Stratepedia News archives

In case you haven’t heard, the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, of which Stratepedia is part, has received funds from the Wal-Mart Foundation to start a project promoting literacy in out-of-school environments. We’ll be partnering with Boys and Girls Clubs of America to extend the scalability and reach of interventions like Strategic Tutoring, Possible Selves, and Fusion Reading.

The Stratepedia team will all be working on this project alongside Mike Hock, Don Deshler, Irma Brasseur, and Josh Saunders. For our part, we’re taking a close look at how volunteer mentors and tutors can be brought up to speed on the aforementioned interventions, in a reasonable amount of time, without degrading the models. We’re looking toward technology to help accomplish this, as a support for our usual professional development models, data tracking, and communication. Look for some of these new tools to roll out this summer.

The Wal-Mart Foundation sponsored a media event in Lawrence last Wednesday. About 100 people and most of the local media outlets attended, as did Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, Don, and representatives of the Wal-Mart Foundation and Boys and Girls Clubs. You can read more about it on the CRL’s website (and see a photo of Don and Governor Sebelius holding the giant check!), then head over to the brand new site we’re developing for the project. It’s a bit sparse right now, but will become the news hub of this project in particular and things we find pertaining to out-of-school literacy opportunities.

After School Literacy Project at the Center for Research on Learning

The following Stratepedia services will be briefly unavailable:

• Learning Labs
• Hello (The Stratepedia Blog)
• Stratepedia Guidebooks
• Feeds

These sites will also be unavailable:

• CRL Media Archives
• Preparing Preservice Educators website
• Content Literacy Continuum website
• Virginia CLC website
• Virginia CLC coaching calendar
• Xtreme Reading website

An article Amber and I wrote about Hello (this site) is featured in the April, 2008 issue of Stratenotes. Watch for it!

Now, before you leave, make sure you’ve subscribed to receive future updates, via either RSS or e-mail. (Need a primer on RSS? Check out Amber’s tutorial on RSS and Google Reader).

I recently ran into the problem of having people not be able to play a DVD that I had burnt for them. They were using it on their computers and it seemed to be isolated to the PC users and I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was causing the problems. However, I think I now have a solution!

PROBLEM:
It is my understanding that when a computer company installs a DVD player in their machine, they package a player and set of video encoders/drivers with that machine. This is why the DVD seems to play on some machines and not on others. Different manufacturers use different software to interact with their DVD player and it’s not consistent across the board. Mac computers seem to have this pretty well covered and are able to process a wide range of media with no problems. Also, since it’s one company, they have standard hardware/software installations. If you’re on a PC, it’s kind of hit and miss. The standard Windows Media Player requires that you have a plugin to handle certain burnt DVDs and I believe it costs a small sum to purchase. Or it could be just a problem with older versions of the software, I’m not sure.

So what can you do about this?

SOLUTION:
A very helpful IT person at my office recommended a free, open-source program called VLC Media Player. You can download it at: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This program is supposed to be very versatile at playing any number of video formats including DVDs which is great since video is becoming increasingly popular. Although I have not used it on a PC, the MAC version seems to work great and some internet searches reveal it to be a legitimate and popular solution. There are versions for all different types of operating systems, so all of you Linux users out there can enjoy this as well!

If you try this with (or without) any success, please leave a comment and let me know how it works!

Dossier is getting the updates I promised a few weeks ago, and also moving to a new server. I’m going to do this tomorrow, May 1. I’m planning on doing this during the day since nobody’s really using the system just yet, but if I’m wrong now’s the time to let me know. If this will conflict with your plans I’ll reschedule this for a night or weekend.

(By the way, all the changes I talked about before made it in, except for the last one. The question types changes will have to wait for a future release.)

I know it’s late, but I couldn’t wait–Hello.

In the last few months, Stratepedia’s blog has become a major part of what we (Amber, Mark, myself, and contributors like David) are known for within CRL and the SIM Network. It is therefore, with little fanfare, I introduce to you the latest stage in the site’s evolution: A real name! Meet Hello, the newest version of the Stratepedia Blog.

The focus of our content will remain the same–helping people at the Center and in the Network use the Stratepedia tools like pros and be less afraid of technology in general. What’s new is a slightly more polished look, a name that rolls off the tongue (and the keyboard) a little more readily, and a few new features to hopefully encourage you to participate in discussions:

• The front page now sports the five most recent comments received on articles across the entire site. Click a comment to read it and catch up on the conversation.
• You can now subscribe to e-mail notifications of new comments per article. You should be able to, anyway–this is a new feature, and I did some testing, but I’ll be curious to know what you think of it.

