October 2007 archives

New look for Stratepedia.org

October’s been a busy month here at Stratepedia World HQ–on top of the new guidebooks and the blog facelift, we’ve just unwrapped a new look for Stratepedia’s main page. Amber’s putting her Photoshop chops to good use–watch the bulletin board to grow over time.

By Aaron Sumner | October 31st, 2007 | View Comments

Leopard: Initial impressions

I installed Leopard on my laptop this morning. Pretty smooth sailing–I did a fresh backup of my hard drive and an erase-and-install of the new OS. This does mean I have to reinstall all my programs and files, but it reduces the chances of something going on. I have a lot of junk to dump from my computer, anyway. The only real problem I’ve had is getting my calendars from iCal to copy over to my laptop, but this is a problem with .Mac and not Leopard.

My new favorite thing in Leopard is Quick Look. It’s liable to become your new favorite thing, too. Now you can peek at a Word file, PowerPoint presentation, or video clip just by hitting the space bar–no double-click or slow startup time required! It works with many other file formats as well, and even works with e-mail attachments.

As far as the exciting things I mentioned yesterday, I’ve only had much time to experiment with RSS in Mail. Verdict: Should be a good introduction to RSS for first-timers, but people with more experience using RSS will probably want to stick with their favorite reader. In doing fresh installations of all my software, I grabbed the latest version of my reader of choice, NetNewsWire, and have fallen in love all over again. OK, maybe that’s going overboard–but version 3.0 is excellent.

By Aaron Sumner | October 30th, 2007 | View Comments

Why I’m excited about Leopard

Apple’s new Mac operating system, version 10.5 (Leopard), was released to much fanfare last Friday. You can read all about it. There’s been lots of talk over the weekend about the souped-up interface and the built-in backup software, but here are three things I’m most interested in:

  1. Updates to iChat: You can now present slides, photos, and video clips via iChat. (For you Windows folks, iChat is Apple’s client for AIM and other conferencing protocols.) Think of what this means for professional development and coaching! Say I’m a teacher in Kansas, and you’re a coach in California. Instead of flying out here to observe me, you can have me record my class and then we can meet later, online, and watch the video together. I can pause, fast forward, and rewind as we talk about the clip. We tinkered around with this feature in a beta release of Leopard and came away impressed.
  2. Teams Server: Teams is a feature on the Server version of the new Mac OS. Imagine five or six of us are on a project together and need a place to collaborate online. With Teams, I can quickly set up a shared calendar, mailing list, blog, wiki, and file storage. It’s all web-based, so even team members using Windows can use the shared space. I think this will be much better than what we’re been working with in Moodle.
  3. RSS in Mail: Apple’s built-in e-mail client, conveniently called Mail, now includes an RSS reader. People who’ve read this blog before know that I’m a big proponent of RSS, and anything that makes it easier to adopt this wonderful technology is aces in my book.

As I mentioned, we’ve been playing with a beta release for several weeks and I plan to install the official release on my laptop sometime this week. In the meantime if you have any questions about the new Mac operating system, feel free to ask them in comments below.

By Aaron Sumner | October 29th, 2007 | View Comments

Content Enhancement Library users’ manual now on Stratepedia Guidebooks server

I’ve moved the easy-to-miss Content Enhancement Library users’ manual to a more convenient place–it now resides alongside the Learning Labs Guidebook (released last week) on the Stratepedia Guidebooks site.

Like the Learning Labs Guidebook, the Content Enhancement Library Guidebook is structured in a just-in-time-style format, indexed by activity and keyword searchable. It’s worth a look whether you’re new to the Library or a seasoned veteran.

Content Enhancement Library Guidebook

We will probably be making some updates to this new guide, but we’re more interested in getting the new SIM Library wrapped up and out the door for you by the end of the year.

By Aaron Sumner | October 25th, 2007 | View Comments

Stratepedia Blog overhaul

If you can read this, you’re at the new and improved Stratepedia Blog. Hi!

More soon, but in the meantime I wanted to point out a couple of changes:

  1. If you bookmarked something here you’ll have to bookmark it again. All of the old content has been moved over and is keyword searchable.
  2. The categories got streamlined. Most stuff is now in Stratepedia News.
  3. The podcast is gone, at least for now. We might revive it down the road, but if that happens it will be on its own site rather than mixed in here (which was kind of a chore, technically speaking).
  4. You can now subscribe to our blog via e-mail! See the subscriptions page for more information.

Also, for system outage information, be sure to visit our new Twitter account: http://twiter.com/stratepedia. It dawned on me that it doesn’t do a whole lot of good if I post a message on this blog about our network being down. Twitter isn’t located on our server, or our network. If something’s down, and I know about it, it will be posted on the Twitter page. See the message in the green bar, right underneath the buffalo? That’s also coming from our Twitter page.

Like I said, we’ll be posting more (much more) here soon, but let me know if you have any questions in the meantime. Thanks!

Aaron

By Aaron Sumner | October 24th, 2007 | View Comments

Learning Labs Guidebook now available

Amber and I have completed the first edition of the Learning Labs Guidebook. This step-by-step guide to getting things done in the Learning Labs, from setting up an account to sharing information in a database–is available online at http://guides.stratepedia.org/doku.php?id=learning_labs_guidebook.

The Learning Labs Guidebook features plenty of screen captures and is keyword searchable and cross-referenced, making it easy to follow along from task to task. If you need a printed version just go to File -> Print as you would any web page to automatically get a clean, printer-friendly version.

Since the Learning Labs Guidebook is online we’ll be making changes regularly as the Learning Labs are enhanced or as clarification is needed. Click the Recent Changes button to see what’s new, or track changes via RSS. Please let us know what you like or don’t like about the Learning Labs Guidebook by dropping us a note at help@stratepedia.org.

By Aaron Sumner | October 22nd, 2007 | View Comments