by Chrissy Hellyer | Friday, January 30, 2015 | Connected Classroom, Resources, Tools for Learning
I don’t think I’ll ever escape the wonderment and awe of using google to help create, fix or do something that you have absolutely no idea how to AND having it work! It’s a real sense of achievement that you figured it out – but it wouldn’t be possible without some good ol’ google search magic!
I’ve been manually updating my CV for quite some time now – a rather laborious but necessary task in my line of work! I knew that I could embed my google doc (where I have my CV for easy updating). When I first tried the obvious embed of going to the google doc, click publish to the web, copy embed code, paste code in Text editor on blog. Well, yes, that worked BUT it was too small and of course there’s no way to edit iframe code! (Apparently you can but this chick doesn’t know how to do that and it looked way complicated with javascript blah, blah, blah!)
Enter (Insert saviour music) Google Search to the rescue! You totally hummed dah, dahdah, dah, dah, dah dah dahhh didn’t you?? In less than 3 seconds I had a recommended plug in (well two actually), Google Apps Login & Google Drive Embedder.
Although I wasn’t really after the Google Apps Login bit, I quickly discovered that without it, the Google Drive Embedder (which I really wanted) wouldn’t work! After installing the plugins & activating them in my wordpress blog, I got a nifty little message pointing me to instructions to set everything up. (Love that!)
Those instructions included a video option if preferred but I just followed the written instructions. Less than 10 minutes later, wa-lah, CV embedded beautifully! (Note Jan 2018: I have since updated my website and no longer use the embedded google doc for my CV)
Thanks Google! Thanks WordPress Plugins Installer! Nicely done! (Insert little fist pump to myself!)
by Chrissy Hellyer | Saturday, August 10, 2013 | Learning, Resources
I’ve been storing my documents, files and photos online for a while now. My number one option is Dropbox. Just recently I signed up for 100MB of storage (at $US9.99 a month) to help me transfer my work laptop files to my home laptop files before having to hand in my work laptop. I figured it would take less time (yes) and be more advantageous (aka: really make me think about whether I needed those files/documents/pdfs/photos or not!). – (Yes!!).
When I get settled, I’ll probably forgo the paid option of Dropbox and transfer files back to my home laptop as the amount of free Dropbox storage I’ve been able to accumulate thanks to a generous referral scheme will be suffice for my storage needs. If you’re not a dropbox user – click here to get your starting 2GB (& grow my space a little bit more) with the potential to earn up to 18GB more when referring your friends!
There are other cloud storage options out there, I also use Box which now gives away 5GB free storage when you join. When they started up, they were giving away a very generous 50GB – so I took advantage of that! Unfortunately there doesn’t appear to be a referral scheme to earn more storage space, by hey, 5GB for free – that’s still pretty generous! It’s the same amount that icloud gives you free.
I use icloud storage simply to backup files on my iphone/ipad that I don’t have anywhere else. I do that so that if something happens to either one of my personal devices, I can easily restore everything!
Now there’s a new kid on the block! It’s called Copy and they are giving away a massive 15GB storage FREE – yes, that’s right – FREE! Now, you know me, typical kiwi – I love free things and this offer is no exception!
I really like the fact I know have 3 options for storage and I don’t have to rely on just one or two sources. You can join Copy via this referral link to get your free 15GB of cloud storage and help my storage increase a little (because Copy has a referral scheme that allows you to earn up to 5GB more!)
by Chrissy Hellyer | Sunday, March 25, 2012 | Learning, Resources, Tools for Learning
Today I’ve been playing around with Cooliris Express trying to create a 3-D photo wall to embed in my blog. The cool thing about this photowall is that it will update as pictures are added to my flickr photostream. For the photowall below, I’m using the 366 2012 set to pull photos for the Cooliris Express. I think for another wall, I will use “cooliris” as a tag for the photos I want to be picked up by the feed.
It is possible to pull content, not only from flickr, but from picassa, facebook, YouTube and Media RSS. You can customize a few things in your 3-D photo wall such as colour, how many rows of photos (1-5) and there’s a choice of 6 themes for your photo wall.
