I have this running on a page at http://cogdogblog.com/tag-poetry/. Now I am inspired to do more tagging of my posts, cause this is fun.

Here’s the thing, when TwitterTools published your new sexy blog post to Twitter, it always prefixes it with the same intro text that everyone else gets:

New blog post: Video of My Big Blah Blah Blah Got Stuck in the Blah… http://tinyurl.com/xxxxx

Do you really want to post like everyone else?

That is so lemming like.

Sheep.

Conformist.

Not for me.

Long ago, I dug into the code and found a line to edit to change it, so my blog posts to twitter are always uniquely mine as Just CogDogBlogged:

This is so easy, all you need to be able to do is to edit one line of text.

Anyone can do that.

Even you.

Just edit the twitter-tools.php file on line 127 (oh, you likely do not use a decent text editor that gives line numbers (and “doesn’t suck”); it is in section of code following class twitter_tools {) which reads out of the box as:

$this->tweet_prefix = 'New blog post';

All you need to do is to change the text inside the single quotes to be whatever you want your tweets to be prefixed as…. do not delete the ending semi-colon, or your entire blog will die, go up in smoke, and self-destruct… just kidding– but the semi-colon is essentila in PHP to denote the end of a command. Here is how my edited line looks:

$this->tweet_prefix = 'Just CogDogBlogged';

Don’t make it really long as the length of this text takes away from the amount of text in your tweet… the code is smart enough to subtract the exact length if the tweet prefix.

And her is another coders suggestion– print this out and tape to your wall — WORK ON A COPY OF THE ORIGINAL FILE just in case you bork it, you always want to work on a copy, so if something goes wrong you can replace the file on your server with the last working one.

And ahem– this would be a simple feature that could be added to the TwitterTools configuration pane. But I don;t wait for them to do what I want to do if I can hack it.

There you go, a cheap gift from CogDogBlog, make your tweeted blog posts rise among the sea of sameness.

A few weeks ago I got an email from a guy named Joe who I had met at Northern Voice. He was developing a plugin that would connect blog posts automatically to related content in a site called DonorsChoose.org– I had never heard of it, but what a great concept. Teachers (and/or students) submit ideas for learning materials or activities they don’t have, and the site connects them with people willing to help them get what they need. Donors can choose which project to contribute directly to.

DonorsChoose.org is dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in our public schools. We believe this inequity is rooted in the following factors:

1. Shortages of learning materials prevent thorough, engaging instruction;
2. Top-down distribution of materials stifles our best teachers and discourages them from developing targeted solutions for their students; and
3. Small, directed contributions have gone un-tapped as a source of funding.

DonorsChoose.org will improve public education by engaging citizens in an online marketplace where teachers describe and individuals can fund specific student projects. We envision a nation where students in every community have the resources they need to learn.

According to Joe, the site has over 14,000 developed lesson ideas, and his concept was to create a system where blog posts would automatically by linked to relevant content at DonrsChoose.

I was a little curious since I really doubted the rants and whinges I post would have some correlation in a school project database, like when I use words like “cat piss”, but he said apost I made about the Learning 2.008 conference had a great amount of correlation.

What was interesting was he set this up as a project in a site called The Point that “lets anyone start a campaign to organize, fund raise, or persuade.” The DonorsChoose project was set up in the Point so that the plug-in would get done only if at least 10 bloggers signed up there and agreed to try it out on their blog.

What the heck? I said. So today Joe e-mailed that his project made his 10, so I was able to get the Possibly Related Classroom Projects plugin (as are you, it’s public).

Joe wrote today:

I can’t wait to see the plugin in action on your blog — and you’re def. welcome to share it with your readers. I wonder if this donorschoose campaign, which features “Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” will be recommended for your most recent post :)

He is referring to my post on moo cards- so let’s see what was picked up. Hmm, no click-clack moo. But I got links to:

So at first maybe not a match. But the first project includes a request:

My students need 3 copies of a set of Favorite Transitional Book CD Read Alongs, and one Minnie and Moo Go To Paris CD Read Along Set.

And there it is in the second project- a second grade teacher in Arizona (hey I live there) is wanting reading materials that will act as magical literacy pills, asking for funds to help purchase:

My students need 17 different elementary level books from Harold and Purple Crayon to Click, Clack, Moo to Where the Wild Things Are in order to build upon their fluency and literacy skills.

Bingo! Joe is right on target.

And ironically, earlier in the summer I bought myself a copy of Click, Clack, Moo since it is such a great story.

And Where the Wild Things Are was such a favorite book for me as a kid… now I am feeling an urge to contribute….

And the third project is also a match, no moo, but a speech therapist is asking for a card reader to help kids learn sounds– so that match works well for all the times I mentioned “card” in my post.

So Joe, I would say you have done this plug-in well. I was scanning the titles of the projects thinking the matches were as bad as the cuil web search, but when you read the projects the match is spot on.

Lastly Joe also shared an interesting Google doc that describes that happened in the development of the plug-in, which to me, as as much fun as watching the extras on a DVD.

What a great way to build software and what a great thing to do to bring people to a site that will help teachers.

Let me know what you find from the DonorsChoose links that now appear here.