310-10784_3-0.html

BuzzMachine
http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Legal Guide for Bloggers
http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

Internet Scout Project Weblog
http://scout.wisc.edu/Weblog/

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, and reasonable estimates of
the number of blogs approximate that there are over 60 million blogs. While
most of the discourse and commentary on blogs remains civil, there have been
a number of recent events that have caused some to wonder whether there
should be an official blogging code of conduct. This past Sunday, Tim
O’Reilly who is both a conference promoter and a primary figure in the Web
2.0 world posted some initial suggestions for just such a code. Of course,
shortly after Reilly posted these suggestions, there was a veritable
snowstorm of responses posted within the blogosphere, some of which were
quite vitriolic, and others which were a bit more detached, but still upset.
Jeff Jarvis, a professor at City University (and an active blogger),
responded after hearing about this proposal by stating “I’m rather resentful
of someone who has the temerity to tell me how they think I should behave.”
Some of Reilly’s initial suggestions included banning anonymous comments,
and he also called on bloggers to not post material that harasses others or
is knowingly false. Not surprisingly, Reilly’s own blog was quickly filled
with a variety of comments, including one user who quoted Benjamin Franklin
and another who referenced the Council of Nicea and its attempt to reform
the Christian church in the 4th century. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to an insightful piece about this proposed
code of conduct offered in this Tuesday’s online edition of the Scotsman. On
a related note, the second link leads to a fine piece by the San Francisco
Chronicle’s Verne Kopytoff on the reaction of bloggers to this proposed
code. The third link whisks users away to the proposed code of conduct,
which is referenced as a “starting point for discussion” on the whole
matter. Given the sheer number of blogs, the fourth link will be most
welcome. It is a listing of the top 100 blogs as determined by CNET
News.com, complete with a smattering of recent posts. The fifth link leads
to the very compelling blog of Jeff Jarvis, who is the director of the
interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s Graduate
School of Journalism. The sixth link is definitely worth a visit, as it
contains a number of helpful sections on the legal liability of bloggers,
and a FAQ on both intellectual property and defamation. Finally, the last
link leads to our very own blog here at the Internet Scout Project. [KMG]

Site Search Tags: Internet+Scout+Report, conduct, weblog, web+2.0, civility, cyber+bullying, bullying, edublogs.org, blogosphere

Dashboard | options | discussion

Dashboard | general | discussion

The third option, on per item basis, is the discussion tab on the edit/write side menu

Tag Cloud Generator for Wordpress.com
http://engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/tag_cloud_generator_for_wordpress/

Here are the results here–

AI/AN   Alaska   blogging blogginess   edublogs.org   in process   organizational culture   public draft   sciencing   Teachers   Uncategorized  

Created by Wordpress.com Tag Cloud Generator by //engtech

Here is what I have run across on the web and started to bookmark, Del.icio.us edublogs+tips I don’t know why del.icio.us won’t use compound tags like Technorati but compound tags must have the plus sign and then del.icio.us puts quotes around that.
http://del.icio.us/hlthenvt/%22edublogs%2Btips%22

If others have a del.icio.us account, the tag edublogs+tips would link everyone’s findings. Alternatively, I think there is a way to send suggestions to my account, but haven’t tried this. When tagging at del.icio.us do not use the quotation marks but do use the plus sign.

The Freshy theme allows a del.icio.us widget, but the feed from the site for a particular user’s set of tagged bookmarks is real easy to add in an RSS widget. (The widget didn’t function for me but the rss does). For example http://del.icio.us/rss/username/tagname

Technorati Tags: edublogs+tips, del.icio.us+tag, newbies, ESLblogs.org, Learnerblogs.org, Uniblogs.org

Social Bookmarks:

ProBloggers – Blogging for Beginners Series

Whether you are a novice, beginner, intermediate, or advanced blogger, take time to read through the Blogging for Beginners series by ProBlogger.

It covers a wide range of topics that you need to know to help you get started with blogging. And when you come back here, the following related articles will also help you get your blog up and running and doing it with style and not stress.
Lorelle VanFossen http://tinyurl.com/2e2fkj

WordPress.ORG Codex
Introduction to Blogging
Introduction to WordPress Terminology
WordPressMU and wordpress.com

The edublogses are based upon WordPressMU (multi-user) and not WordPress.ORG (self-hosted) or the WordPress.COM Confusing? yes. There are general similarities amongst the three flavors, but also significant differences at the operational (user) level.
WordPressMU and wordpress.com

WordPressμ http://mu.wordpress.org/

The list below isn’t intended at the moment as a classification or thesaurus of terms. The new tag clouds in the forums will help locate information, but the existing tags lack consistency (and lack consistent use) to be of best help. Please suggest additions, re-naming, or deletions.

Don’t forget that the search box will find posts containing your search term. That is, “IP address” is related to “referrer” but “referrer” is a more often useful and used term. [Also, "referrer" is the proper spelling, and tagged, but "referer" [sic] is found in old wordpress MU posts and better found in the search box.] Please add your own tags to posts in the forum. I’m suggesting we share a common set of most useful terms because the poor computer bytes are truly stupid; whereas the users aren’t [see Steps to edublogging happiness]. Don’t forget your towel.

• learnerblogs or uniblogs or eslblogs (for questions specific only to http://learnerblogs.org/, http://uniblogs.org, or http://eslblogs.org)
• privacy
• referrer
• akismet
• spam
• moderate
• comments
• themes
• multi-users
• newbie
• users
• authors
• page
• post
• plugins
• rss [but wouldn't "feeds" be more useful?]
• widgets
• wikispace
• sidebar
• uploads

Technorati : wordpress+tips wordpress+MU+tips edublogs.org

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Blogging and the Internet, like computers over the past 60 years*, can be extremely useful for some things. But they are mostly famous for doing exactly what we say and not what we mean.

