Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Kewl Kid Pick this week: the Ruler Pen

Hats off to Gizmodo for this great item! I definitely want to find this for my kids. I know $40 is a bit but it would be so very handy. (Unless you needed to make tick marks AND measure at the same time!)

Ruler Pen: "This one goes to eleven! Who needs a ruler, measuring tape, stylus, pencil, and pen when you have this magical conglomeration of classy coolness? It costs a mere $40...

Friday, March 10, 2006

Family Calendaring Made Easy: Cool Cat Kidcast #2

Our family has been testing a new service on Airset for managing our family calendar. In this kidcast, we talk about :

  • How the family calendar works
  • How mom synchronizes it with her Palm pilot
  • How it reminds us over cell phones and e-mail when we have appointments
  • How kids and parents can put things on each other's calendars
Mom rates Airset a 10+. It is the first thing that can synchronize my palm, remind my husband over e-mail and cell phone for me and he can put things into the family calendar and check the family calendar without having to find me. We love how it e-mails the kids their schedule every day and automatically appears on their google start up page when they log in the Internet.

We hope you'll enjoy the Cool Cat Kidcast Volume 2.

If you want the details, I'll write how I set it up on my cool cat teacher blog.



Monday, March 06, 2006

How to customize your design

Anne at one of my favorite teaching blogs today wrote about cool cat kid and my cool cat teacher blog. I was so honored! Here is what she says about cool cat kid:
Isn't that the coolest thing! Check it out. It is fantastic.I love the design. The kitten is adorable. I want some lessons on how to design like that. As soon as my grandkids are a little older , I will jump in that arena. I know Vicki will blaze the trail!
So, Anne, here is your lesson on how we created the design for Cool Cat Kid:

1) My daughter and I searched for free blogger templates.
2) When we found the one she liked, I downloaded and copied and pasted the code into the blogger template page. (Each one has their own set of instructions, I printed it out and followed it as I checked it off. This modeled the behavior I want to show to my children.)

3) I set up a free account on photobucket and uploaded the free photos that came with the template.

4) I customized it some with that old HTML knowhow (but not too much!). I added a counter from statcounter and claimed the blog on technorati to add those links.


All this is with one caveat: Do this before you customize your template. If you have already made changes to your blog and added technorati tags, bloglines, etc. you will want to set up a new blog or be very careful with your changes. I suggest doing this first on a test blog or a new one. I wouldn't attempt one of these with one of my existing blogs and I've been HTML coding for a while!

To learn more about blogging read my Ten Habits of Bloggers that Win. It will get you jump started!

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Online Websites for Kid Internet Safety

Myspace and Xanga are not inherently evil just as books or computers or paper aren't. It is not the medium that is the problem but what is done with it.

When I was growing up the issue was "the mall." Kids were getting 'snatched' from "the mall." What a bad thing "the mall" was.

It wasn't the mall that was bad, it was the fact that kids were hanging out at the Mall unsupervised. Neither is Myspace or Xanga inherently evil. The fact that parents allow their kids to have accounts without providing any oversight -- that is the problem. Go to myspace or Xanga and search for your child. Ask them to show you what they are doing.

Predators lurk wherever kids congregate. Parents who love their children supervise their children.

In the meantime, I've compiled a great list of resources for Internet Safety for you!

Wired Safety
http://www.wiredsafety.org/

Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use
http://csriu.org/index.html

Playing it Safe
A webquest about Internet Safety for 6th Grade Computer Literacy
http://coe.nevada.edu/slefevre/playsafe.html

NetSmartz Workshop
http://www.netsmartz.org/

SafeKids.com
http://www.safekids.com/

CyberAngels
http://www.cyberangels.org/

FBI Publications - A Parent's Guide to Internet Safety
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/pguide/pguidee.htm

The Police Notebook - Kid Safety on the Internet
http://www.ou.edu/oupd/kidsafe/start.htm

KidsCom - Tips for Internet Safety and good manners!
http://www.kidscom.com/games/isg/isg.html