If you don’t know, all your synced Apple TV media lives in either iTunes or iPhoto, so let’s add some media to your Apple TV. Without media, though, it is less entertaining that a piece of driftwood. So, let’s get started.

Video

First step–get some video on your Apple TV. Download Handbrake for free, stick a dvd into your computer, and click the pre-set “Apple TV” button. Now that it’s on your computer, add that movie to your iTunes library, and sync it to iTunes.

You can also rent and buy HD movies through the iTunes store, which is also on Apple TV. Never again will you make a Blockbuster run.

You can’t use Netflix Instant Watch on Apple TV. Get a PS3 for that. (I did.)

I usually watch rented movies on tv. I also love watching concerts. Honestly, I don’t watch the movie I’ve Handbraked much. I’ll just throw in the dvd.

TV Shows

Read the video bit above. Same thing, except that it’s television.

I’m a fan of renting an entire tv season on tv if I need to make sure that I watch every single episode. It’s $3 per HD episode, but it looks so nice, and is so convenient. I’m watching Lost now, and I must admit, it looks fantastic, and there is zero hassle with downloading episodes.

Music

You music should already be in iTunes. Sync it to Apple TV, in the same way you sync an iPod.

I’m a big fan of listening to music videos on iTunes. I also just play a soundtrack in the background when I want some brain music (that makes me write better and work harder).

Photos

tv will sync whatever photos you want. You can sync albums, which is great for looking at your last trip to West Virginia. The real gem, however, is syncing Faces. iPhoto 09 uses facial recognition, and tv lets you sync people. This is huge. Last Thanksgiving, we all sat around the tv and watched a slideshow of my wife’s grandma. It was the highlight of Turkey Day for all the cousins. Stoked.

YouTube

You can watch YouTube videos on tv. Again, it’s great to watch on a big screen, and not crowd around a laptop. Enough said.

Hacks

There are two ways to make tv way cooler. From what you’ve read so far, nothing is too mind bottling. Hacking your tv gives you (imho) two huge advantages: the abilities to watch Hulu/Boxee/XMBC and use an external hard drive. There are two ways to do this: 1) free, geek-intensive hacks; 2)buy aTV Flash. I’m gonna convince to choose #2.

#1: If you want to hack it for free, google the directions. Basically, you create a patchstick, where some software is loaded onto a flash drive, plugged into the tv, and installs itself. I’ve done this before (two years ago). I consider myself knowledgeable about computers, but I spent most of a Saturday figuring this out. Eventually, I wanted to upgrade to Apple TV version 3, and just did the Apple software update, thus overwriting my efforts. Once you successfully install the patchstick, you need to connect via ssh if you want to install Boxee. Not fun. Free, but not fun.

#2: If you want to quickly make your tv awesome, spend the $50 and download aTV Flash. It does everything as described above automatically. All you need is a flash drive that’s 512mb-2gb. Details are found at the aTV Flash wiki.

There are several new menus (instantly accessible). Now, you can go to Boxee > videos > CBS > HIMYM. No more TiVo, no more cable. Well, I still have both, but I don’t use them much anymore.

You can also attach an external hard drive to the (otherwise useless) USB slot. Now, you can have 2 TB of movies. I haven’t done this (yet), but I think this step will do for dvds what iTunes did for cds. Soon, it will be silly to have a dvd (or bluray) rack in your family room. Eventually, I will do this, and put all my dvds in storage, so they can gather dust next to my cds. This truly is a game changer for dvds.

No Cable TV

If you’re the type of person to buy an AppleTV, you need to go get aTV Flash. There are many more features (like using your iPhone as a remote) that make this a crucial add-on. After installing aTV Flash, I use tv way more than before. In fact, I’m considering canceling my cable because of it.

Tweetable

Matt Harzewski created the Tweetable Twitter Plugin that allows readers to quickly tweet your blog post. It even shortens the url automatically. Additionally, Tweetable can display recent tweets in your sidebar.

My custom settings: I added the TweetMeme button (small version) to each blog snippet on my front page. Here’s how: go to Appearance > Editor > home.php. Add

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tweetmeme.com/i/scripts/button.js"></script>

where you’d like it to appear. I added it just under

<?php the_content(__('Read more'));?>

Now, the Tweetable button appears at the bottom of every post on my main page.

SexyBookmarks

Josh Jones created SexyBookmarks to allow readers to easily share your blog post to a variety of social media sites. Currently, there are 77 possible sites that you can display in this plugin. I chose my top 6 bookmarks so that this plugin would take up just one row. The most compelling reason I switched from ShareThis to SexyBookmarks is that SexyBookmarks has a fantastic user interface. When you mouse over a half-way hidden social media icon, javascript takes over and pops the icon up to full view. It looks great, and it works great.

My custom settings: Much like my Tweetable plugin, I wanted SexyBookmarks to appear on the main http://www.billselak.com/ page. Originally, it only appeared when users clicked “Read More” and went to the post’s page. I pasted in

<?php if(function_exists('selfserv_sexy')) { selfserv_sexy(); } ?>

just under the custom code (above) for Tweetable. That’s why you see the Tweet Button first and the Sharing Is Caring buttons second.

Disqus

As a reader, Disqus (pronounced “Discuss”) allows you to track comments you make over the web. Whenever I leave a comment on someone’s website, I usually have the desire to go back and see what other people say about my comment. I have never returned to a website again just to see if someone else commented on my comment. It would be nice, but I don’t do it. Disqus makes this easy to do. Just go to their website and your profile displays all your comments.

As a website creator, Disqus makes it easy for your readers to leave comments. They can log in with a variety of social media credentials (Twitter, Facebook, etc.), so that they will be more likely to actually leave a comment. This step has the added benefit of making is simple for your readers to share the post with their social networks (since they’re already logged in).

