Tag: class

Vidéo: nécessité d'une formation blogs [fr]

[en] I explain that it's normal that most people don't "get" blogging naturally. Active bloggers today "in the wild" are the result of a natural selection. You can't turn a bunch of politicians or employees into bloggers (all the more good ones) just by throwing blogging tools at them. Training is needed. Media education.

Voilà, chers lecteurs (et maintenant auditeurs!) francophones, c’est à votre tour d’être les victimes d’un [vidéocast Climb to the Stars](http://dailymotion.com/Steph), après mes lecteurs anglophones qui ont eu l’occasion d’entendre [pourquoi je pense que Lush devrait bloguer](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/11/20/video-about-lush-and-blogging/). (Je sais que *podcast* est également un terme techniquement correct pour ce que je fais ici, mais j’aime bien indiquer qu’il s’agit de vidéo.)

En sept minutes et une ou deux poussières, j’essaie d’expliquer pourquoi même si [le blog est un outil facile à utiliser](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/07/20/bloguer-avec-wordpress-cest-facile/), il reste utile (voire indispensable) d’apprendre à bloguer autrement que sur le tas.

Dailymotion blogged video
CTTS: Nécessité d’une formation blogs
Vidéo envoyée par Steph

Quelques liens en rapport avec le contenu de cette vidéo:

– [le fameux cours sur les blogs](http://www.romandieformation.ch/index.lasso?ID=14&Course=2318) (pub!)
– [monElection.ch](http://monelection.ch) et [ce que cette initiative m’inspire](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2006/11/12/blogs-et-politique-ca-bouge/)
– [WordPress.com](http://fr.wordpress.com) pour se jeter à l’eau
– [la vidéo sur Lush (DailyMotion)](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xocox_ctts-lush-me-and-blogging)
– [ce que j’écrivais quand j’ai commencé…](http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2000/07/)

Edit 12h30: Je vois maintenant qu’il y a des sauts, dans la vidéo — quelqu’un a une idée à quoi ça peut être dû? Il me semble pas que j’avais ce problème avec la vidéo d’avant. Le seul changement que j’ai fait c’est d’avoir mis les “key frames” sur automatic au lieu de 150 à l’exportation.

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Harvard Law in Second Life [en]

[fr] Un cours de la prestigieuse Harvard Law School est en train d'avoir lieu en partie à l'intérieur de Second Life. Quand je parle de Second Life comme outil/média éducatif, c'est à des choses comme ça que je pensais. Je suis allé y faire un tour, j'ai parlé avec une des instigatrices du projet, et je compte bien essayer de suivre en tous cas une partie de ce cours, qui a lieu les lundis et mardis.

By chance, I picked up [a link to today’s RocketBoom](http://www.rocketboom.com/vlog/archives/2006/09/rb_06_sep_12.html) in the #wordpress IRC channel (thanks, [twidget](http://charlesstricklin.com/)). I don’t often watch [RocketBoom](http://rocketboom.com “Popular internet video show. Pretty geeky. Funny.”), but the new presentator (en?) had a nice British accent, so I watched the whole thing.

A [Harvard Law course in Second Life](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/) caught my attention. I watched the trailer, and decided to [hop in and see for myself](http://slurl.com/secondlife/Berkman/123/219/24/?x=400&y=400&img=http%3A//www.law.harvard.edu/programs/center_law/berkman_logo.gif&title=Welcome%20to%20Berkman%20Center%20for%20Internet%20and%20Society%20at%20Harvard%20Law%20School&msg=Berkman%20Island%20is%20the%20product%20of%20a%20collaboration%20between%20individuals%20associated%20with%20the%20real-life%20Berkman%20Center%20and%20Second%20Life%20citizens.%20Members%20of%20the%20community%20have%20helped%20landscape%2C%20enrich%2C%20and%20create%20unique%20content.%20For%20the%20purpose%20of%20the%20Beyond%20Broadcast%20conference%20%28http%3A//beyondbroadcast.net/blog/%29%2C%20we%20have%20built%20an%20inworld%20broadcasting%20center%20and%20a%203D%20replica%20of%20the%20Ames%20Courtroom%20at%20the%20Harvard%20Law%20School.). I’ve been telling people around me that [Second Life](http://secondlife.com) provides opportunities for education that we can barely yet imagine. I’m glad to see that it’s starting to happen. [Watch the trailer for yourself](http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/videos/CyberOne.mp4) [10.5Mb].

