I think this video is a great illustration of how much snow fell and how it effects everything.

What small events can you capture and share with others? What is important in your life? If you find it important, interesting, funny, touching, chances are someone else will too.

Now get out there and make some media!

Real World Example: Sharing with others – Blizzard video is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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• Q: How do I easily backup my WordPress database (the file that holds all your posts, comments, etc). Why should you backup your WordPress Database? If not, am I in danger of losing all my blog posts due to hacking, upgrade issues or other technical mistakes?.
• A: Yes, failing to backup your WordPress database could lead to the loss of all your blog content if there is an issue. There are a variety of ways to backup your WordPress database. The usual method is to use the database manager page at your web host’s site to manually run a backup to a text file and then download the text file. Doesn’t sound very easy or fun, does it. When I switched over to WordPress a few years ago I was determined to find an easier, and more automatic way, to do backups.

  Enter WordPress Database Backup, a free WordPress plugin available from austinmatzko.com.

  On each of your self-hosted WordPress blogs, download and install this plugin and then activate it via the WordPress Dashboard. Once installed, you can force an immediate backup that can be downloaded to your local computer or, and I prefer this method, an automatic backup which wakes up and then emails the backup file. I keep a separate Gmail account just for this purpose.

  Now, whenever there is a WordPress upgrade, I check to make sure there was a recent automatic backup and then proceed with the upgrade, secure in the knowledge that all my content is safe.
  

Do you have a question? Why not drop me a line? Use the Comments link above, send email to me@douglasewelch.com or call the voice mail line at 818-804-5049

Question: How do I make automatic backups of my WordPress blog database? is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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• Q: How do I set up a WordPress or WordPress.com blog to use a static page as the opening screen instead of a list of blog posts?
• A: I first turned to the WordPress Codex to give me some guidance on this. You can read more in this here – Creating a static front page.

  Basically, you create the WordPress Page you would like to act as the front page for the site. Put your home page content here. Then, create another page and name it Blog, Posts, or whatever else makes sense to you. You need not add anything to this page, as it is only a placeholder to contain the usual posts you would see in a more typical WordPress blog.

  Next, from the WordPress Dashboard, select Settings, Reading. Under the first option on that page (Front page displays) select the radio button next to “A static page”. Then in the popup menus immediately below that, under Front Page, select the page you created to act as the new front page. Under the Posts page, select the second page you created named Blog, Posts, etc. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the blue “Save Changes” button.

  Now when people visit your blog, they will see the static page you defined. You will need to include a link to the Posts page in the sidebar or header in order to allow people to access your blog posts.
  

Do you have a question? Why not drop me a line? Use the Comments link above, send email to me@douglasewelch.com or call the voice mail line at 818-804-5049

Question: How do I set up a WordPress blog with a static page as the home page? is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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The Problem

My friend was trying to modify an existing theme on her WordPress blog and one thing she really wanted was to expand the theme to include 3 column, instead of just 2. I have often had the same desire for more sidebar space, so I could understand why she wanted to do this.

Using the WordPress Admin interface she had entered into the Appearance area and clicked Editor to access the php and HTML code that underlies all WordPress themes. In editing one of these files though, she made a coding mistake, or a typo, and suddenly she could no longer access the Admin pages for her WordPress blog and trying to access the blog itself resulted in a terse, one line error. Oh Oh! Of course, having “been there and done that” I knew what had to be done to get things working again.

First, let me offer a word of advice that can help to limit the effects of a problem like this, should you ever want or need to poke around in your WordPress Theme files. When you are editing these files, you are editing the LIVE files on your existing web site.  This means any changes you make take effect immediately. Since some of the theme files effect the Admin pages as well, you can find yourself locked out of your own, now broken, blog.

Whenever you are editing a file, ensure that you have a clean, unedited copy of the file somewhere on your hard drive. Usually, if you downloaded this theme, you will still have the original files there. If you are making a series of changes, you can also keep a local copy of the file as you make changes. This can be down by downloading the file from your web site, or copying and pasting the contents of the file into a text editor on your system. Doing this gives you a fallback point should anything go wrong.

Now, what do you do when things go wrong? First, you should still be able to access your web site via ftp (File Transfer Protocol). This is the same method you used to upload the theme file originally or upload photos, audio and video to your web site. Since it is only the WordPress theme that is broken at this point, using a lower level method of accessing your site, i.e. ftp, should still work fine.

Log into you site using ftp and navigate to the folder that contains your WordPress install. This might be at the the top level of your web site or inside of another folder. In my case, my WordPress installs exist in a sub-folder, so I am looking for something entitled /career/wp-content.

The wp-content folder holds all themes and plugins you have added to your site. Inside of that folder you will find a folder named “themes” and inside that folder you will see sub-folders for every theme you have uploaded to your WordPress site. Locate the folder for the theme you are currently using i.e cutline is the one I am using. Inside of that folder will be all the files that make up that WordPress theme.

