Throw Out The Manual

plugin

Adding Tweets in Wordpress

I've become pretty accustomed to taking screenshots anytime I wanted to talk about something someone posted on Twitter. Of course there's Storify which is cool in its own right, but I can't say that creating a new "story" and searching for tweets,

art

Touch of Evil: Cinematic Villains

Alex Prager has a series of video portraits on the New York Times that is absolutely haunting and excellent. I love the idea of using a minute or so of film to capture an idea, a portrait, with stunning visuals. It adds a layer of cinematography to a portrait that

bbedit

Choosing a Text Editor

One of the things I love so far about the P2PU course I'm taking is that it starts at the very basics and forces me to address things that I skipped over when I was self-learning HTML and CSS years ago. One of those tasks was finding the

html

Writing HTML by Hand

This was the next assignment in the P2PU Webcraft course. I can honestly say I didn't have to much of a struggle with this one. Obviously writing with a pen is difficult. Which slash is correct, forward or back? I only know where the key is on the

diy

Embarking on the P2PU School of Webcraft

I was inspired by Alan Liddell's latest post where he has started working on the P2PU course "School of Webcraft" and thought "Why the hell not?!" You see my experience with HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, etc all stems from a DIY attitude of learning

conference

VSTE 2011 is coming!

Tomorrow morning I head out to the 2011 VSTE Annual Conference. VSTE stands for the Virginia Society for Technology in Education and is probably the largest gathering of educational technologists in this state. It's hard to believe that this will be my 5th year at the conference. In

media

Expanding the Media Network at DTLT

Back in July shortly after starting my job at UMW I began talking to Jim about the possibility of doing a video podcast. It would have to be something that wasn't relatively long, but a daily thing where we'd reflect on all manner of subjects. I

development

I <3 Gravity Forms

The more I use Gravity Forms for Wordpress here at UMW, the more I am constantly impressed by such a full-featured and flexible plugin. This is not some shill paid post. I've used Wordpress for 5 years now developing sites and themes and my discovery of Gravity Forms

soda

SodaStream comes to DTLT Today

2 weeks ago I just happened to be thinking about items you could buy that would end up "paying for themselves" in some way. You always here about items like programmable thermostats that end up saving enough money in the short term to be worth the investment. I

3d

MakerBots in Education

[caption id="attachment_306" align="aligncenter" width="580" caption="Image Credit: Bre Pettis"][/caption] Have you ever heard of a MakerBot? It's a 3D printer that basically "prints" melted plastic onto layers, building almost any digital model into

ds106

You Are Cordially Invited

### Dear DS106, You are cordially invited to attend a midnight showing of a 1987 Christmas Classic, "A Muppet Family Christmas" in honor of the holidays. IMDB gives the storyline as follows: > When Fozzie and the Muppet Show gang drop in unexpectedly on Fozzie's mother, she

Test Post

This is just one of those pesky test posts to see if some additional, yet to be revealed, functionality is actually working. Please disregard.

change11

Where is the "Change"?

"MOOCs are all about messing with boundaries, barriers, and silos." In May of this year George Siemens announced the "Mother of all MOOCs", appropriately titled Change. The philosophy is sound: Why have a single person or even small set of people delivering course content when we

alumni

Custom Post Types in Wordpress with Gravity Forms

We recently discovered the great premium plugin Gravity Forms at DTLT from the web group at UMW who purchased it to use with the redesigned UMW.edu site (running completely on Wordpress!). One amazing feature of gravity forms is that it allows you to create a form that, when a

The 7:30 Project

[S]o Andy Rush came up with a great idea, document all the off-the-wall things I come up with in the early hours of the morning when I get to work. You see, for the time being my wife and I are commuting to Fredericksburg from Richmond. Since she likes

audio

This American Life Sex Tape

This is possibly the best parody I've heard, and I think it's a perfect example of how students can use just audio to create a compelling new narrative.

apple

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

Today, just one day after announcing a slew of new gadgets and showing off yet more amazing software that seems futuristic, Apple replaced their homepage with an image none of us wanted to see. At the age of 58, Steve Jobs lost his battle with cancer and passed away. I&

DesignAssignments

Born This Way

The great @scottlo is back on the radio and doing some great things, one of them being timed #ds106 assignment. ~24 minutes where he plays a few songs and challenges you to finish an assignment. Don't think, just make. I saw it this morning and rose to the

DesignAssignments

Going Home

I grew up in a small town called Fairborn that was situated close to Dayton, Ohio. We moved when I was 11 and haven't been back in a very long time. From what I understand the town is suffering with job loss and many folks having moved out

DesignAssignments

Where did that guy come from?!

Spending some time this evening in Photoshop with another fun ds106 assignment. Pretty basic, photoshop a guy into odd scenes. I'm focusing on film scenes. Enter our volunteer stage left: Photo courtesy of Rob Let the games begin.... I've got quite a few more planned, but

DesignAssignments

Math is hard

You know what's cooler than a million dollars? Me neither.

DesignAssignments

Sorting Hat

The Messing with MacGuffin asks you to choose a pivotal point in a movie and alter the plot with a single line. It turns out to be a hell of a lot of fun!

brainstorming

Collective Collaboration

These are notes we took at the DTLT office yesterday while brainstorming ideas for 2 courses we have the opportunity to create for the Spring Semester under the American Studies discipline of the History Department at UMW. But yesterday we did things differently. Rather than simply erasing the whiteboard and

images

Writing through Media

I was browsing Reddit and came across this image which I post here not because I think it's so hilarious it's worth a blog post, but rather it has my mind spinning on the realization of why an image like this exists. In the Age of

Media U

A few weeks ago when I started playing around with Wowza for streaming I started thinking about the value iTunes U offers for the University. We have an iTunes U server on campus that never really got much action, in part because it was nothing more than a Linux box