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Photo Dropper for WordPress – validation problem

March 20, 2008 in Tools

This is a great tool for WordPress sites – it’s a plugin that lets you search appropriately-licensed images on flickr and easily drop them into a post, complete with the appopriate attribution. This makes the whole process of searching for images and including them in your posts much quicker and more convenient.

Site validation problem

My only problem has been that the first time I used it, my site would no longer validate at http://validator.w3.org. This appears to be because the plugin produces code which doesn’t quite conform with the default WordPress document type (XHTML 1.0 Transitional). Specifically, when I added an image using Photo Dropper the plugin included the attribute align=”absmiddle” for the little CC icon. W3 didn’t like that – but when I changed it to align=”middle” it validated without a problem. Since search engine bots (eg Google) may penalize you for having unvalidated pages, I decided it was wise to fix this.

A simple fix

I’ll never remember to edit the HTML and change this attribute every time I use the plugin to add an image to a post. But it’s very easy to tweak the code to fix this:

In the wp-content/plugins/photo_dropper directory, edit the file called flickr-js.php
Change line 62 (but see note 1 below) so that the align attribute is now middle rather than absmiddle.
Save the file and check that everything looks okay. You might like to use the validator to be on the safe side.

Note 1: As of 3 April 2008, a new version (1.0.5) is available from the Photo Dropper site. The code that needs changing is now at line 96, not 62.

Here’s an image added using Photo Dropper. You can see that changing this attribute does make the tiny CC icon look slightly off-centre, but I prefer this to the validation problem.

Have a happy Easter…

photo credit: terren in Virginia

Note 2: A cleaner fix might be to remove the CC image and replace it with text (eg the © symbol). See the photo below…

Tags: photo dropper, Wordpress plugin, XHTML validation 4 Comments »

by Paul Left

Flexible learning planning guide

March 12, 2008 in Learning technology, Pedagogy

For a large institution, selecting a flexible learning software platform is a major undertaking, requiring careful consideration of many factors. Such a process can seem like overkill, however, when a smaller-scale development is planned. For example, one or more teachers in an institution might decide to pilot an online learning component as an action-research project. Or a small provider might decide to ‘put their toe in the water’ with flexible learning. From my experience, the people involved in such projects need some guidance but are not prepared to undertake a full needs analysis and evaluation process.

I started putting together the Flexible Learning Planning Guide for just these sorts of situations. It’s informed by my own work and also by research such as Chickering and Gamson’s 7 Principles, which I’ve found very useful as a framework for developing teaching and learning.

I believe there’s a need for something like this to complement the sorts of rigorous development processes called for in models such as the eLearning Maturity Model: not because they are not valid but because small-scale projects sometimes just need a bit of guidance to get started.

The guide is based around pedagogical processes rather than software features. And I deliberately left out many aspects of good practice because I wanted to keep the list short – it currently comprises just ten practices and I’ve had to resist the temptation to add to this. For example, I’ve deliberately left out any practices relating to assessment as that is often excluded from such ‘first steps’ projects because it’s such a high stakes component.

The guide reflects my interest in constructivist approaches to learning and the use of tools such as blogs and wikis. It also avoids providing a simple checklist of features – because good practice doesn’t arise automatically from software features, but from how effectively they are used.

Download the guide

Tags: elearning, flexible learning, planning guide, small providers 1 Comment »

by Paul Left

Being critical of the technology

March 4, 2008 in Learning technology

Technology delusions

I’ve recently been reading In the Kingdom of the Unabomber* by Gary Greenberg. The Unabomber of course is Theodore Kaczynski, who was sent to jail for using letter bombs to carry out a campaign of terror, killing 3 people. As someone one who’s been enthusiastically promoting the use of technology in education for many years, I find myself challenged by one section:

Technology not only helps us to accomplish things, with the occasional failure or accident or frustration; it also constructs us as the kind of people who are hard-pressed to be sufficiently critical of technology… no one really understands how we can listen to another report about the greenhouse effect even as we drive our cars, festooned with ‘Save the Earth’ bumper stickers, to fetch a loaf of bread.

We tend to ignore evidence of rising climatic temperatures. Now it’s pretty hard to argue that there isn’t some truth in this last statement, although thankfully few people are driven to Kaczynski’s reaction to technology!

Is education immune?

To assume that this type of technological delusion applies to other applications of technology in society, but not to education technology, doesn’t seem supportable. So as education technology enthusiasts, in what ways might we be deluded about the real impacts of technology on education? I suspect one key delusion is that we still too often see technology as an enabler for doing what we’ve always done in the past, only faster and more conveniently. Education technology specialists need to be sceptical as well as enthusiastic, and avoid the delusions about technology that we see elsewhere in society.

Graph by Hanno

* In The Best of McSweeney’s Vol 1, Dave Eggers (ed), Penguin, London 2004.

Tags: impact of education technology, technology criticism, technology sceptic No Comments »

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