Now, you replace the file creating the error with your clean, backup copy of the file. In this particular case, my friend had been editing functions.php, a particularly important file. To repair her site, I renamed the bad file to functions.php.old and then uploaded her original, clean, functions.php file into the same directory.

Immediately the WordPress blog was available again and the changes she had made to functions.php were gone. This then allowed her to acesss the Admin pages for her blog. Now she could attempt to make her changes again, hopefully with better results.

This is a pretty geeky post for most of the readers here, but one take-away is that it can be relatively easy to recover from, what looks like, a major problem with your WordPress blog.

If you are editing your theme files, tread lightly, keep a original, clean copy of the file you are working on, and you will be able to put things a-right on your WordPress blog when something goes wrong.

Tread carefully when editing WordPress themes (and how to recover when things go awry) is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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Image via Wikipedia

I received an interesting call from a friend yesterday that is leading me down an interesting New Media road.

Our friend is also a teacher at my son’s school, so when her son was preliminarily diagnosed with the H1N1 flu virus, there was a bit of concern. She showed no symptoms herself, but the school administration was concerned with her being in the classroom while she could potentially be carrying the virus. That said, losing her time and skills, when she was not herself sick, pushed them to try something a little different. That fact is, what they asked me to implement has been possible for years, but this particular situation was enough to push them into action. This is probably a familiar situation to anyone who is an new media consultant. People have to come to the decision to investigate New Media on their own. It is nearly impossible to push them into it.

In the classroom

The software and hardware we are using is nothing special and many other systems could be substituted for what I am about to describe. First, all of our classrooms are outfitted with Smart Technologies interactive whiteboards. These are projector based systems where a computer screen can be projected and also “drawn on” electronically. Since these screens can project anything on the host PC, it was a simple affair to load Skype (http://skype.com), create a user id and login. In our specific case, a microphone for their desktop PC was located and tested. The built-in mic on a laptop or a USB headset would also have worked.  We are going to try and bring in a simple webcam to allow the remote teacher to see the classroom, but even one-way video would work for now. (An assistant will monitor the classroom locally and act as an intermediary between the students and the remote teacher A webcam, though, would allow the remote teacher to interact more closely with the students — watching for hands raised and confused looks)

In the “studio”

The remote end of the connection, set up in my home office for this first run, includes a standard Windows laptop or Mac Mini desktop computer. On the laptop, we can use the built-in webcam for video or connect my Digital8 camcorder to either computer to use as a more functional camera. A camcorder is a bit better as it has better quality optics and also allows for zooming in on materials and demonstrations. This would also allow you to record a high quality video of the presentation as it happens for later use.

For the audio portion, I am equipped with both lavaliere mics, like you see on television news shows and a shotgun microphone, like those used to record on location for television and film. You don’t need any of these, of course. You can use the audio coming from the camcorder or web cam, the microphone built into your laptop or a USB headset.

Blackboard/Whiteboard/Notepad

Most presenters typically want some way of writing or drawing information for their students and, in some ways, this becomes even more important for remote teachers. I have several solutions ready for this.

1. Flip chart and stand

I happen to have flip chart pads, stand and markers which I use for my own presentations, so we could simply set up one of these and point the camera at the pad. These are available at any office supply store. If you were teaching from an actual classroom, you could also just use the blackboard or whiteboard provided there.

2. Computer applications

On my Windows laptop computer, I have the program ManyCam which not only allows me to select a webcam or video camera, but also allows me to display whatever is on my computer screen. In this way, a teach could use a word processing program to type out whatever she wanted to present to her students, including pre-designed pages, Powerpoint presentations or anything else they might wish. CamTwist is a similar program for the Macintosh.  Both are free.

3. Graphic and drawing programs with digitizing tablet

To take it a step farther, I have a small Wacom drawing tablet and pen connected to this computer. This allows me to load any graphics or drawing program and use the computer screen as a virtual whiteboard.

Again, you can make this as simple or complex as you wish within the bounds of the technology you have. In our case, I think I am going to start out with the flip chart and maybe use the other technology if we think it might help.

Further information

We are supposed to conduct our first sessions this Wednesday, so I will right up another report to let you know how it went — the good, the bad and the ugly.

As you might imagine, this same setup could be used to bring in virtual guest speakers for your class, group or event. I am amazed how few people take advantage of this technology and the access it gives to experts across the country and the world. It matters little where you teach or live these days. You can still bring amazing people to talk to your class or even set up virtual “sister classrooms” all over the world. Imagine helping your students learn with another classroom in the UK, Australia, Europe, Africa, — wherever.

If you would like to know more about using New Media tools like these, leave a comment on thie blog post or post your questions to the New Media Interchange Community site. Finally, I am also available to come to your school, business or group (perhaps remotely) and show how New Media can be used to further education in all its forms.

Using New Media to teach from afar – A Real World Example is a post from Careers in New Media and Podcasting

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