Step by Step Guide to Installing BuddyPress
At the request of my friend Silvia Tolisano I have decided to put together a step by step tutorial for installing Buddypress for you do-it-yourselfers out there. However, if this process seems to complicated to even attempt I will help anyone, that’s right anyone install Buddypress via a Skype session or two. That’s how much I am committed to open-source! If you are interested in having me help you set up Buddypress just contact me.
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Browse to http://mu.wordpress.org. Click the download button on the front page.
Download the latest copy to your computer. |
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Open upyour web host’s Cpanel and open the file manager. Once you are in the file manager, browse to the public_html directory. |
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Now click upload and browse to the file that you just downloaded |
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Find the .zip file in the public_html directory. Check the box next to the file and click the extract button on the top tool bar. This will extract the contents of the .zip file into its own directory. |
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Find the directory that you just extracted and rename it to whatever you want, something like IAMUNBELIEVABLYCOOL would make a pretty cool URL. |
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Now that you have the folder in the correct place, you need to create a database for the information to live. Go back to the Cpanel and click on MySQL Databases. |
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Create a new database for your installation. Be sure to give it a name that makes sense to you and that you will remember. |
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Add your database user to the database you just made. If you don’t have any users set up you will need to make one, which you can do from the same page. |
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Give this user full control over the database by checking the All Privileges box. |
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Now everything is set up on the backend and you just need to tell your WPMU installation the information it needs. So now browse to the URL of the directory you created. It will be whatever name you gave to the WordPress-mu folder. |
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I recommend you chose the sub-directories option because it is the easier set up. If you want your addresses to be sub-domains you will have to a a wildcard record to your domain using the IP address of your server. Sound complicated? Use subdirectories. Fill in the information about your database. Remember that there will be a prefix related to your primary address that you have. Look at my screenshot. |
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The server address should be filled in for you. Change the site title and add your email, then click submit. |
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Login to the backend of the WordPress installation by clicking on the button and entering the password that was generated for you. On the left hand side of the dashboard you will see a tab marked Plugins. Click it, then click add new. Type Buddypress into the search bar and find the Buddypress plugin. Click install. |
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Select the Buddypress theme from the themes page and you are running BP! |
May 14, 2010 15 Comments
Projects Roundup: Poetry Portfolio with Carbonmade
I have been doing a poetry portfolio for years. Each year students produce a collection of original works as part of a unit where we learn about verse. Students are encouraged to express themselves while they create this collection and include original artwork, photography and other artifacts. When they are completed these collections have traditionally been something to behold and something that students could take with them. This year I really wanted to move the project into the digital realm for a couple of reasons: 1. I thought that more kids, including the ones who are not traditionally engaged in this exercise might get interested, 2. the digital portfolio is quite a bit more portable than the paper version, given that students only need to share a URL. So the first step in the process for me was to find the proper medium, and I had a few requirements.
- I wanted the collection to look and behave like a book, meaning that students would be able to virtually ‘flip’ through the collection.
- I wanted the collections to have a URL that was simple so that students could easily share it.
- I wanted the technology to be web-based, so that it was platform neutral and easy to use with any computer.
After considering many options and consulting with my PLN I settled upon Carbonmade, mainly because it met those requirements above but also because of their quirky design aesthetic. I looked at some of the exemplars that were posted on the website and thought they looked great, also the folks at Carbonmade were also quite receptive to the project when I tweeted about it so I was sold.
The only issue I had with the project is that I was asking the website to do something it wasn’t intended to do. Carbonmade’s primary cliental are artists and photographers, so at the moment the site is only equipped to handle picture files. The process of converting words to pictures is a somewhat complicated one, even for some digital natives but there are a number of different ways to do it. Here are some of the methods we used.
- If you are using a word processor on a Mac you can print to .pdf, then open the .pdf with Preview and save as a .jpeg.
- You can use Notebook from Smarttech on any platform, then file/export/image files.
- If you are using Windows you can use MS Publisher and save as .jpeg.
- You can use OpenOffice Draw on any platform then file/export/jpeg
- I have also used an online tool called Zamzar with a lot of success. This website will convert nearly every file type there is.
Other than some of the hiccups students had with converting the words into images I think the project was a success. Here are some examples of student projects.
http://myportfolioofcharacters.carbonmade.com/
http://josephspoems.carbonmade.com/
http://mypoemsonline.carbonmade.com/
Just like any paper project, just make sure that students know what your expectations for them are by giving them a rubric and examples. If you have any questions about this project let me know.
May 5, 2010 5 Comments
Should I Abandon Public Education?
Last week was a hard week to be a public educator. Between what is happening locally and nationally my frustration level is at an all time high. At a local level, my school like many other schools across the country has been hit by extraordinary cuts in state aide. I teach in a very small and rural school that is heavily dependent on that aid because of a small tax base. In the ten years I have been here I have seen a technology program go from two teachers to one, an art program go from two teachers to one, a home and careers program go from two teachers to one half-time teacher, and I have seen this district hire and fire at least three different physics teachers because of budget constraints. Beyond the budget woes, there have been a slew of other news items that have dishearted this normally stalwart advocate for public education. Take a look at this ad:
The tagline of this ad is “Stop listening to teacher’s unions“, and it ends with the line: “and make decisions that are gonna benefit the kids.” Put these two line together and you come up with teachers (who are represented by unions) do not make decisions that benefit kids. Maybe I’m feeling over sensitive, but this ad punched me in the gut. This ad follows on the coat tails of a front page story that was run in the Syracuse newspaper entitled: Recession doesn’t hold back Central New York teachers’ raises , normally I could have just shrugged this off as inflammatory yellow journalism written to sell copies, but look at the comments that appear below the article. Here is an example of one.
