Ever needed to quickly create a page of directions? How about a list of links for students to visit on your next trip to the media center?

Dinky Page bills themselves as "A free service to create disposable pages on the web." I must say that I can find tons of uses for this service...

Here's my quick example. Get your own at http://dinkypage.com
http://dinkypage.com/teachageek

Be aware that there are some limitations - the Dinky Page FAQ mentions that they do not do image hosting, so, pictures will need to be linked from an image hosting service. However, pages don't ever expire and you don't have to create an account to create your page. It sounds like a really good idea to me...

Found this via another of my favorite blogs, but, I needed to use this today, so, I thought I'd do a quick write up. Thanks Download Squad!

As a North Carolina Educator I am forced, privileged to use NCWise daily to assist me in keeping up with Student Attendance and Grades. While this is a requirement of my job, the geek within just can't stand to use Internet Explorer. Especially not Internet Explorer 6, which my school system provides for me.

I had been happily using Firefox 3 for my NCWise needs up until the recent update to Firefox 3.5.2. After the update, Firefox quickly crashed upon launching and it was back to using IE for me...

A quick Google today helped me find the solution, though. Thanks to http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?locale=de&forumId=1&comments_parentId=410610 I found that all I needed to do was copy jvm.dll from my JRE install to the \bin\hotspot\ folder of Jinitiator. Hoorah, I'm back to NCWise in Firefox again.

It actually feels like NCWise runs better and faster in Firefox, but, I can't prove that....

That also got me wondering what other browsers might support Jinitiator.

A quick check tells me that Google Chrome doesn't, and maybe never will. (http://blogs.oracle.com/appstech/2008/09/chroma_for_applications.html) However, I did discover that Opera plays very nicely with Jinitiator, and surprise, surprise, it even works in Linux!!

So, goodbye Internet Explorer. I guess I just won't use the big blue "e" anymore. Now that I've found a way to use my Linux machines.... well, that just opened up a whole new world of possibilities.

I hate this time of year - between testing, end-of-year cleanup, and just the general sense of apathy we get from students and staff it just seems to be such a chore to do anything. Include Blog Entries as well... :-)

Anyway, one item that I found that makes life a little easier is a FREE Online Registration system for your school events. Enter Eventbrite Online Event Registration Service. This service allows you to post your event at their site. Provided the event is FREE, it costs you absolutely nothing to use this site for your online registration. Eventbrite provides full reports (in csv format nonetheless) and will event help you print name badges the day of the event.

Should you decide to charge for your event, Eventbrite can help you collect money for tickets via PayPal, credit cards, etc. Eventbrite charges only 2.5% of the ticket price for this service.

Every summer my school does a Freshman Camp to help to ease parents and students into High School. Last year we started using this to help figure out how many parents & students to plan for. This service really helped and it was so simple an Assistant Principal could do it - really!! I set up our account initially and the two of us played with settings and options, but, he's taken over this year.

If you have a need for something like this, give Eventbrite a try - it's worth the time for me... ;-)

For an example of our own Freshman Camp see http://freshmencamp2009.eventbrite.com/.

Found this at another friend's blog.... as the school "geek", I'm often ask to convert files that students bring in from home. This is sometimes a different version, sometimes a different program... so, it's nice to find things like this.

Looks like http://zamzar.com will be added to my list of favorites. This site can convert all of the major file document types as well as images, videos, music, and even archives (zip, tgz, etc). Pretty cool find!!

I saw an interesting article today at Moodle.org. - http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=121208

If you're looking for a book about Moodle, please visit our Moodle Books database, which contains a variety of books and manuals, for both teachers and administrators, written by members of the Moodle community.

Recently added titles include the Moodle 1.9 Course Creator Reference Manual by Ray Lawrence and Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds by Mary Cooch. Both Ray and Mary are Particularly helpful Moodlers in our Using Moodle course.

Please note that when you buy a book from the Moodle Books database, you're helping support Moodle development, as a percentage of all sales goes to the Moodle Trust.

Looks like a good resource for Moodle books and I like the fact that you're donating to the Moodle trust.

Happy Moodlin'!