Show Me What’s Wrong

My other great find in the last few weeks is Show Me What’s Wrong!

I get people asking me to help them know what to do to fix something wrong with their computer but they are most often not nearby to physically show them or people would like to be shown how to do stuff on their computer. With Show Me What’s Wrong you can make a drop dead easy video screen capture with your voice explaining what to do as you go. Show Me What’s Wrong then emails a link to it to yourself or the other person telling them to view the screencast you just did.

The whole procedure is so simple and easy to do. Once the person views your video they can download it for further reference as it is not archived and will be deleted from their servers in seven days.

Here is a You Tube video explaining it better….

I have used it a couple of times already and it’s brilliant.

Publish your own book on your blog.

This last week I have been thinking more and more about going back to school and the things we might learn to do and projects to undertake. I have found a couple of cool tools over the holidays that are well worth sharing.

Here is the first…

http://www.youblisher.com/

With this little tool you quickly upload a pdf and voila- you have an embeddable book for your blog.

(If you’re on an Apple and you want to make a pdf go FILE – PRINT – Then look in the bottom left of the box you see and it will say PDF, click and go SAVE AS PDF. If you’re on a PC look in my Delicious for a downloadable pdf converter that suits you.)

Using it on my class blog for our first newsletter I made my font size very big so you wouldn’t have to zoom in to read the text. You can flip and turn the pages, download and print it off. Here is an instructional pdf I have been revisiting getting ready for a foray to visit @inneskennard country in March.

How to make a Blogger blog

Click on the graphic to see it in action- page turn icons are down the bottom right hand corner!

365 Photo Project

Imagine if you will- it’s New Year’s morning and most people have retired for the night but a few of us on Twitter were hatching a plan. The plan started a little after midnight and finished, for me anyway, after 3am. That’s how long it took me to get started and be inspired by Chrissy Hellyer and Jude O’Connell to start a 365 Photo blog.

The idea is that you take a photo a day and post it on the web. I thought I would explore a different blogging platform that I hadn’t used before to avoid changing log ins. Some might say I have overdone this blogging thing with a family blog, a class blog, this edublog, the bling4yrblog, our podcast, microblogging with Twitter, Facebook. Linked In– whatever.

I chose WordPress to host my photos. With Jude’s prompting I chose the duotone theme from WordPress. The theme itself misses a few features that I would like but the great thing about it is that it samples your photos and automatically selects a similar coloured background. So here it is- now I’ve gone public I will HAVE to keep it going.  http://allanahphoto.wordpress.com/

allanahphoto.wordpress.com-2010-01-17-end-of-the-day.pdf
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

Here is a sample of how one of the photos looks in the theme. The duotone theme has a couple of limitations in that you can only post one image per post, it only allows three widgets and to get to a previous photo you click on the forward arrow- but you can’t have it all manuka!

The whole thing has gathered momentum and I am keen- not only because I have always loved taking photos but mainly because of the support and encouragement given by everyone in my blogroll who comments on my photos.

In a school context I am going to ask the children contribute in a similar sort of way to http://365project.org/. This was another platform that I started with but let go. Using this we get post every day and children can share their successes as they learn how to take better photographs.

In the past I have tried to keep a written diary but always lost interest- I think the thing that will keep me going with this project is having an authentic audience. The people who are also doing the project with us are awesome and give me a reason to keep trying.

My next step is to re-join the Nelson Camera Club.