Category Archives: Technology

Windows 8 can be fixed (and made better than Windows 7) for a mere $10

In an earlier post, I discussed my initial skepticism regarding Windows 8, but I decided to reserve judgment until I had a reasonable amount of time to play with the much-maligned new operating system. So, after five months, I’ve come to this general conclusion: the “under the hood” changes are excellent, but the default user […]

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Embracing Windows 8… Somewhat

The inner geek in me couldn’t resist. For $40, I had to try the upgrade of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 8, on my desktop computer. I’m not unhappy with Windows 7 – it’s a very solid OS – but I wanted to try something new, and see for myself what has become a virtual […]

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The Rip Van Winkle Effect: Back in the Classroom after Eight Years

Last September I knew I had to make a change, and so I took the plunge and moved back into the classroom after eight years in distance learning. I decided to leave DL because I really missed the classroom. I wanted to work face-to-face with students again, and embrace the challenges and rewards that come […]

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Skydrive: Slowly Working My Way to the Cloud

I haven’t been very keen to embrace the “cloud”, but in the last few days I’ve witnessed how simple and useful it can be. Two days ago I downloaded Microsoft’s new Skydrive app to both my laptop and my home desktop computer. By allowing me to seamlessly synchronize data, this app extends the capacity and […]

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Students Consider the Future of Education

One of the more useful educational tools on the Web, especially for teachers of language arts, is the blog. As a platform for authentic communication, the blog offers students a relatively simple and convenient way to express their thoughts, archive those thoughts for the future, and, if desired, converse with others over issues that matter […]

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Back to the Future with Technology

One of the personal ironies of the current push to “21st century learning” is that I would be happy to return to the technology of the 1990’s. Back in those halcyon days, when I lived and worked in a small community along the Alaska border, our tiny rural school had one bookable computer lab fitted […]

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A Few Tweets with Baldrey

Twitter is an interesting technology that I’ve just started to use in the last four months (@grapemanca). So far, it has been a wonderful way to save, share and collect valuable links to fast-breaking stories. Not so useful is its capacity for discussion. Trying to follow a conversation between two other people is very difficult, […]

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Wisdom at the Movies

I watch too many movies. There… I’ve admitted it. While others are reading books or debating the great issues of life at sophisticated dinner parties – or so I imagine – I’m enraptured by the latest Hollywood epic playing on my Blu-Ray and magnified through a large-screen projector and 5.1 surround sound system. As guilty […]

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Converting PowerPoint to Flash

As more people try to downsize their business paraphernalia,  lugging around a laptop from meeting to meeting is becoming less desirable. However, how do you deliver your PowerPoint presentation with something less than a fully-enabled laptop? One solution is to turn your PowerPoint  into  an online and interactive Flash video. Online Flash presentations will allow […]

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Create a WordPress Entry with Word 2010

If you’re not a fan of the online text-entry tool provided by WordPress, and you want to create your blog entry locally with a rich text editor, then Microsoft Office’s Word 2010 is an excellent option. Word 2010 offers a blogging tool with most of the same functions as Word’s standard text editor, and it […]

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