One reason I like working with the Web over any other medium (I was trained to write and design for print, if you can believe it) is its dynamic nature. So, given that this site has received a handful of facelifts in the last year and a half, rest assured that Hello will continue to be an ongoing process and a continual learning experience for all of us. I’m going to remind everyone again that we (”we” being the list of people above) need your comments and suggestions to keep us moving in the right direction! If you like what you see–or more importantly, if you hate it–leave a comment using the form at the end of this page. You won’t hurt my feelings (not much, anyway) and it will help us make Hello (and Dossier, Depot, and the Learning Labs, for that matter) better for everyone. Or, if you don’t have any constructive criticism, at least comment to tell me you recognize the reference from the title and first line of this post.

In the meantime, thanks as always for visiting and keep checking back!

Don’t forget you can get help immediately with the Stratepedia tools (notably Depot, Dossier, and the Learning Labs) via our handy Guidebook Series. It’s not that we don’t like helping you by e-mail or phone–we do–but you’ll probably find that checking out these pages online is quicker, so you can go about your business rather than wait for one of us to reply to your e-mail (which can take up to a full business day!). Each guidebook is broken down by tasks you’re likely to need to do within each tool, and the how-to for each task is provided in a step-by-step manner.

So, when in doubt, visit the Guidebooks first–and if what you see there doesn’t make sense, or you need help with something that’s not there, then by all means, contact us via the usual methods.

Mark, Amber and I were just interviewed by David Gnojek for the KU-CRL Podcast. Listen for us in the coming weeks–I think Dave is going to break it down into a few segments–and hear us talk a bit about Depot, Dossier, the Learning Labs, our sessions at this summer’s conference, and a few other surprises.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of restarting our own short-lived Stratepedia Podcast. Look for it to be weekly or so and provide tips on our software and other things we’ve found useful. Stay tuned!

(By the way, in case you didn’t know–you don’t need an iPod to play back podcasts! Dave’s got CRL’s set up so you can play clips directly in your web browser–no downloading required.)

I thought I would kill two birds with one blog post……or something like that.  Not only am I making my Stratepedia Blog debut today but I also want to tell you about my first poster session presentation at the summer conference.  Yes, I will be sharing a poster with you all at the SIM International Conference.

Look for my poster: Thinking Outside of the Online Course Topic Box

And hear me talk about…
Exploring the different ways that groups are collaborating in the Stratepedia Learning Labs. Featured topics include using the Learning Labs outside of a traditional “course” construct and becoming better organized by choosing the right tools. Stop by and see how you can make the most out of your online collaboration experience.

The poster session will (tentatively) take place on Wednesday, July 16 from 1 - 4:30 in the afternoon.  Click here for more information about the conference schedule.

I am very excited to discuss this collaborative tool with you.  Oh…and I promise no birds were actually hurt during this post.

Today, as I was waiting for some software to install in the background on my computer (a digital equivalent of watching paint dry), I decided to check out Dashcode, a Mac development tool that makes creating custom Dashboard widgets really, really simple. So simple, in fact, that after about 30 minutes of work I have something to share!

The 2008 SIM Conference Countdown widget does exactly what you think it might–it displays a counter on your Dashboard so you can easily see how long you’ve got to plan your travel and get that PowerPoint ready for this summer’s 30th Anniversary International SIM Conference. Once installed it looks something like this:

(By the way, it’s counting down to Tuesday, July 15, at 6:00 PM. I don’t know if it takes the time zone into effect but I doubt it.)

Want this widget on your Dashboard? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Make sure your computer can run the widget. First things first: You need a Mac. Sorry, Windows people. Second, your Mac needs to have OS X 10.4.3 or newer. You can find out which version of Mac OS you have by going to your Apple menu, then “About This Mac.”
2. Download the widget to your computer. (Provided as-is, no warranty implied, yada yada yada.) What will most likely happen is the file will download to either your Downloads folder or Desktop, automatically expand, and ask you if you want to add the new widget to your Dashboard. If so, you should be ready to roll!
3. If you downloaded the widget and nothing happened, check your Desktop or Downloads folder for a file called “2008 SIM Conference Countdown” or “2008 SIM Conference Countdown.zip.” If you see the former, just double-click it to open it on your Dashboard. If you see the latter, first double-click on it to decompress the zipped file, then double-click on the “2008 SIM Conference Countdown” icon (black, rounded rectangle) to add it to your Dashboard.

Hope you enjoy the widget! Dashcode has been fun to tinker with, so don’t be surprised if I add more widgets here down the road. Let me know what you think!

Want more widgets? Check out Apple’s widget directory.