Web 2.0 Tool: Numbr

It’s been a while since I’ve signed up for a Web 2.0 tool. I think I’ve been going through some kind of withdrawal symptoms. Thankfully, I have a very cool and useful tool to pass along this time.

On more than one occasion, I’ve had to chaperone an overnight trip with a small group of students. Though I wanted all the students (and other chaperones – be they parents or teachers) to be able to get in touch with me in an emergency, I was hesitant to give out my personal cell number to a group of high school kids. Not because I didn’t trust any one of them, but because I know how kids (and sometimes parents!) are by nature. I always had this bizarre, uncomfortable feeling about letting my phone number be programmed into a student’s cell phone.

Enter numbr. You know it’s Web 2.0 since there’s no final ‘e.’ Numbr allows you to create a temporary phone number that forwards to your real one and, by default, expires after one month. According to their fact sheet, numbr’s vision is to keep communications from being crippled due to privacy concerns.

I’ve not yet tried numbr, but the next time I take a group of high school students out of town I’ll definitely be giving it a try.

(via LifeHacker)

Does this theme make my blog look fat?

I loved the Grid Focus theme that I’ve been tweaking for a bit, but no matter how many times I looked at my blog, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was just a bit stark for my tastes. While I love Derek‘s design and the cleanness of the layout, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that my blog wasn’t – well – Me. Combine that with Scott and Jeff who missed my header image, and I just had to come up with something else.

After spending much of the weekend looking at a myriad of 3-column WordPress themes, I think I’ve found one that will really work for me. Right now, I’m using OceanBech 1.0 (sic) – a 3-column, Widget-ready theme by AskGraphics.com.

I’ve made a few changes so far, namely replacing the tropical paradise in their header image with the mountains from my town, but that’s the limit of my tweaking to date. I have another idea in mind for the Grid Focus theme, but for now I think I’ll keep this one. On the to-do list right now is fixing the CSS for the “About” and “Colophon” pages. Oh – and figuring out why every post shows the same date… (I say that as if I have any idea where to start…)

We had a good run

Bad NewsPerhaps I shouldn’t have blogged about it – I may have jinxed it. Sadly, the miraculous parting of the firewall that has allowed me to use Skype and Google Talk for the last two or three weeks appears to have come to an untimely end. On my return to my office today, I found neither application able to connect to the outside world.

Evidently it was as I suspected: A fluke. An accident. It was a “hole” that has now been “patched.” Ugh!

I shouldn’t take it that badly, I suppose. I heard from my friend in another state that his district has blocked access to Flickr!

Web 2.0 Tool: Timeline

Timeline [Cross-posted at the West Tech Blog]

I have started listening to the net@nite podcast on TWiT and this morning I was listening to the Easter Sunday episode on the way to work. One of the callers mentioned a very cool tool called Timeline which is a part of MIT’s SIMILE Project. (Evidently, SIMILE is an acronym for Semantic Interoperability of Metadata and Information in unLike Environments.)

Of course, don’t let all that detract you from the coolness that is Timeline. When I heard the site mentioned on the show, I immediately Jotted myself a note to check it out when I got to work and I must say that I’m very impressed.

According to the site, Timeline is "like Google Maps for time-based information." If that doesn’t mean anything to you, check it out for yourself and peruse some of the sample time lines. One of the sample time lines depicts the events immediately following the assassination of JFK, another the life of impressionist painter Claude Monet. Yet another example (recommended for viewing on a large monitor!) depicts the different prehistoric eras and the dinosaurs that populated the earth during each. Imagine the possibilities!

What I especially like is the ability to click on any of the data points and add text or images. This isn’t a full review because I haven’t played with it that much, but I wanted to pass along something I think may be a valuable Web 2.0 tool for education.

As the school year is winding down, I thought Timeline would be a great tool to capture students’ interest for the last few weeks. There is plenty of documentation making it simple for both teachers and students to create interactive time lines.

Resources: Two new posts on WestDev

Back from Spring Break this week and it’s been crazy! I’ve spent Monday and Tuesday putting together a couple of new resources for our Internet Study today so I wanted to share them with you. They’ve been done before (and done better, no doubt!), but I’ve put together a "Why use Firefox" post and a basic "Intro to del.icio.us" post for our group. Of course as always you’re welcome to hack them up for your own purposes.

Hope you find some use in these resources I’ve cobbled together.