Inside the Second Life lecture hall (a replica of the real Harvard one, from what I understood) I chatted a while with [Rebecca](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/2006/09/11/day-one-comes-to-a-close/) (one of the instigators!) and a student, LZ.

I learnt that the class was open to “public” ([“at large”](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/audiences/at-large/), they call it), and I’m very tempted to participate. I missed the first classes though, yesterday and today, but the [wiki](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/administration/syllabus#9_11) contains a lot of information and is supposed to give links to the lecture videos (haven’t found those, I’d be glad if somebody can point me to them). A lot of [reading material](http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/cyberone/course-materials/readings/) is online. They also have a [20-minute introduction to Second Life](http://cm.dce.harvard.edu/2006/01/82002/P11/index.html) but [Flock](http://flock.com) can’t find the missing plugins I need to view it. Damn!

So, anyway, had to let you know about this. I think it’s exciting!

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Stress [en]

A few lines on the stressful life of an apprentice-teacher. Don’t tell me we don’t deserve our holidays. Ever. Again.

[fr] Un petit aperçu du stress de l'enseignant. Et qu'on ne vienne pas me dire qu'on se la coule douce, qu'on est trop payés, et qu'on ne mérite pas nos vacances.

I’ve been thinking a lot about stress this week. I’m pretty stressed these days. I didn’t feel the stress much before the autumn holidays. I just felt very tired. Now I’m much less tired, and much more stressed.

Even though my sources of stress are multiple (private and professional, emotional and simply the sheer amount of work to do) it translates into a permanent background of “thinking of my pupils.” I just can’t get them out of my head. I go to sleep thinking of them, I wake up in the morning dreaming of them, I worry about them during the day, and even when I try to relax, they just won’t leave me alone. I’m usually pretty good at “blanking out” and thinking of “nothing”, but it just doesn’t work anymore nowadays.

It doesn’t help that I don’t have much time to do non-school things. Most of the time I have out of school is spent correcting and marking tests, preparing tests and classes, or discussing various school issues (relational or directly educational) with various people (some of whom must really be sick of hearing about all this stuff by now). Oh, and sleeping. Did I meantion dreaming about school? To put it shortly, I’m finding it hard to unwind.

However, even though I’m having a hard (sometimes rough) time, I’m confident that I’m doing what is necessary to improve the situation, and that I’m handling it as best I can. I am surrounded by competent and helpful people, and that helps a lot. It won’t last forever, and things are under control.

Just don’t tell me that teachers do nothing but sit on their arse all day waiting for their undeservedly long holidays, and go on “strike” because they think they’re not being paid enough. It pisses me off ever so slightly.

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Requirements for a WordPress Installer Script [en]

To install 30+ WordPress blogs on a server, it would be nice to have an automatic installation script. Here is a list of what this script should do for me.

[fr] Pour installer plus de trente weblogs WordPress sur mon serveur, il serait utile d'avoir un script d'installation en PHP. Quelqu'un a offert d'en écrire un pour moi. Ce billet récapitule ce que devrait faire un tel script, de mon point de vue (installation et configuration de WordPress en fonction d'un nom d'utilisateur).

As you may know, I’m shortly going to install 30+ WordPress blogs on my server. Noderat on #wordpress kindly offered to have a go at writing a PHP script to automate WP installs. I sent him this list of what the ideal script should be able to do for me, but on second thoughts, I’m posting it here so that everybody may see it. Of course, if you know of an existing script which already does this, let me know!

  • take $username + $password as input
  • install wordpress in a subdir named “$username”, using table prefix “$username_” and with an extra user (on top of admin) named “$username” (password=”$password”), user level 3
  • mysql user should be “$username” too (password “$password” also), with grants only on the tables belonging to this weblog
  • set permalink scheme to
    /archives/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ for monthlies and /categories for categories
  • generate .htaccess in directory, based on this template, with “blog” replaced by “$username” everywhere
  • in wp-config: define (‘WPLANG’, ‘fr’) and edit appropriate lines
  • wp-includes/languages and wp-content/plugins should be symlinked to directories I can specify in the script
  • blog admin password should be reset to something I can specify in the script

I should be able to edit the script config file to provide mysql root user + pass, wordpress database name.

It would also be interesting if the script was built in such a way that it could be further modified/developed to allow installation of blogs on separate subdomains rather than subfolders. From the point of view of the filesystem the blogs live in, this wouldn’t change much — but some extra WordPress options would need editing (e.g. blog address), as well as the Apache and Bind config files necessary to set up the subdomain. This is not mandatory, but could be useful at some point (if we’re thinking in the line of WordPress-farming).

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