January 9-13, 2011

Monday - Office
Tuesday - State Tech Meeting
Wednesday - Office/Open
Thursday - Office/Open
Friday - Office

Monday: I spent the morning working on several projects.  First, I helped get our bookkepper's office back in order after the floor waxing over the weekend.  Yes, I did that last Monday, too. Only this time, we had a different set of rooms to set back to rights because the floor guy didn't realize his key would open all the doors.  I started working on our Moodle server to add content (create a course).  During that, my Director came in and wanted help with her iPad2 - FaceTime, accounts, etc.

I went back to Moodle to finish creating the course I am working on.  We are moving the TIE program modules from word/pdf handouts to a mixed-mode enviroment for in-class/asynchronous professional development.  Basically, the courses are taught in a classroom setting and we use Moodle for content delivery and online discussion during the course.  The State requires 6 hours of "seat time" for professional development, so this is a way to get the physical requirement taken care of while letting the participants have the freedom to complete many of the tasks at their own pace.  During the course of the day (most are 1-day sessions), the facilitator brings the group back together for in-class discussion.  This is the first time we are trying this arrangment, and I'm anxious to see how it all plays out this summer.

While working on the Moodle course (we will have dozens uploaded/modified before a February meeting), I met with our Early childhood coordinator about Apple Volume Licensing.  We bought some vouchers, and now just have to wait for them to be delivered before we can redeem them.  Seriously!? In today's age of full-on electrnic purchasing, why on earth does Apple may you buy phyiscal vouchers to redeem!?  Ugh.

After that was done, I returned to the Moodle module.  One area of concern raised up as forums and discussions.  As it turns out, "Guest Access" is not available for those sections.  There are two solutions: 1) Require each user to sign up for access, or 2) do not hold online discussions and make them in-class only.  We're not sure which route we're taking yet.  The whole state has several statewide Moodle-based rollouts, and requiring participants to register on each of the Moodle servers is a bit much, in my opinion.

Oh, I forgot, I also worked on a user's Google Calendar.  The events would show up on her phone, iPad, etc, but not in the online calendar.  The problem? It was hidden online.  In "My Calendars," the user has de-selected the default calendar.  I reselected the box, and everything showed up. Awesome!

Now, lunch break and the rest of the afternoon (for Monday)!

While working on modules for Moodle, I encountered a few .pages files that were created on a Mac.  I am using a PC and my MacBook doesn't have Pages on it, so I was a bit stumped as to what to do (short of asking the author to export them as PDF).  Instead, here is a solution:  change the extension to .ZIP and open the files with Winzip or whatever.  Inside there, you will find a folder called "QuickLook." Inside Quicklook, you will find a PDF of the .pages document!  Bingo!  Copy and paste the content, and you should be good to go.