September 2008 archives

Those of you who attended our session at the last SIM Conference know we’re big fans of the Common Craft Show and the clever way Lee LeFever simplifies concepts for the masses. In the latest episode, Lee tackles a problem we’ve all had: How do you narrow search results to find exactly what you need? I won’t spoil the surprise–watch the video to learn. Even if you know these tips, watch the video anyway–it’s not too long and might give you some ideas about how to explain a concept in a different way.

Thanks to Gail Tiemann for pointing out that this new episode is available!

Many folks don’t realize it, but most of the services we provide–Depot, Dossier, Coaching Calendar, etc.–have accompanying Guidebooks. Each guidebook includes tutorials to help you get up and running with our stuff and make the most out of it in professional development and strategic instruction.

Of course, I’m never one to leave well enough alone, and when a new tool called ScreenSteps came along, making documenting procedures on a computer incredibly easy, Amber and I sat down, went through our materials, and essentially developed entirely new versions of our Guidebooks. And since Stratepedia.org just got a fresh coat of paint, we’re treating the new guidebooks in kind.

The result: It’s very pretty, and much easier to navigate. All guides are available in HTML format, for viewing in your web browser, as well as PDF format, for saving a local copy and/or printing (some of these are lengthy documents, though–I think the Coaching Calendar Guidebook is upwards of 40 or 50 pages–so think about a tree before printing, OK?).

Without further ado, here are a couple of screen shots:

First, the front page makes it simple to select the guide and format of your choice. Since these guides can can change, we include the dates each was last updated for your convenience.

Next up: Here’s a table of contents, HTML version. Select what you want to do, and click the tutorial for it.

Here’s an individual tutorial or lesson. We’ve gone back and broken steps into their simplest, most concrete forms to make it easy for newcomers to follow along.

Here’s a look at the PDF version of the same tutorial, using the Preview PDF viewer built into Mac OS X. Some nice features: Each PDF version also has a browsable table of contents (see the right-hand column here; this will show up along the left in Adobe Acrobat) and is keyword searchable.

Want to see a real, live preview?

We’ve got the new site up and running while we finish the remaining guides and final touches. You can see it for yourself, right now, but you have to visit our Twitter feed to get the address. Twitter is a great way to keep up with what’s going on at Stratepedia, so check it out and add us to the feeds you follow!

Nancy Duarte’s Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations is a hot read around CRL right now–Jim Knight recently reviewed the book in his blog, and just yesterday I saw a copy sitting on Don’s desk. It’s a great companion piece to the likes of Made to Stick.

Last week, publishers O’Reilly and Associates hosted a one-hour webinar with Duarte to discuss the book and the notion that visuals sell your story. I wasn’t able to sit in on it, and neither were you, probably, but fortunately O’Reilly already has the archived video up on YouTube, so I can embed it right here:

Watch the video, read the book, read some of the things we’ve shared about presenting in the past, and think about the slides you use. How can you tell your story–and the story of SIM–better?

After some initial trials and tribulations, I now really like that Kindle we bought a few months back. I’ve been reading Groundswell on it, taking notes in it, and toting it with me back and forth to appointments in Kansas City. That said, there are ways it could be made better. It’s a little clunky-looking, for example, and the screen is a bit small. You can adjust the print size, but that just means you’re flipping virtual pages a lot more often.

Last week, Plastic Logic introduced an alternative. Its to-be-named e-book reader is the size of a standard piece of paper, super-thin, and under a pound. And they’re working to make it flexible, giving it more of a real book feel. See DEMOfall 2008: Plastic Logic’s Reader Is Thinner, Less Ugly Than Kindle, from Wired.com Gadget Lab, for more photos and commentary.

Pricing will supposedly be competitive with Kindle, which currently sells for $349. Would a device like this cause you to look a little more closely at e-books? What features are must-haves for you to take the plunge? Or are you a dyed-in-the-wool paper lover?

I’m done with the Learning Labs updates that were scheduled tonight. Sort of. I hit some snags along the way and need to revisit this task at a time to be determined down the road.

The Learning Labs will be offline for an hour or so this evening, around 9:00 CDT, for maintenance. Sorry in advance for any inconvenience.

I meant to get this out to you earlier this week, but you know how it is when you’re trying to get a funding proposal out, right? Anyway, that’s behind us, so I can get back to other matters like this one: I want to get a big update to Depot out the door by the end of the year.