Unions are powerfull ------Better take a look around -----Who's going to pay taxes when all the business go south or go out of business .Oh by the way I think there should be a new law ----like school kids who don't own property or pay taxes shouldn't be voting on issues of school taxes. Teachers butter up the kids and get them out to vote. Same kids who vote get educated here and leave town.
These are the opinions of my neighbors who feel free to express their honest opinions under the protection of anonymity, and it seems that the only comments coming to the defense of teachers are written by teachers.
Where am I going with this rant you might ask? Certainly teachers have been under fire before as spoiled over paid babysitters. Well now I am a dad. My son is two and a half 
and I have begun to contemplate his education. These sentiments that I have mentioned above, coupled with the budget constraints, coupled with accountability pressures on the state and national level, coupled with unreasonable moral expectations are driving talented young teaching prospects away from the profession. All of us know that greatest variable to have an impact on a child’s education is the classroom teacher and passionate teachers take this stuff personally, how many will be left in 2 1/2 years? My son loves art and music and these seem to be the first programs to get the axe when school budgets get tight, will I have to pay for private lessons? Does this mean that arts programs become the exclusive purview of the rich?
Should I abandon public education and home school my son?
May 1, 2010 3 Comments
Student Bloggers Wanted! No Rent, Free Parking!
I have some students who expressed an interest in blogging just for the sake of writing, not for a grade. Initially I had about fifteen interested students but that number has dwindled down to four or five students who consistently post. If you have students interested in blogging but for whatever reason have not set one up, or perhaps the prospect of administering a student blog seemed overwhelming I have a deal for you. I already have a blog set up and running. I have quit a bit of experience blogging personally and with students. I have hardcore spam protection set up. I will administer, moderate and commentate on the posts. If you have students interested in blogging they are welcome to join my students (who are desperate for other writers to interact with). Registration is open. All high school students are welcome. Just direct your browser to this address and click register. http://www.rogersenglish9.com/studentvoice
April 25, 2010 6 Comments
Black Cloud: What Educators Could Learn From Ning’s Swan Song
Panic struck my PLN yesterday as it was announced that Ning would no longer be hosting free social networks. My friends and colleagues, some of whom have extremely large Ning communities were left wondering what was going to happen to all of that positive networking that was happening. Luckily my PLN is made up of educators who are the masters of Plan B and before I went to sleep I saw tens of alternatives to Ning being discussed on Twitter. While the crisis is probably just a nuisance at this point it is important to reflect on this situation so that we don’t get ourselves caught up in it again.
Web 2.0 technologies like Ning are attractive to creative educators because they are free to set up, but we need to remember that nothing is really free. Ning is a company that had investors that paid real money to get it started. These investors of course are not philanthropists, they want a return for their investment. When you boil it all down there are really only a handful of ways to make money with a website. You either make money with advertisement, charge a subscription to use it, or use it to sell stuff. Ning was attempting to make money with advertisement but I have a distinct recollection of some educators griping about Nings with ads and asking the company to make special arrangements for educators, which I think that they did for a while. Many of us just believed that Ning was allowing us to use their software and server space out of the kindness of their hearts, which yesterday became clear wasn’t the case.
I don’t fault Ning for wanting to make money. I fault them for a flawed business plan and for making special dispensations when the shouldn’t have. I also question the ethics of what looks like a bait and switch scheme. Let’s look at another website we all use that also announced a plan to make money this week, Twitter. Some of us have griped about the prospect of seeing sponsored tweets in our stream, and we may lament the eventual loss of some of our favorite software, but the bottom line is that the user experience is going to remain mostly the same. It may even improve. Imagine if Twitter had instead announced this week that it was going to start charging its users per month, or per tweet. I think that the reaction would have been quite different.
So what can we learn from this experience? We can learn what we have always known, that it is never about the tool! We have to be careful never to fall in love with or rely too heavily on one tool, or it could end up betraying you like Mollie did Junior year. It always has to be about what the tool does. To that end educators need to constantly make themselves aware of alternatives to what they are using. Luckily we don’t have to do it on our own. This PLN is filled with people constantly scouring the Internet for resources and sharing them with all of us. We just need to make sure that if we don’t click on that link, or read that review that we at least bookmark it and look at it later. We need to insist that our professional development never has the name of a tool in the title like “How to use website X”, instead the PD titles should read more like “Strategies for Critical thinking” or “Teach Your Students to Problem Solve”. These PD sessions should give you a menu of tools to use, so that you can choose what best works for you. But the learning should never focus on the tool, because as we learned yesterday if you are married to the tool you could be in for a messy divorce!
April 16, 2010 2 Comments
Digital Storytelling with Animoto: My Teachmeet Presentation
This past Friday I delivered my first virtual presentation via Skype at Teechmeet Nashville 2010. My presentation was about digital storytelling using Animoto. Here are the resources if you are interested in using the project or adapting it for your class.
Here is the project and the rubric. – the students don’t create the story per se, instead they make judgements about what they have read by choosing media that reflect their interpretation. The most important part of the project is for the students to explain these judgements.
Here are two examples of the finished project. Students were required to present the project and explain the choices they made.
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
This is one that a student made after reading The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe.
Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.
This is one that a student made after reading The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant.
I thought that the presentation went alright, I was a little nervous about it because it was my first virtual presentation and I was never really sure how the audience was responding. But I think it went over well and I heard someone mention Animoto during Steven Anderson’s speech so someone thought it was useful. I really think I have witnessed the future of professional development with Teachmeet. Everyone was there because they wanted to be there, neither the presenters, nor the participants got any money. It was clear that everyone that was there was willing and eager to learn something. I was completely inspired.
April 5, 2010 12 Comments