Randy Orwin's blog

Print only what you want to!

Aardvark LogoHow many times have you printed a web page and got all of the crap from the columns along the outer edges of the page, or didn't want all the header information to be printed and the site doesn't have a print friendly version? If you have experienced these problems or just want to print a specific part of a page, have I got a deal for you!

EdTech Boot Camps About to Go Live

Okay, once again it has been a while since I last posted. Life has been really hectic since I have started building out my consulting company. I have spent many, many hours on the road and way too much time in front of a computer screen. A big part of my time in front of the computer has been adding additional features to my web site, but most importantly the ability to process financial transactions. My site is built on top of Drupal, the amazing open source content management system and the shopping cart is built from the really nice module called Ubercart.

Moodle Groupings

As a Moodle user have you ever wondered if it was possible to hide an activity from one group of students and yet allow another group of students to complete the activity? Until now that wasn't possible. With the advent of Moodle 1.9 there is a new feature called "Groupings." Through the use of groupings you can now assign specific activities only to specific students. Now that I have piqued your intest lets talk about how to assign activities to a certain group of students.

Making the nanogong html editor icon work in Moodle 1.93 and later.

I have blogged about Nanogong before. It is a great tool for integrating audio into your Moodle course. Nanogong has a number of components including the Nanogong Activity, a Nanogong filter and the Nanogong editor hack that allows you to access the Nanogong applet from any page that has the html editor. You can read my first post about Nanogong here, it talks more about what Nanogong is etc...

Favorite Open Source Applications

Have you ever gone looking for open source software titles? Did you ever wonder if there was a single place where all of those titles could be aggregated with descriptions, license information, links, use categories etc...? Well I have built a page where I would love to have as many open source apps listed as possible. I am asking your help in building a repository of apps that includes things like titles, license types, instructional uses, ratings and other informational items.

New web site up and running!

Hello to everyone that has visited my site in the past. I have nearly completed a full overhaul of my site. This short post is to invite you to help me to make this site more friendly to all of my visitors. I am asking for your feedback in regards to things like navigation, ease of use, layout, design etc... I want to make this site easy for people to get around and find stuff. With this in mind I have created a forum where you can give input to ways in which I can make the site better.

Time for a change!

Did you wonder if I was ever going to post again? Well it has been a while but I am now ready to get back on the wagon. For those that have read my blog in the past you have probably noticed a few changes to the site in the last couple of months. I have totally rebuilt my site on Drupal 6 and am now ready to get on with my new life. This post is mainly to bring folks up to date on what I am up to since I left my previous district last May and to describe where I hope that I am headed.

Word Processing Form Trick

Welcome to 2010! One of my goals is to get back into blogging a bit more. With that in mind here is my first post of the new year. Recently I have been filling out a lot of forms and I am just sick and tired of forms that are formatted so poorly! As a heads up, I will be doing a webinar in the near future on how to properly format word processed documents so they look good in almost any word processor.

Online learning better than face to face?

A new report that was prepared for the United States Department of Education says "...on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction." The report goes on to state that there isn't much actual research based evidence in the k-12 arena to support this statement, but that with adults and students in higher education this is the case.

NSBA T+L 2009 Conference

I am sitting here at Denver International Airport using the Internet via bluetooth on my phone. I figured it would be as good a time as any to give an overview of the 2009 T+L conference. Last year we did a couple of workshops and one presentation as kind of a beta test to see if the folks at NSBA wanted to have an open source presence at their annual technology + Leadership conference. This year they gave us our own room and we did about a dozen presentations and two workshops. It was very well received!