Here’s the deal: I’m about to get started on some big, under-the-hood changes to Depot. I know, I know–the big reason moving from the Content Enhancement Library to Depot was for big, under-the-hood stuff. But Stratepedia’s web development platform of choice (OK, my web development platform of choice), Ruby on Rails, underwent some pretty big changes between when Depot was started and when it was finished, and especially between then and now. The long and short of it is I need to make some changes and want to get your input along the way. In that spirit, I’m offering this post as an open forum on what you like, what you hate, and what you’d like to see in Depot. Now’s the time to tell me!

I’ll get things started by telling you about two things I’m already addressing in this change, plus a possible bonus item:

• First, I know Depot sometimes gives weird error messages without telling you what’s going on. Most of these, I’ve found, are due to people not being signed in when trying to do something. This is exacerbated by our current policy of not requiring people to be signed in to browse public groups, but needing to be signed in and a member of said group to download from it. What are your thoughts on this policy? Right now I’m inclined to close things off a bit and tell people they need an account to do anything, even poke around the joint. By and large, people don’t even come across Depot until a PDer has introduced them to it during Content Enhancement PD, anyway. This will make access control settings much easier and therefore much less error-prone. Let me know what you think about this possible policy change.
• Second: Keyword search. I get asked for this a lot. It wasn’t feasible at all in the CE Library. It’s sort of feasible in the current Depot. It’s very feasible in Depot 2–I’m just trying to figure out the best way to do it. My current plan is to incorporate keywords as a filter (like we do now with subjects, grade levels, and routines). To one-up this, I’m looking at adding saved filter sets–so if you want to be able to easily find, say, every Unit Organizer about Ancient Egypt for middle school, matching the keyword “pyramids,” you can save a filter set and quickly pull up anything that’s been shared with you. What do you think–useful? No?

And now, the bonus: The long-promised single sign-on system for Stratepedia is making progress. This isn’t exclusive to Depot, and is technically a separate project, but will ideally be released simultaneously to this updated version of Depot. This basically means that, eventually, you’ll have one username/password combo for Depot, for the Learning Labs, for Coaching Calendar, for Depot, and for whatever we come up with down the road. It’ll also be the username and password you’ll use for anything at something-dot-kucrl-dot-org (like, say, an online version of Stratedirectory? Whisper, whisper).

OK, now it’s your turn.

Tell me what you think about the two items I mentioned above, or anything I missed. I know there are things that drive you nuts about Depot–tell me about them! Leave a comment below. If you want your comments to be anonymous, make up a name. If you’d like to keep your thoughts private you can e-mail me at help@stratepedia.org–but this will be a much more effective process if we can get a conversation going here.

Have at it!

I pushed out a few updates to Coaching Calendar today. Nothing major, but this update does address a few requests I’ve received from the Virginia schools:

• Improved behind-the-scenes handling of enabling and disabling individual time slots in a day (this wasn’t broken; I just found a way to do it more efficiently).
• Coaches can now manage their own time slots without asking a site administrator to do this for them (so, if a coach needs to take a morning off, he or she can mark this time as unavailable directly).
• Coaches for each day are now displayed on the school’s master schedule.
• On a site’s main page, the coaches listings for dates coming in the next four weeks is now a little cleaner.
• On a site’s main page, the list of coaching dates coming in the next four weeks now properly displays today’s date if today is a scheduled coaching date.
• Moved membership key management away from a site’s main page, onto a separate page, with some additional tips about the membership key reset process. Hopefully this will help clarify why we do things this way.
• The dates shown when viewing an individual membership’s details look a little prettier.
• Error messages displayed by ACL (”Access Control Layer”–what determines what you can or can’t do based on who you are and your role within your school’s coaching program) are a little more verbose.

Jean Piazza has announced this year’s reading list for StrateReaders:

• The 6 Secrets of Change: What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive by Michael Fullan (also an upcoming CRL Learns read)
• Influencer: The Power to Change Anything by Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, and McMillan
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, and Switzer

Links to purchase each book on Amazon* are provided at StrateReaders, along with a discussion board to talk about each book before or after the scheduled conference call. You just need a Learning Labs account to participate–if you don’t have one yet, sign up for free.

* Of course, you can buy the books elsewhere if you’d like.