Cool new vote buttons for Unbridled Learning

Ok, I'm very excited about this, although bummed that so far I can not implement it here at Homeschool Journal :(  If you missed my intro of Unbridled Learning, it was on the carnival the week HSJ was down, so you're not alone.  Check it out here.  To make a long story short, it's digg for homeschoolers/educators of the unbridled sort.

Any blogger who has control of their own templates can now place a cool little "Vote on Unbridled Learning" button (like a "Digg this" button) on their blog posts or web sites!  To see it in action, check out http://www.unbridledlearning.com/wp or http://unbridledlearning.blogspot.com

I'm not moving, those are just set up as demos of the cool button!

I know everyone is dying to find out how to add this awesome little button to their sites!  So I will delay no further.

Tools for your Blog

Remote voting buttons and links

1.      Wordpress users - put a " Vote in Unbridled Learning!" in the footer of your posts! This will only work if you are allowed to edit your templates.

2.      Blogger users - put a " Vote in Unbridled Learning!" link in your sidebar!

Generic blog link

Say you're a blogger and you've crafted a masterpiece. A total beauty of an article. You can put it up for your readers along with a "Vote in Unbridled Learning" link back to Unbridled Learning that will allow the reader to submit the article to the community right from your blog.

Just copy and paste this line into the source of your post:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.unbridledlearning.com/evb/button.php">

The Unbridledlearning.com voting symbol will appear wherever you place the javascript code.

One note, the button must be used in the extended version of your post (or “permalink” location). If you put it on the post and the button displays on the front page, the script will use the homepage URL for submission, which won’t promote the story you want.

Check out http://www.unbridledlearning.com/wp for an example of the voting button in use!

Wordpress Remote Vote

WordPress Bloggers:

1.      Log into your Wordpress account and go to the Presentation-Theme Editor menu.

2.      Select the Main Index Template (index.php) link from the page list.

3.      Locate the section that contains your “Postmetadata". It should look something like this:

<p class="postmetadata">Posted in <?php the_category(', ') ?> | <?php edit_post_link('Edit', '', ' | '); ?>  <?php comments_popup_link('No Comments »', '1 Comment »', '% Comments »'); ?></p>

4.      Just after the </p> but before the </div> that follows it, add the following:

<script type="text/javascript">

submit_url = '<?php the_permalink() ?>';

</script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.unbridledlearing.com/evb/button.php"></script>

5.      Click the "Update File" button, reload your main page and you should see the voting instructions at the bottom of each post.

You can also add the button to your Pages by following the same steps listed above on your Page Template (page.php).  This time add the same script just before the last </div> on the page.

See an example at http://www.unbridledlearning.com/wp

Google Blogger Unbridled Learning Vote link

1.      Your blog should be set to save Post Pages. Post Pages are archived blog posts published to their own web page. Each post will have a unique URL, which is required by Unbridled Learning for the individual posts to be submitted. To verify or enable it, login to your Blogger Dashboard. Under Settings-> Archiving, set the “Enable Post Pages?” to “Yes” and save the settings.

2.      The code reads the URL of the individual blog page and this shall be the URL used for submission of the story to Unbridled Learning.

3.      Under “Template”, click the “Edit HTML” tab. Block copy the entire HTML code for your site and save it in a text file. This is one of the two necessary steps whenever you want to change the template. The second step is of course to “Preview” the new changes, and save the changes only when you are satisfied. The backup you have saved in a text file will come in handy when you accidentally click to save the changes without previewing them. With a backup, you can easily restore the template to the prior state if need be.

Click the box next to “Expand Widget Templates”. Scroll about two-thirds down the template to look for the code that reads:-

<p><data:post.body/></p>

□       Replace the above code with this:

<script type="text/javascript"> submit_url = "<data:post.url/>" </script> <script src="http://www.unbridledlearning.com/evb/button.php" type="text/javascript"/>

□       That’s it!

See an example at http://unbridledlearning.blogspot.com

May in Review

Well, May has been a busy month!  I have not gotten any May photos in yet... so here they are all at once!!

Here Kevan and Ben measure our Tomatosphere sprouts to see how the seeds exposed to space compare to the seeds that have never left our atmosphere.  Also this month we planted some beans to observe the effects of gravity on their roots, and watched how they leaned toward the light coming in the sliding glass door.  We got some painted lady caterpillars to attempt to watch them metamorphosize (ok, I know I made that up!) but unfortunately they all seem to be dead.  We are going to try mealworms next!

Mitzie randomly placed herself in this very deep, very narrow box.  Fortunately, before long we noticed the ghostly movements of the box and removed her... but we had to take a picture first!

We went to the Strawberry Festival.  Ben got called up on stage during a live animal show to answer some quiz questions.  When asked how many feathers there are on some kind of bird, he was quite lost until the lady turned around and the audience pointed out where the answer was displayed!

For his hard work he got some cool tiger sunglasses and a ladybug bugs-eye viewer.

William's varsity 4X400 team made it to CIF! Here he is with his team just before their race.

And here he is receiving his awards and patches for his jacket.  His track coach called him her top sprinter!