These are a few simple ways for readers to share what you’ve written. Which social media WordPress plugins do you love?

My Connections

Here are some low-tech connections that have been floating in my head. They have nothing to do with teaching, or ed tech, but it’s interesting to me how I’ve made these connections:

I’m pretty good at skiing. I’m not so good a riding my bike really fast. When you ski, you’re supposed to use your hips to guide your body. It occurred to me that the same technique could be applied to riding a bike. Yep. Now, I’m better at riding a road bike.

I’m pretty good at playing the guitar. I’m not so good at playing the flute. I need to teach students how to play the flute. When you play the guitar, you’re supposed to have your hands relaxed, in a natural way. Same with piano. It occurred to me that the same technique could be applied to playing the flute. Yep. Now, I’m better at playing the flute.

The human brain loves making connections. It looks for them everywhere. Brain research shows that when you can connect new knowledge to prior knowledge, learning happens. The goal of a teacher is to change the brain of their students. This is how to do it!

Technology is really about making connections. Web 1.0 was about connecting computers; web 2.0 is about connecting people. It’s all about what you are doing with the technology. That’s why I love educational technology so much. And why I think it’s a perfect fit for social media.

What’s this look like in the classroom?

There are simple high-tech ways to immediately engage students in the classroom, and to show them the connections.

Show them YouTube videos. Right off the bat, they are excited to watch anything from YouTube in the classroom. It’s not enough to just throw fluff (YouTube) at them, though. Engage them, and make a connection. Last week, a fifth grade teacher asked me (the music teacher) to teach her kids “that 50 states song.” I found the Animaniacs states and capitols video on YouTube» . So, where’s the connection? My students love cartoons, and sort of know the Animaniacs. They’ve been exposed to the 50 states, especially in fifth grade. So, I took all this prior knowledge and put it together to teach them the song.

Ask students to make the connections. Have them start a blog or wiki, and get them writing. Have them write about a book you just read. Have them make the connections. It might sound like this, “Hey, that part of that book reminds me of…”.  Yes, this could be done in a journal. Think of the analyzing that happens, though, when students are writing together. Soon, I think every classroom will be part of Google Wave. You are able to write collaboratively, and in real time. As one student types, others see the letters getting typed. If you remember Bloom’s Taxonomy, you’ll see right how to get students into higher-ordered thinking.

Making connections is crucial to professional development. As an ed tech teacher, you need to always be on the cutting edge of technology in the classroom. Build your own learning network by using social media. Connect to other teachers. Connect to other social media folks. Connect to other technology people. Here’s the tip of the iceberg of my social media connections:

• http://twitter.com/billselak/edtech
• http://groups.diigo.com/group/Web2
• http://groups.diigo.com/group/educ515
• http://www.billselak.com/wiki
• http://www.google.com/reader/shared/billselak
• http://snipurl.com/edtechrss (my rss feeds for ed tech)

How do you connect with other teachers? How can I better connect with other ed tech teachers?

I don’t really know what Google Wave is, or what it does. So, here’s what I do know. Google Wave is:

• “what email would look like if it were invented now”
• updated live. As your friend types, you see the letters appear. Coool.
• full of “gadgets”. So far, it sounds like a Google Form (which is also cool).
• able to drag-and-drop stuff from your desktop.
• embeddable. Folks can see your wave/conversation on any web site. If they comment, it updates your wave.

So, all this seems great. The big downside is that I have nobody to collaborate with. Google Wave sounds great for collaborative writing, for translating chats in real time, for updating conversations in real time, but there aren’t enough invites to go around. The people I care about aren’t on it. So, until then, I think most of my “waving” will be at the three contacts saying, “Hey. I just ‘waved’ at you.”

Here’s a nice introduction to Google Wave:

What are you using Google Wave for? Comment below, or wave at me at billselak@googlewave.com

Here is an advanced trick for Wordpress users. This is how I removed the sidebar from one specific page (titled forum) on my wordpress site. After much searching, I found that I needed to implement conditional formatting using php.

Here’s my problem:
I wanted one single wordpress page to not have a sidebar. I wanted it to take up the entire width of the page. Makes sense for a forum, right? Not so easy…

Solution:
In the wordpress dashboard, navigate to Appearance > Editor > page.php.
On page.php, I changed:

<?php get_sidebar();; ?>

to:

<?php if(!is_page('Forum')) get_sidebar();; ?>

Here’s what that means:
Typically, wp displays the sidebar. That’s what we usually want. In this case, the exclamation point means “if it is not”. So, the php translation is, “If it’s not the Forum page, then show the sidebar.”

Perfect, so far. However, there was a blank space where the sidebar used to be. Another problem. The forum should be wider. This won’t happen, though, because my stylesheet says the page can only be 510 pixels wide.

So, I went to my stylesheet and created a div titled #widecolumn with a width of 100%.

Back on page.php, I changed the original div titled #contentleft to:

<?php if(!is_page('Forum')) { ?>
<div id="contentleft">
<?php } else { ?>
<div id="widecolumn">
<?php } ?>

Again, with the php translation: “If it’s not the Forum page, use the div #contentleft (with a width of 510 px). If it is the Forum page, use the #widecolumn div that you just made (with a width of 100%).

Yay!

Deke McClelland made a screencast for Scott Kelby about masking using channels. I just finished Scott Kelby’s book on Photoshop channels. Heed this warning: this 30 minute training video is not for the light-hearted. It’s not for an intro to Photoshop. If you have some decent Photoshop chops, there are a few gems that Deke covers.

btw, if you don’t know who Scott and Deke are, go spend a day on their web pages.