It’s relatively simple to set up (log into Cooliris Express using your facebook or google account) and you can save your wall. Filtering is easy too as you can name a particular set or tag of photos you want displayed on your blog. As I write this, I’m just wondering if you can embed the 3-D wall in the sidebar – I guess you can but it would be pretty small, and I kinda like the flickr app I already have in my sidebar.
by Chrissy Hellyer | Sunday, February 19, 2012 | Connected Classroom, Resources
I mentioned Pinterest in an earlier post in which I said it was really appealing to my creative/visual side. Usually I’m busing reading my extensive Google Reader lists of “Must Reads”, “Might Reads”, “News”, “Photography”, etc etc, happily starring (really good for finding stuff you thought you read earlier!) or delicious bookmarking into stacks, the interesting articles, blog posts & sharing that I come across (gosh no wonder I have no time to write my own blog posts – hehehehe). Most of that “stuff” is writing (with a few visuals here and there) but the majority of it, is definitely for reading or in my case reading-later!
Enter Pinterest. It’s a visual pinboard! It lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People are using pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes! No words (unless you count the comment you can post with a pin) – all those ideas, things that make you go ahhhhh, oooooooh, you can now “pin” on a “board”. You can follow other people’s boards and there are some pretty creative people out there! What I love is that it’s so easy to follow people with similar interests/pursuits to you and it’s so easy to share. Today (thanks Mel) I came across two images that explain aperture and Depth of Field SO clearly – and I would never have come across them without pinterest. Now that’s cool! And there’s a Pin It add-on for your browser!
The featured image of this post is my “boards” so far …. Photography (all things photography from camera equipment to techniques), Classroom (cool ideas for the classroom) Fitness (keeping healthy), Inspiration (quotes & sayings), Oh the Places We’ll Go (places I’d like to travel to), Just Gorgeous (what else can I say?), and Books worth Reading (self-explanatory). Update: I’ve since added a “few more boards” ~2018
It’s a nice way to spend an hour or four on a Sunday – and it makes me feel inspired! Are you pinning?
by Chrissy Hellyer | Monday, July 13, 2009 | Resources
I saw this tweet from @keishawilliams about TweetStats. Curiousity got the better of me, so taking a break from Empressr and MyStudiyo (blog post to follow), I entered my twitter username.
Considering my family and I have just spent 5 days down in Nelson (blog post in progress over here) with the amazing AllanahK – it’s no wonder she’s top of my Replies To (@) list. Ms Cofino – well everyone knows I just LOVE working with this highly motivating and intelligent lady (even have the t-shirt to prove it!!) so NO surprises there. HeyMilly is absolutely gorgeous, witty and funny and I love reading her tweets – I wish I was as full of energy as she is – she’s loving life and taking us along for the ride – Go Girlfriend!!
Here’s the graphic I think is most revealing though – TweetCloud! My top 5 tweets are a reflection of the last 5 days spent in Nelson on our first ever visit to the South Island – thanks, new, time, nz, great !!
But I like the fact that awesome, learning, students, skype, mac, think, need, time & blog feature heavily too.
Most of all, I’m really, really pleased that thanks features the most in the Tweet Cloud! Without such a supportive, inspirational, generous and caring bunch of people in my PLN – my learning journey would be a half-empty glass. Thanks twitter PLN! (And thanks Mum, for teaching me that manners matter!)
by Chrissy Hellyer | Friday, June 19, 2009 | Resources
It’s summer vacation, my son is enjoying an hour on his PlayStation, and I’m enjoying the time to just browse the internet, catch up on the starred posts in my google reader, read some books (some fiction, some teacher-ish!) and generally relax. It’s been a while since I last posted …… I thought I might be having writer’s block again, but the more I think about, the more I’m convinced that I really haven’t had anything worthwhile to say for a while.
I do have a few posts brewing, one on Writer’s Workshop (my own personal area for development and improvement for the 2009/10), a reflection post on the whirlwind year moving from New Zealand to Bangkok, Thailand, and a few other little projects gently simmering in the background!
The tips and tricks are very handy indeed – I didn’t realise that you could drag PDFs or Word Docs straight over to your Notebook file (if you’re a mac user) and I didn’t realise that the magic pen had 3 extremely useful functions!
Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark78/1463574952/
