CogDogBlog

Like Duvall’s Kilgore, who said “there’s nothing like napalm in the morning”, for a web geek, there’s nothing like a bit of curious fiddling with code to make something work. Today’s feat was finagling a MediaWiki extension to display a Google Calendar in our sites.
I’ve been using GCal for a year to manage our Second [...]

Trying my hand at conference blogging, here at the CNI Spring Task Force Meeting in Phoenix (Hey, my flight here was a 20 minute drive from home). Can I blog faster tan Bryan Alexander? Heck no.
This first session of the breakouts is from Ann Lally head of digital Initiatives at University of Washington, and Carolyn [...]

MediaWiki - love the app, hate the documentation, a term used loosely.
Here is a normal set of steps it took to find the answer. What I was looking for was that special MediaWiki URl you need to use to edit the sidebar links of your site.

Go to the bookmark I had for MediaWiki Handbook
Type [...]

That was wild.
After composing the last post on wiki stuff, I decided to try ou Send2Wiki, where I managed to post my blog entry in Italian!.
Amazing!
But ick, a flickr page… does not send very well.

Leigh Blackall has some great rumblings on his Vision for Wikieducator, starting with the rant:
The problem with wikis is that they require people to remember to contribute, stop what they’re doing, go to the wiki, click edit and retype what they wrote somewhere else already, such as in a blog, email, or other media upload [...]

It was pretty much another curious link click of serendipity last May that led me to Stewart Mader’s Wiki/Blog Using Wiki in Education. I gotta like a domain he chose that is “wiki” spelled backwards http://www.ikiw.org/.
Today Stewart is unveiling his new book/web site project Using Wiki in Education, headlined there as “A Wiki-Based Book”. I [...]

I’m just getting my feet wet with customizing MediaWiki for several NMC projects- sure it is easy to set up and install out of the box, dump the flower logo for your own, but there is sure a lot of stuff under the hood. There are a lot of flexible editing codes if you can [...]

Triggered by yesterday’s post on how one of our Spanish teachers started using PBWiki, I got a nice email from Ramit, one of the PBWiki co-founders, seeking ideas on how to “spread” the peanut butter / wiki concept to other teachers:
I also noticed you’re involved in instructional technology, so I wanted to ask your advice. [...]

Two days ago, a colleague at one of our colleges asked me what wiki software our district provides.
I responded, “none” (In Maricopa, such services are hosted at each college), but I took the opportunity to suggest that he try one of the free, externally hosted ones to experiment and flesh out some content or ideas. [...]

I had fun this afternoon helping in a wiki workshop at South Mountain Community College. “Dr Coop” is Alisa Cooper, a gem of an English teacher who pretty much tries and finds almost every new technology- in a thoughtful and effective manner. She got turned onto PBWiki last year and has been using it extensively [...]