The Maine Learning Technology Initiative – affectionately known in these parts as MLTI (pronounced “Milty”) – has unveiled their new professional development blog called Maine121.org.
Apart from the fact that it is built in WordPress and just happens to use the same template as this jebswebs’ blog, it should be a welcome addition to the program and to Maine educators.
Most noticeably the blog will feature a section discussing “accessibility and Universal Design for Learning (UDL).” We are pleased that this “theme” is important to the MLTI program and look forward to the potential for collaboration.
BTW, a little background. The MLTI program is Maine’s “laptop program;” designed to get laptop computers into the hands of students and teachers. The program started in fall of 2002 with Apple iBook G4s deployed to every student and teacher in Maine’s middle schools. Eventually the program was expanded to include administrators and support staff and most recently, it was expanded into Maine’s high schools. About 64,000 Apple MacBooks were sent out this summer making it one of the largest 1-to-1 educational technology programs, of its kind, in the country. Read the MLTI history
~j
WordPress logo
I guess it’s the scourge of age. You get comfortable with something and as time goes on the resistance to change increases. But in the technology world, there is no such thing. You simply can’t get too comfortable.
I had been using a very simple – almost primitive – blog authoring program which served me well over the years. It was very accessible on both the front end and the back end when the prevailing big boys in the field were still asking how to spell accessibility.
There were a few quirks with that application and I set about today to fix them. As you may have guessed, that five minute project turned into a nightmare. So the long story short is I’ve jumped ship and installed Word Press. This template that I am using is supposed to produce valid XHTML and CSS 3.0; in which case it should be full accessible. I’ll be checking it over the next few days and giving you a complete report.
But the good news is that Word Press is an absolute delight in terms of depth, design and functionality. Adding and updating themes and widgets is a breeze and making changes to the settings a delight. And it makes the posting process so easy.
Being the Brooklyn-born cynic, I’m waiting for the other shoe to fall.
We’ll keep you posted.
~j
