Author: grabe

Sometimes things can’t be fixed.

The drive in one of my Macs crashed. These things happen. I thought I had backed things up, but you always find something you missed. One of the first things I have discovered is that I did not understand how iWeb stores the web content a user creates. I know where the pages are in my .Mac account and where they are on my personal server. I did not consider where the pages might be on my desktop machine.

It turns out the files are stored in what seems a really obscure place – the “Application Support” folder within the Library. This is my first experience with the Application Support folder. The logic of this approach escapes me – other products one creates seem destined for an appropriately named folder (documents, music, movies, sites) and the content is not hidden within a subfolder of the Library.

Anyway, here is why it matters. iWeb uses something called a “domain” file to organize the pieces of your web site (the pages, objects, etc.). You have access to all of the pieces with the exception of the domain file on the server. The problem is that without this domain file, iWeb cannot open individual web pages. The organizational file is not unique to iWeb. GoLive (my favorite web authoring tool – my reaction to Adobe giving up on GoLive instead of Dreamweaver is another issue) uses a .site file. What GoLive does that iWeb does not is to allow web site “pieces” to be imported into a newly defined site. One can build a new site from parts of an old site. This appears to not be possible with iWeb. In my situation, I will probably have to create a new site and then cut and paste pieces (images, segments of text) in an attempt to recreate the old version of the site.

Unless you happen to be an iWeb/iLife user this will not make much sense. However, if you work with iWeb my misfortunate may be useful to you. Add the iWeb folder within Application Support to the list of folders you back up on a regular basis.

The “issue” I encountered with iWeb made me realize some related limitations. iWeb is not a tool for collaboration. iWeb becomes cumbersome if one is accustomed to working from multiple machines. While the design of iWeb may explain such limitations, some method for importing web resources would be very useful.

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KidPix Podcast

One of my favorite software discoveries from NECC was MacKiev’s KidPix 3.x.

We go way back with KidPix. KidPix helped Cindy convince the school board that Macs (the LC) were the way to go when computers were first purchased for Grand Forks elementary classrooms. Our second grade daughter created a Kid Pix project (she colored a line art drawing of a dinosaur, recorded a song about dinosaurs, and typed in the lyrics of the song) as a demonstration. She entered the text as a something to do as the meeting progressed without our suggestion. At the time, it was a very impressive demonstration of multimedia authoring (we still include her “dinosaur project” image in the forward to our book).

We created a slide show before we knew what such things were called and before the feature was added to KidPix. The procedure was a little complicated – it required that KidPix pict files be attached to individual cards of a HyperCard stack, audio had to be extracted from the KidPix files (using Resedit) and added to the HyperCard stack, and the stack had to be activated by a script we hacked together and attached to each card so that stack the entire collection would automatically play. (I still miss HyperCard.)

I think KidPix got kind of buggy and there were some strange things going on with which company was actually upgrading and selling the product (I am still confused because you can purchase two versions).

I am an advocate again. We ran across a new KidPix feature at NECC (the MacKiev update to version 3) that we like. You can now export a KidPix slideshow as a podcast. I find the idea of second graders creating podcasts a little freaky, but why not.

A simple example (turn up the volume). This is playing as a Quicktime file (podcast size) within a web page – I thought this would be easier than sending as a podcast.

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The World of Educational Software is Flat

OK – my title is a derivative. In his book (by a similar name), Tom Friedman describes when he discovered the world was flat. I think this conference represents the time point at which I realize the world of educational software is flat. Now I understand that MacKiev is not a company located somewhere in Idaho. Now I understand that the “international types” do not all attend NECC to learn what folks in the U.S. are doing.

The person who described the feature of KidPix that allows podcasting was a software engineer from the Ukraine (very cool – more on that later – by the way this is MacKiev). The woman showing the best document camera I have seen (Wolf Vision) was from Austria. EducationCity is from England (I have this strange image of these electrons running through a cable across the Atlantic. One electron with an angry look on his face turns to the other and says – “North Dakota, again?”)

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Different faces, different places

We meet some of the students from Fultondale, Alabama, while waiting for the fireworks to being on Tuesday. They were engaging in a little competition to see who could invite the most adults to their Thursday morning showcase session. They were mature and polite and seemed excited about being at the conference to share their technology experiences.

Fultondale

We did attend the student showcase and reintroduced ourselves to the student who had invited us. He then explained the different parts of their exhibit and described their epals projects (check out the link from the web site). I said I would blog their presentation – so here is a “shout out” to the students in Mrs. Ramsey’s class.

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Outside Aisle 2006

Vendor

My reason for posting this image requires an explanation. Over the years in which I have attended NECC, I have become interested in the vendors who populate the outside aisle. Vendors purchase different areas of the arena floor for different prices and the small and lower price spots are around the outside. The vendors who purchase the smaller and less central locations often seem to have a single product and are not well established. I admire these folks. Gaining attention must not be easy, but where do we expect new ideas to come from? So here is to those small companies with big dreams.

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Beyond the Textbook

I attended a session entitled “Beyond the Textbook” because I am interested in the future of books as educational resources in a digital era. It was a panel presentation and as panel presentations go a few interesting things were said, but it was difficult to pick up themes within so many perspectives.

I did pick up on an interesting resource – a special issue of Threshold (Cable in the Classroom) on this topic. I read parts of some of the articles while listening (multitasking) and bookmarked for future review.

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