The Educated Kiwi
blogging
Byline-an iPhone app to get started reading blogs again
Jun 10th
A few days ago I downloaded and installed Byline which now has a free ad supported option. I don’t know why but it just seems nicer than google reader and has got me started reading through my education blogs again and finding out some new ideas which has to be a good thing. This from the website
Simply use your free Google Reader account to subscribe to websites you’d like to keep track of. Byline will automatically bring you new content, putting thousands of RSS and Atom feeds at your fingertips.
Reading your feeds has never been so fast and frictionless. When you’re ready for the next article there’s no need to scroll down or stab at tiny buttons — just swipe to move between pages in one fluid motion.
Browse offline
Even when you have no internet connection, Byline gives you instant access to complete web pages. Perfect for flights, subway journeys, and (if you’re an iPod Touch owner) those long dry spells between Wi-Fi zones.
Byline automatically analyses your feeds so that it can cache the ones with truncated content. This means all your news is there in full when you’re offline, and blazing fast to load when you’re online to boot. It’ll also cache your notes, so you can save any website you visit for offline browsing.
Teach Tech
Aug 13th
I recently received a request for information on how ICT is used in a Hard Materials Technology class so I decided to start a new blog. I bought teachtech.co.nz back in January intending it to be a wiki for New Zealand Technology teachers but I realised that the Tech Teacher community was probably not ready for it. So when Toni Twiss the ICT facilitator at Matamata College asked me for information about how ICT can be used in a Hard Materials workshop it seemed logical to create a blog which Technology teachers can visit and get ideas. I realise it is very much a niche audience, but that is what the internet is about, and hopefully it will help Technology teachers, new and old.
If you are a Hard Materials teacher and have some great ways to use ICT in our subject you are more than welcome to become a contributor on Teach Tech, or if you know a Hard Materials teacher who is using ICT as a teaching and learning tool please let me know.
mark@tek.net.nz
Will it Stick?
Jan 21st
One of the things we all like to do here at TEK is throw stuff at the wall and see if it sticks and I have to say that most times in education you have to run up to the wall and push it on extra hard to make it stay. This can get exhausting as between us we only have a limited number of arms and every now and then something new and shiny distracts us and we forget to hold up the old stuff. As we have probably mentioned before the key is getting buy in from the staff and/or students so that it stays stuck by itself.
I have set myself two ‘ICT’ related goals to achieve before I head back to work next week. The first is to create a blogging site for Mt. Maunganui College, the second is to create a wiki for Technology Teachers to submit relief work so that none of us have to come up with relief lessons on the morning when we feel the worst.
Both these things are reasonably straightforward to setup but they require a reasonable investment of my own time, not only installing the systems but also generating awareness and then supporting users (all without financial reward).
The second goal is the easier of the two. Go to Teach Tech and you will find a basic mediawiki install where teachers can share content. Contacting those likely to contribute will be done through the BOP GTTA (Graphics and Technology Teachers Association). After that it is just a case of waiting for the emails to come flooding in, I hope.
The first goal is a little harder as it has been requested from senior management after seeing what happens in other schools with blogging. Having set up a blog server at Katikati College I am aware that only a couple of keen teachers have really used it so far although it is growing in popularity. The thing I am most scared of is that I put this thing in place and then have to tell the whole staff that they have to use it, or I am only given half an hour in staff meeting to sell it. In short I will have to do it well to avoid a backlash.
I have decided to go with WordPress mu again but this time using the Buddypress plugins. This makes WPMU look and feel like Facebook or Bebo which enables users to add friends, create groups, post their status etc. The idea is to get users to use the platform to generate content without it feeling like work and once they are used to the interface then the transition to blogging will be smoother. One of my problems is that in my head the target audience are the most cynical teachers (you know the ones I mean), if I can sell it to them then I should get everyone else. I am probably being too hard on myself, I will be happy if a handful of people use it, blogging isn’t for everyone but we shall see if it sticks.
WordPress 2.7
Dec 27th
Even though I promised I wouldn’t do a lot of computer work this week, I find myself not wanting to watch TV and already going to quickly through my Christmas present book ‘Lucky Legs‘ ( which has been a great read so far) So I sat down and approved a comment from MRZ aka Rob Zdrojewski whose blog is a must visit for those wanting to get started on school tv and is a great resource for Adobe’s Visual Communicator.
But I digress, In doing so I found that the blog needed updating which thanks to the Automatic Update plugin is simply a matter of clicking on a few buttons so I did it and woah WordPress looks completely different on the backend as you can see from this picture. One of the features that got me started straight away and did this post on was the quickpost area where you can blog right on the dashboard, no more clicks.
Mobilising TEK
Nov 23rd
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Since I went crazy and brought an iPhone last week I though it was time to Mobilise TEK for Opera Mini, Windows mobile and safari mobile, This was a crazy easy task which consisted of downloading mobilepress. Unzipping then uploading the folder to the plugins folder and ticking a couple of boxes and bingo mobile TEK. It has been amazing how much I have used mobile Safari and now see what Mark was talking about with the iPod touch. It is great to have a mobile device that is easily useable rather than the clunky interface with my Nokia N73, which was actually a more expensive phone.
Joiku in action
Sep 22nd
I am sitting in my office here at mt maunganui college and although I have good wifi I also get a good 3g signal.
I have started joiku on my n95 and my iPod touch found the wifi network instantly.
Safari on the touch works very quickly and I can watch my data usage in real time. Joiku also shows me who is connected in case someone tries to piggy back my wifi signal.
Still can’t get AIM to work, maybe I will try a different IM client.
All in all a good experience.
NB. Joiku does support WEP encryption which will keep most people out and it only uses the http and https protocols which is why IM clients dont seem to work but Google chat from the browser will.
Posted from iPod Touch
Ipod touch
Sep 16th
As I sit here waiting for an appointment I decide it is a good time to try writing a post on my new iPod touch. I have had it for two days now and it is an amazing device. I won’t go into the reasons why I chose it over the iPhone but I get pretty much the same experience.
To begin with text input is very easy and the auto correct is excellent and the places where I spend most of my time have good wifi coverage.
(next day) I shouldn’t start writing posts when I know I will be interupted. No chance of that now while I sit in a hall with 7 other staff supervising exams.
Back to the iPod touch; most useful app so far apart from the wordpress app I am using now is mocha vnc light which allows me to screen share my laptop wherever I am in the school. Handy because not all my apps, like aim work through the proxy yet.
Watch this space for more updates on using the ipod touch in the classroom.
Using Blogdesk on Windows
Jul 24th