We went with some homeschool friends to visit a miniature horse farm.  These guys were so adorable!! Unfortunately, most of the pictures have other peoples' kids in them so I'm only showing you this one.

Well, that explains a lot!! These are from our trip to the zoo this month.  We got to ride the train there and back with a bunch of other homeschool friends.  It was a blast!

Here's Ben with his jawbreaker on the train ride home.  The kids played hide and seek in our train car (which was only our group) and had so much fun!

We visited our first Renaissance fair.  We got to meet a knight in shining armor...

...and a real life druid!  Or so he said anyway.

Kevan and Ben completed a treasure hunt and received some pirate booty in return.

I got nominated to join the bird guy on stage to help with a trick.

Then he tried to trick me into kissing him!  Ack!

Kevan, Ben and I went to visit a friend of ours out of town so that I could do some work with her.  Here's Ben with her German Shepherd puppy.

and with her ferret! 

Ben's birthday arrived while we were there.  We went out to breakfast and he opened a little magnetic chess set.  He loves chess.

The pirate booty came in handy this morning when we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 with Grandpa Roger and Nana.

Then we went to Grandpas house (with Grandpa Roger and Nana) for cake and presents.

Ben got Legoland tickets (we're going next weekend, as well as to Seaworld), Spiderman 3 for the Wii, and...

a cool touch sensitive talking globe.  This kid loves geography.  He's randomly memorized all of the states in the U.S. and provinces in Canada, as well as where many countries are.  He spends hours on Google Earth, and doing the map game on the Fly Pen.  He had a cheapo version of the globe, but this one is way cooler!

Well, that's all for now!

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The Always-On Carnival and Podcast

Well, I know where I am sending my favorite blog posts, websites, or cool resources from now on. I hope you will join me! At unbridledlearning.com I am starting to add things that I enjoy reading or doing, or just think are interesting (and relevant to unbridled learning) to the site. When I add something, it automatically has my vote. Others can come along and vote for the same item and can add comments pro and con. I can "tag" the items that I submit to keep them categorized and easy to find.

At the moment, items that I submitted are on the front page and published. As time goes by and others add their own links to their own favorites, items with more votes will make it to the front page. Those who join in will create the flavor of the site. Members can be "friends" with other members; if you know someone has similar taste to you, you can just look at the articles that they enjoyed or submitted.

Create an account. You will end up on your profile page. At the bottom of the page you will see a "bookmarklet" that you can add to your favorites or drag to the toolbar of your browser. Now whenever you come across something that would interest other unbridled learners, you can just click that link and it will start the submission process for you! You will just need to enter a few pieces of information and the article will be submitted!

Although I find myself vastly interesting <g> I am hoping that this will be a useful index not just of what I like but of what lots of other vastly interesting people like too!

There doesn't have to be a link to post something.  Maybe you wrote something on a Yahoo or Google group, email or listserv that you would like to publish elsewhere.  You can post those types of things to Unbridled Learning as well.  If you want to post something someone else wrote in a private group or email, be sure to get their permission first!

I am toying with the idea of re-birthing the short-lived Unbridled Learning podcast which would contain the most popular stories of the week/couple weeks/whatever.  You know, kind of like DiggNation.

Ben’s first fish

There was a fishing clinic going on where grizzled old fishermen taught eager young fishermen how to bait, cast (ok, drop), and remove the fish from the hook once caught.

We planned our campout around the fishing clinic, and Ben was excited.  The only fishing he had done before was at a Boy Scout campout at the beach.  Kevan did *not* want to fish, so Ben fished in the surf with Kevan's fishing pole.  Nobody caught anything that time.
This time, once again Kevan chose not to fish when the time came, although he did do the knot tying and casting practice.

He did not relish the idea of figuring out what to do with the fish once it was caught (and doesn't eat fish, so...)  One of the grizzled old fishermen had been out there all morning fishing off the dock and had caught something like 27 of the sunfish we were fishing for.  So we knew there were some there!  Ben was very patient, keeping his line in while other boys would move to a new spot after 5 minutes without a bite.

Finally, he got a bite and reeled it in like a pro!

Great! Now what?  My husband, who has caught and cleaned many a fish in his day, did not come along on this campout.  I have caught quite a few fish but have never so much as watched while they were being bonked on the head, much less learned how to clean one!  Kevan and I tried valiantly to persuade Ben to let the poor little thing go, but he was determined to eat it!  One of the grizzled old fisherman hooked the fish to a string for him, and we let him swim in the water while we fished some more.  Finally it was time to stop fishing.  I asked one of the moms that was with us how I was supposed to kill the fish.  She said that if we pulled it out of the water, it would be dead within a minute or two.  So, we put it in a bag and took it with us.  It survived our walk back to the store, where the old guy offered to clean the fish for Ben, but I declined because I had given someone a ride from the campsite and they were very anxious to get back to the campsite.  It then survived our drive around the campground, which took several minutes because we took the scenic route.  When we got to our site, we put the fish in the cooler.  I hope it was dead very soon thereafter.  Kevan and Ben seemed to think it was still alive about 5 minutes later when they checked, but I didn't look.

Finally, at home the next day, daddy cleaned and grilled Ben's fish for him.  He loved it!

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