Category Archives: Site News

New background music!

No podcast this time (perhaps tomorrow, I do have some things to talk
about…), but I just took some time to play around with GarageBand to
make some
new background music
.

Now I’m not saying that I dislike the
background music I’ve been using recently
, but I felt it was time for a
change for two reasons: 1) I could do it and 2) I like being
able to depend less on the efforts of others.

The time may very
well come soon where I begin to show case musicians in my podcasts again,
but for now I’d like to just toot my own horn (figuratively speaking,
since there aren’t any horns in
this song
).

I hope you like it.

T-shirts, etc. (UPDATE)

brushes iconI’m thinking of opening I’ve opened up a CafePress account and started putting some Blog / Podcast / Geek / Teacher / Artist / etc. designs up there. Everything’s being sold “at cost,” so CafePress makes a profit but I don’t. Why? because I’m not that interested in making money here. I just want to get these designs out.

In any case, I’m trying to think of some good slogans. So far, I have:

  1. Blogs in Education: Share the Kool-Aid.
  2. Podcasts in Education: Share the Kool-Aid.
  3. Ask me about my podcast.
  4. I podcast, therefore I am.
  5. Art Class: It’s not just a 2nd recess anymore.
  6. Have you blogged today?
  7. Have you read a blog today?
  8. My MP3s are legal.
  9. Have you told a teacher about podcasting today?
  10. Have you told a teacher about blogging today?

I’ll be posting pictures to Flickr as well. If anyone wants to make their own shirt with my design or wants me to design something with a slogan of their own invention, let me know.

Anyone else have some good ideas?

(No longer) In search of a blog

Ok, I’ve been looking at various blog engines I can use with my Art Club next year and so far I’m not happy with any of them. You see I want to have students from grades 3 thru 6 blogging about the artworks they’re working on, but since they’re so young I want to have some administrative control over what the students put on their accounts.

I’ve had a few people suggest software solutions, but I’m looking for an existing
blog service. David Warlick’s got a nice one called Blogmeister, but it’s having server problems at the moment so I’m looking for alternatives. If you’ve seen a blog service that you think might suit my needs, by all means please leave me a comment.

UPDATE:
I’ve got a Blogmeister account set up and ready to go
. I almost can’t wait until next school year to get started! Yes I know that’s a template and I don’t think they’re editable, but the templates still look nice and the back end stuff so far seems to be very, very sweet.

Relatively Famous (Again)

Boy, is my face red – Steve Dembo plugged my site in his podcast again, and I didn’t know about it until just now due to a half gigabyte backlog of podcasts to which
I’ve been meaning to listen. (Curse you, Leo Laporte!) Thanks, Steve – your comments really made my day (In addition to today’s first grade ceramics project … more on that later.)

If you aren’t listening to / reading teach42, then you should. How else will you hear people saying nice things about me? ;) Seriously though, Mr. Dembo might say that I find some cool links, but I wouldn’t be sharing half as much stuff if itwasn’t for his site inspiring me.

I’m now on Podcast Alley!

circuit boardSo if you feel moved to do so, you can vote for me there. They ask for an email address for verification purposes, but you can use a throw-away one if you feel especially paranoid.At the time I’m writing this I’m ranked #21 out of 51 Educational podcasts, but that’s with a single vote so any support would be greatly appreciated. (However, if you find a podcast there that you like more I would not feel insulted if you vote for that instead.)

Ego Boost

Wow, since my last posting my Feedburner stats have gone from 2 (not counting me) to 11! (again not counting me). You’re all making me feel obligated to include some more original content … oh, alright, I will.