It’s not until I need to find something for a particular teacher that I realise some of the great stuff out there. Today I was trying to show a teacher how to blog from their desktop in a familiar surrounding and I though Windows live writer would be the answer but found that it required a bit of work to get to talk to WordPress Mu so a quick search led me to Blogdesk which once I unchecked the publish on upload button the posts appeared. For more information visit the link below.
Blogging from the Windows desktop with BlogDesk » Make You Go Hmm
inTouch – The Mobile Administrator
Jul 24th
The purpose of this post is two fold – firstly it shows the new “press this” feature in wordpress 2.6 which brings up a post window whenever you click the link and wish to post about something you have found and secondly it’s another example of handheld use in schools. Have a look.
inTouch – The Mobile Administrator | Main / Home Page browse
embedding an iframe
Jul 23rd
Recently Hilary asked me how to add an external site to her blog. Specifically a SWF game. Rather than just getting the game and not being able to attribute to the owner I showed her how to use an iframe to get the data in just use this code. <iframe src=’http://tek.net.nz’ frameborder=’0′ width=’410′ height=’342′></iframe>
Google Custom Search
May 25th
It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with upgrades of servers and laptops going out left-right etc. So I guess it’s now time to do some writing. I came across Jeff Utecht’s Blog today and found a number of new plugins to try with wordpress. The end result will then be added to the KKC community which is now hosted within our school.
My favorite of these has to be the custom google search box that now has an Ajax version. By typing in this box you can search through any of the sites that Mark and I contribute to.
This week is a big one for Tek also as it will see Mark leaving the comfort of KKC to boldly go to MMC (that’s Mount Maunganui College for the uninitiated) I would like to wish him well at his new school and I guess that through Tek etc we will be proving that professional learning between schools can work.
I will however miss the rants about what we are trying to do with technology on the way home in the car pool but then arguing and discussing through iChat and Skype is a new challenge.
So here’s one on me Mark

Identity Crisis
May 24th
We recently found a website with some awesome wordpress themes and we immediatley went and put them on our sites. However, a little later I discovered that the footer.php file was encrypted, apparantly to stop people changing the links in it. Now that is all very well but how do I know what else is in there? I did a search of the net to try and find a way to decrypt and discovered that some encrypted footers had been used to hide malicious code. There were some instructions on how to decrypt the file but I was not successful so these beautiful themes will have to go back where they came from.
Disqus
May 22nd
It is probably best to visit disqus.com to understand it properly but it is essentially turning blog comments into forum style posts. I have just added the disqus plugin to this blog to see how it works for us but I can see it being a valuable discussion tool for subject blogs on our school wpmu site.
Sometimes you just gotta throw things against the wall to see if they stick.
Fear in Australia
Mar 18th
Doing the rounds on the internet at the moment is the case of the minilegends, Al Upton‘s class blog and its closure by the Department of Education and Childrens services in South Australia. Visit the site to read some of the comments, many posted by the children themselves and gain some understanding of this issue. Also worth a look is Miguel’s tongue in cheek comment on his blog.I’ve always been fairly un-pc and a believer that fear drives consumerism so this whole issue just brings up the nanny state issue again as well as the obvious lack of understanding on the part of some.I do worry about safety but then I remember going on Form 2 camp and kayaking across Lake Whakamaru with a group and my father was the only parent/guide. Guess I survived but no we couldn’t do that now, someone might drown.I wonder about Shedds’ quote “A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for” and how this applies to the current generation. Already we see few males in teaching as they are scared off by the negative press around issues such as this, after all it was only a week ago we had the intrepid teacher resigning over what seemed similar issues. So overall this isn’t so much a post but rather some worry, after all I’m 30 tomorrow.
New Addition
Mar 10th
We would like to introduce another writer on TEK – Kelvin. To us Kelvin is <root> and must be obeyed and is the chief computer geek at Katikati College (he even used to play Dungeons and Dragons). He already has two comments on his first blog here and we look forward to hearing more pearls of wisdom but we like his rants better.

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