Beyond School

[Update: I notice that I could have saved money by getting a FREE domain name when signing up with PowWeb, instead of paying $20 for two years with GoDaddy. Live and learn. Also, PowWeb needs 24 hours to set up my account before I can install WordPress MU, so hold tight. More: you can’t hear my students on this screencast - it didn’t record the Yugma-Skype conference audio. Even more: you’ll see Diigo website highlighting and annotating at work when you watch the screencast. If you don’t use it, you’re missing out. It auto-forwards your bookmarks and tags to del.icio.us (if you set it up to in preferences), and gives you annotating and highlighting and sharing power that del.icio.us itself doesn’t give. Finally *pant* - thanks to Wesley Fryer for the PowWeb tip and other advice he gave in Shanghai.)

If you’re interested in how to buy your own domain name (web address), and buy a webhost server package so you can run your own website, here’s the first of two screencasts walking Christina and Daniel, two of the Project Global Cooling members at my school, through setting up our Project Global Cooling website with WordPress MU at http://projectglobalcooling.org. The site won’t be up until we install WPMU, which we’re about to do. (Do yourself a favor and watch the large size on the Screencast-o-matic.com channel. Much easier on the eyes, and you can leave comments.)

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)

Way past bedtime, but it’s Chusok - Korean Thanksgiving holiday - and I have the week off. And I want to share this link to the prototype of the Project Global Cooling website, which we’ll migrate to its own URL next week, and permanently open up to global, student-created content for annual contributions.

I share it for two reasons: first, the theme design is an example of WordPress at its aesthetic and functional best. Refresh the page and watch the header change, for a taste of the aesthetic. And click the flags on the left, and watch - this is just magic to me - watch the language change, within the theme. This is ideal for a global collaborative project, though more than Euro-languages would be “more perfect.”

Second, a few minutes noodling around on the site should clarify the project idea for anyone unclear on it, or wanting a link to forward to others.

April 19 - Earth Day Saturday, 2008 - is still comfortably far away. Plenty of time to find a place for a concert in your area, book a few bands, and hook a few of your more visionary and creative citizen-students up with others like them around the world. Here’s the badge for our planning Ning - we’d love it if some of you could embed it on your own blogs, Facebooks, what have you. Just click for the embed code, and if you do - thanks

Visit The Global Cooling Collective

If you like this post, please spread it: (But don't tag it "education." That will bury it.)