Category: ElderGeek

Better the second time around

What’s hot here on Web Teacher?

What about some of the other stuff that I write? A couple of items published as the TGB Elder Geek are worth a second look.

At eHow, these articles are getting some attention.

At BlogHer, these articles are hot.

Useful Links: CSS3, elderbloggers

Showing and hiding content with pure CSS3 is a good tutorial from Opera developer Corey Mwamba.

Where it happens when you’re an elderblogger is one of the many things tossed around on Time Goes By. By that I mean, where the blogging happens. (Your mind doesn’t have to automatically go to those strange places, so stop it.) Here’s a series of photos showing where the elderbloggers blog.

Learning from the top bloggers

Oh, I know The Bloggess isn’t for everyone. She’s profane and outrageous. She’s offensive in so many ways. She’s also funnier than Robin Williams and extremely successful at blogging.

One of the hints you get when you read tips for being a better blogger is to summarize your posts in a weekly roundup. Another tip is to point out your most popular posts. I do remember to do those things every once in a while. I’m not very organized about it, but I remember once in a while.

The Bloggess writes in more than one place on the web (as I do). So she publishes a weekly summary of “shit-I-was-doing-when-I-wasn’t-here.” This feels like another edict from on high from a successful blogger: tell people about all the other stuff you’ve been doing.

In that spirit, my aim today is remind you off all the stuff-I-do-here-and-there-on-the-web.

  • WaSP InterAct Curriculum. This is a web standards based curriculum produced by a worldwide volunteer group of experts from education, business, and many web related fields. It is freely available for use in education and business. Some courses are available now. More will be available in March. Several members of this group are working on a book.
  • eHow. This how-to site is home to several hundred articles  of mine explaining all sorts of web related things in step by step fashion. I’m approaching a million page views at eHow, which is possibly a greater readership than I have anywhere else.
  • First 50 Words. In a past life, I taught writing. I wrote some books about teaching writing. I embrace a technique called “writing practice” which calls for writing about any topic whatsoever. Most days of the week, I create a writing prompt for writing practice and post it at First 50 Words. I write about the topic and invite readers to write about it as well.
  • BlogHer. I’m one of several Contributing Editors at BlogHer who write about technology and the Internet. I haven’t counted the number of posts I have at BlogHer, but I’m sure the number is in the hundreds now. For purposes of comparison, I’ve posted about 1000 writing prompts at First 50 Words and have over 1300 posts here at Web Teacher.
  • TGB Elder Geek. TGB is Time Goes By. It’s a blog about what it’s really like to get older. There are so many elder bloggers who read Time Goes By that I was asked to write some geeky posts aimed at elders. Those posts aren’t much different from any other basic technical post I write.
  • vdebolt.com. I mostly ignore my home domain. Recently I reworked it to reflect more of what I do now, and pared it down to about three pages of information. First time I’ve revised the material there in years. You can find a few more tidbits about me there, such as presentations I’ve done, books, and links to some stories.

There it is: stuff-I-do-here-and-there-on-the-web. With a tip of the hat to The Bloggess.

Twitter as an RSS source

I’m the proud owner to two new Twitter accounts. Both of them are meant to be nothing but an RSS feed. . . .

I’m the proud owner to two new Twitter accounts. Both of them are meant to be nothing but an RSS feed. One is for eHow articles and the other is for TGB Elder Geek articles. Neither site has a handy way to create a feed for just one individual’s articles, and Twitter is a great solution.

There’s a new Grazr widget in the sidebar today. It’s a feed reader widget that provides access to the feed from every site where I normally post things in the course of a week. Because of Twitter, I’m able to provide a useful URL on Grazr to create this handy RSS widget.

Thanks to Twitter for having feeds.

And so it begins: Elder Geek

The TGB Elder Geek begins posting twice a month at Time Goes By, starting today with Select, Cut, Paste, and Copy. Who is The Elder Geek? None other than Web Teacher. More . . .

The TGB Elder Geek posts at Time Goes By twice a month, starting today with Select, Cut, Paste, and Copy. Who is The Elder Geek? None other than Web Teacher. Moi, chéri.

The series begins with several articles on the most basic of things. Here’s the introduction:

Very few elders are what we call the kids today: digital natives. Digital natives are those people growing up now who use a computer every day as an indispensable part of normal life. They absorb its intricacies through osmosis.

Elders, on the other hand, may have been presented with a computer late in life. Maybe someone taught them how to turn it on and how they could get email and photos. That may be where the lessons stopped. For that reason, we’re going to devote many of the Elder Geek columns to helping you learn the basics.

Yes, you may be an elder geek, but henceforth, only I will the The Elder Geek, or at least The TGB Elder Geek.

It’s surprising how many things that some of us take for granted are mysterious to people using computers only peripherally in their lives. It isn’t just elders. I know people who use the computer because they have to, but it isn’t their major thing in life. They might be artists or musicians or massage therapists who know enough to get along with their email app and that’s about it. These basic articles are for them, too.

If you know someone who fits that mold, let them know about the new series by The Elder Geek. Maybe it will help them. I’m sure the regular readers at Time Goes By will have comments about the posts, but if any of my regular readers here have ideas or comments about them, I’d love to hear. I’m wondering if these articles might be helpful to an instructor somewhere who’s teaching the basics. (Somehow everything is always about education for me.)

The collection point for all the Elder Geek posts at Time Goes By will be at the TGB Elder Geek page. I’m wondering if I should list them here, too,  on the Web Teacher Tips page.