What In Tarnation?!?!?

I think we might have reached a special level of TV heaven.

Yes. I am almost giddy.

Genius Joss Whedon is directing the genius The Office. Jenna (aka Pam) says so on her MySpace.

YES!

Class dismissed!

FYI to all bloggers who might read this, I decree:

Whereby, February is the shortest month of the year.

Whereby, it is good to establish small, realistic goals for oneself;

I hereby decree February to be A Post a Day Month.

Will you take the February challenge?

Do we need to make a logo for that? I think we do! Give me some time.

Class dismissed!

I love my Interactive White Board (IWB) or SmartBoard. From my perspective, it allows me to make lessons more interactive (surprise, surprise) and it allows me to make things more concrete for my little concrete learners. Instead of describing how I use a ruler and trying to show them by hold up a ruler and hoping everyone can see it, I can show them in a large fashion on my IWB. That is just one example. From a teacher’s perspective it helps me with classroom management. When a student is gone, I print off everything that we did and hand it to the student.

Every teacher that I have talked to who has been fortunate to get a IWB, they love theirs.

Assorted Stuff links to an article with some interesting and not so positive things to say.

It is a good reminder that nothing can replace a good teacher in the classroom. Technology can make a good situation better but it can make a bad situation worse. The article also reminds us that districts  shouldn’t just plop IWB in any ole classroom and it shouldn’t be done without proper training for teacher.

Some other articles that I dug up on Tech and Education in general that I will read later:

• UK Teachers Struggle to Find Right Place for Technology
• Too Much Technology in the Classroom?
• Classrooms Use New Gadgets
• Brick Classroom Goes High-Tech
• School Children Produce Own Podcasts
• Students Get High-Tech Advantage
• SmartBoard Make Math Easier, Students Say

All kinds of blog posts on SmartBoards…

So many posts, so little time.

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Class dismissed!

When I upgraded to WordPress 2.1 my blogrolls disappeared.

I called up the team from Without a Trace becuase they seem relatively good at solving missing persons, or in this case missing blogroll cases but for some reason they wouldn’t take my class. Hurumph!

Today when I logged into my Dashboard I noticed an article called WordPress 2.1 Gotchas and clicked to see if this was a common problem that might be listed in the article.  Sure enough it was! I tried the fix listed in the article but it messed up everything, the blog would even display but the article gave me another idea to try.

You see WordPress pre-2.1 listed blog categories and link categories separately. When I created the blogrolls I specified which catagory of links I wanted to display. If I understand correctly, with WordPress 2.1 the blogroll categories and the blog categories are listed together. In order to do that WordPress had to renumber my blogroll category ids. In the old blogroll I was calling category with the id 1. In the new WordPress that category id was now 23. So I went back to PHP tags that were working before the upgrade and change the category id from 1 to 23. Their back.

So that is something to be aware of. If you are upgrading to Ella, and you current themes have blogroll tags that specify category ids like I did then you just need to change those id numbers to the new category id numbers.

I hope someone else finds this helpful.

Class dismissed!

Those looking for what I want for my birthday, look no further.

Behold, the perfect gift:

Only the MacGyver brand. Unopend of course.

What is your idea of the perfect birthday gift for your birthday.

Speaking of birthdays…

Tomorrow (well it is 11:35 pm right now) will be Pressed’s birthday. This past year has brought all kinds of changes and excitement to his life. This will be a year he will never forget. Wonder what the next year will bring. So I need you to do me a favor. I need you to head over to Avoiding Evil, Pressed’s blog, and wish him the happiest of birthdays in his comments.

Please?

Tell him WIT sent you.

If Pressed’s happens to actually read my blog, just to let you know, your very own MacGyver Multi-tool is in the mail (no really, check your e-mail, the pressed(at)avoidingevil one). Thank me later.

Thank you readers for going to Avoiding Evil and wishing Pressed a happy birthday. You did go comment didn’t you?

Class dismissed!

…that’s because I am upgrading this blog to Ella. In other words I am upgrading to WordPress 2.1.

Here is the impressive list of upgrades, features and enhancements that Ella offers:

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

Mmmm, yummy goodness! Here’s hoping everything goes okay!

Class dismissed!

Found via Kev. I think.

Do your worst and tell me how it went in the comments.

I don’t think this is the quiz to be deciding such things. Many questions just gave you the answer practically.

Class dismissed!

Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt will be playing all four episodes tonight on the Food Network. One of my favorite shows of 2006. It all starts at 7 pm central. Good stuff. Watch it.

Now to prevent this entry from being too short on the front page a quiz that is totally unrelated to Feasting on Asphalt.

What Fantasy Archetype Are you?
The Mentor You are the prestigous Mentor! You’re akin to Gandalf (Lord of The Rings), Merlin (ARthurian Legend), Obi Wan Kenobi (Star Wars), Aslan (Narnia), Door (Neverwhere), Dumbledore (Harry Potter) and Zeddicus Zu’l Zorander (Wizard’s First Rule). You are wise and knowing, and know that there is not much time left for the Unlikely Hero to defeat The Totally Wicked Villain. Only you know the true motives and past of The Villain, so it’s up to you to teach the Unlikely Hero all he has to know. Be careful as you’ll invariably regret not telling The Unlikely Hero things sooner rather than later. You like teaching and often care very much for others.
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

What are you? Let me know in the comments.

Class dismissed!