To avoid overdosing on frustration, follow these steps.

As the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy states–

• Don’t Panic

(written in large, friendly letters)

• Step refresh your browser. (reload the webpage)

• Step switch browsers.
  (what may look odd in one browser looks fine in another. However, MS Internet Explorer does not behave according to the generally acceptable rules of Internet design. Any blog may look better in Firefox or Opera or Safari or Flock browsers.

• Step enable cookies (referrers) in your browser.

• Step empty your browser’s cache

• Step log out of your account. Refresh. Log back in.

• Step change themes.
  WordPress is open source. Themes do not all have consistent options. Some themes may not offer page comments or may truncate wide images. Some themes give extra help.

• Penultimate Step — go to bed and try again in the morning. This avoids the

• Ultimate Step — throw the blxxdy thing out the window.

* remember, the first computer bug (some 60 years ago) was analog, a moth, which flew into the wiring.

Please add missing steps in the comments. Also, I’d appreciate your suggestions for ordering the steps in their most effective order.

Technorati : WordPress+Tips, blog, edublogs.org, newbie

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Actual size (800 wide by 600 tall)

Note that with this theme, images which are too wide are simply truncated (actually, the image is overlain by the sidebar).

440 wide by 330 tall and 4.24 KB (4341 bytes)

The original context is

• Nazarene or Baptist –
  http://hedwardpruitt.edublogs.org/2006/09/20/nazarene-or-baptist/

http://YKAlaska.uniblogs.org

I have been adding emendments (obscure large word for me and other people to mean changes) to existing posts without messing up the permanent link (the slug plus the date).

However, the comments boxes automatically format any URL as a hot link. This makes it difficult to force links to open into new pages or, if the URL or permalink itself is very long, then it appears all over the web page instead of wrapping properly. I figured out how to do this, but to keep from forgetting it and in case anyone else wants to try this, I’ll make a stab at explaining.

Here is the example in context
Professional Literature (H5N1) -
http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/03/16/professional-literature-h5n1/ and the comment itself is
http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/03/16/professional-literature-h5n1/#comment-193

Here is what the comment looks like to the human reader

VetGate, mentioned
here is part of BIOME one of a number of Internet subject gateways that together form the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

Here is what it looks like to the human’s browser.

<strong>VetGate</strong>, mentioned <a HREF="http://ykalaska.uniblogs.org/2006/05/19/avian-influenza-in-other-animal-species-2/" TARGET="_blank">here </a>is part of BIOME one of a number of Internet subject gateways that together form the Resource Discovery Network (RDN).

Note—This may only apply to multi-user WordPress blogs. I don’t use the rtf editor but the plain editor.

1) After adding the link to your comment, view the site. In uniblogs, there is a little teeny-tiny e in the comment box of the comment just made.

This stands for edit. When that is clicked, the comment is opened into something which looks more like the “write new post” box, that is, there will be some “quick tags bar” . One can then format the comment (bold, italic, etc.) and add a “link”. Cut the URL. Highlight a piece of text (in the example above I used “here”), select the “link” button and paste your cut URL into the box which pops up. Close box and save (”edit”) comment.

The text link disappears but the hot linked text is still there. This prevents the comments box from doing weird stuff to the link.

2) I use Firefox or Opera as a browser which allows me to open links in a new tab, rather than replacing the page I’m still trying to read. One can also make links do this for the reader. You will see in my example that there is a TARGET=”_blank” (See Lorelle VanFossen for why this might be a good idea. OK, I didn’t code this special but just through the quicktags toolbar on my “write post” page.
http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/10/12/the-power-of-the-link/)

3) The only reason you the reader can see the coding in the example above (and not the finished product) is because it is coded specially.

I don’t remember how to do this special coding stuff, so I found two tools which do it for me. The Easy Text to HTML Converter is great for taking a copied URL and creating the hot link coding however you want for pasting back into one’s post. It is available here—
http://www.easyhtools.com/

The second tool is Show HTML Coding and is from Finn Ekberg Christiansen living in Copenhagen, Denmark.
hjem.get2net.dk/fec/shtmlc/shtmlc.html

4) Regular post page in non-rtf format click in image to view larger

5) Editing Comments page click in image to view larger

Technorati Tags: WordPress+Tips
Site Search Tags: WordPress+Tips

2007-02-28 In this recent post, it seems most sites are not so picky about slashes any longer, including this one. But to be on the safe side, I would still use that trailing slash if present.

What’s a URL to do? – How to Save URLs

2007-03-22 There is an interesting, though tech discussion at http://www.dailyblogtips.com/speed-up-your-site-use-slashes-on-your-links/ It is directed more at people who can manipulate their sites but may still be of value to shared MU sites like the edublogses.

Technorati Tags: edublogs+tips, WordPress+Tips

I usually use ImageShack which will post the size of the full image one must download if the thumbnail is clicked. This is a boon to those in remote areas on dial-up so you don’t have to wait forever for a too-large image to load.

Flickr has the advantage of taking the viewer to your collection of photos.

Either way, using another image host for the thumbnails also speeds up the display on a blog instead of posting your full sized image on the blog host.

Technorati Tags: WordPress+Tips, edublogs+Tips
Site Search Tags: WordPress+Tips

The calendar site is free and pretty easy to use. Holidays and language may be altered.
http://www.calsnet.com/ykalaska