Convert any web page to PDF

Every day it seems I need to save a web page for one reason or another. Often I just worry that they will change, or I will forget about them. Sometimes I am changing things myself and would like a record so it was great to realise I already had a fantastic tool at my fingertips. I still tend to use Moodle for my students to submit assignments or do online quizzes. This morning I needed to replace the test from last semester with a new one. I created the test in Respondus, then imported it into Moodle where it contributes to a question bank. That is good but I forget what I have set before and I would like a record. Copy/Paste is messy, downloading as an html file is even worse as you finish up with all sorts of associated files. The simple answer is just to us Google Chrome web browser. Open the page (in this case preview my test), click on the spanner symbol in Chrome > Print > Save as PDF. Voilà as simple as that. Apparently the feature has been available for ages, but like everything it is only when you start looking for a solution that you find an answer.

Is Sydney most gullible city in Australia?

You may have heard in the news recently that Sydney is the most gullible city in Australia. Well actually it is old news, but I am a bit slow on the uptake sometimes. One of my colleagues has been developing an ethics course, and she wanted to include a reflective journal as an element of the assessment.  This caused a lot of opposition because 'first year students have no idea about reflective practice'. Might have some foundation but surely they need to learn? And what about hardened journalists? Do they have experience in clear thinking? Do we teach clear thinking? Portfolio are the perfect tool to assist. Watch the video, it's fun but also a little scary.....

Ideas come from anywhere

I see so many great posts, it is hard to keep up. A friend showed me  http://www.udemy.com/ recently and there is some great content both free and paid. A quick look yielded 'ideas come from everywhere' a series of brief lectures by Merrisa Mayer VP search products at Google. I am not sure if the link will work directly you may have to login first.

Die Clippy!!!

How long have we been a slave to MS Word for now? I started out with Word Perfect many years ago now, but then IT departments the world over flocked to Microsoft and the rest is history really. It is all the second guessing that drives me nuts. Would you like this or that? I can make my own decisions thanks very much. And then try to copy paste from MS Word to..... well just about anything and it will often mess up. Have you ever seen a Moodle page that looks <;!--like@this?

In his article Death to Microsoft Word, journalist Tom Scocca describes the main problem with Word, namely moving text and other content between multiple online and offline applications. I downloaded Textedit for Windows today and had a play (any excuse not to work) and it is really good as an authoring tool. It has some cool features like text to voice (it will read a document to you) but can't spel.

What it has made me think about though is using software that is fit for purpose, rather than just using MS Office exclusively, because we have for so long. 

Mahara 1.5

Mahara, the software that powers FolioSpaces is continuing to improve at a frantic pace. The New Zealand Ministry of Education has funded a large number of improvements in version 1.5 which is available now as a release candidate. Ultimately this is fantastic news. In the short term though it also causes us (at FolioSpaces) a few headaches. When will you upgrade Ian? Why are your help files and videos so out of date? And so on... 1.4 was a radical improvement, introducing collections and many other features, along with changes to some terminology, most notably Views became Pages. Version 1.5 is equally radical in terms of improvements. Some will be evident to users (such as the new notes feature) and many more are enhancements for admins and institutions. My feeling is that Mahara is finally 'there'. It is now established as the dominant open source solution for ePortfolios, much as Moodle is now the world leader for Learning Management Systems. One of the really great aspects of using FolioSpaces rather than your own install of Mahara is we automatically do the regular upgrades and you hardly even notice. I have noticed a lot of organisations are still running versions which are way behind, but upgrades can be tricky so I do understand the reluctance of IT departments to do them. I think it exciting though and like everyone I am always impatient. We have learnt from experience it is better to wait until early bugs are ironed out though, but we are usually able to upgrade FolioSpaces a few weeks after a stable release is confirmed. I expect that the radical changes will slow down from now on, and there will be time to consolidate Mahara as the premier ePortfolio solution. Personally I am much more interested in exploring new ways to use FolioSpaces with students, and more and more I am using it as a community for classes. As I explore our test install of Mahara 1.5 more, I will share my thoughts on the changes. In the meantime here is a link to the official documentation. New feature in 1.5 are highlighted and you can see there are a lot of them.

Linkedin to what?