I’m feeling like one of the last holdouts here with Manila, and I’ve got open source issues that I need to come to terms with, but this news from Userland CEO Scott Young has me hoping:

We are getting closer to the release of Manila into public beta. Its been a fairly long process, but the size and scope of the changes will be worth it. Significant additions have been made and as we have finally worked through all the change notes and have come to discover that what we have is Manila 9.5 !!

After adding versioning for content and templates, access controls, enclosure support, Atom support for Manila’s aggregator, greater flexibility in the new member signup process, easier navigation of stories and pictures pages, improved static rendering support, and a large number of other enhancements and bug fixes for users and developers alike - we’ve set the version number for the next release of Manila at 9.5. (We’ve even got a few more surprises in store.)

We’re excited!

Fingers crossed for a successful release…soon!

Everyone has been raving about the new satellite imaging in Google Maps and I have to agree it’s pretty impressive. While most people I’ve seen are zooming in on their spaces, I like the longer view of mine…and I like the space. Forget what you’ve heard about Jersey. There’s some real purty parts, and I’m fortunate to live in one of them.

Yesterday, I took my daughter Tess on a satellite trip to school and then over to my wife’s office. It was pretty amazing to be able to just drag our way across the country side and point out all sorts of landmarks. (We even tried to see the cows we pass each day on the way home…not quite.) As the daughter of a mother who somehow missed the directions gene, maybe continual field trips on Google Maps will give here a better sense of place…
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So before I get to my semi-regular list of newfound practices out there, I just want to note a couple of people who for some reason have been drinking from the blog Kool-Aid because of my blogvangelism. Always nice to know someone’s listening…

Amy Bowllan, who I met at Mohonk last fall, gets my vote for Rookie of the Year so far this year. She’s really gone, shall we say, “blog wild” over at “Teaching in the 21st Century” to the point where just recently she even got her mother to start blogging. And the big news is that she just landed a gig as a blogger for the School Library Journal. How cool is that?

The other special mention is Tom McHale, who I’ve written a lot about lately as the teacher at my school who is trying to push the envelope of his practice using blogs. Well, the good news is he got tired of my harassment and finally started his own. And I love the name: “Professional Transparency: people who work in glass houses work better.” Amen. I’m sure he would appreciate some gentle encouragement.

Some other recent blog/wiki uses I’ve come across of late:

Paul Allison of East Side Community High School in NYC has been a long time user of blogs in the classroom but now he’s graduated to wikis in a big way. This site that he’s set up at Wikicities deserves a post of its own, but for now just dig around in there a bit and see what he’s trying to do. It’s pretty amazing.

The New York Math Exchange is a group effort “to provide teachers from across New York State with information regarding the New York State Math standards as well as create a forum for collegial sharing of best practices among teachers.” Nice. (Disclaimer: I’ve been working with this group in the Executive Ed. D. program at Seton Hall.)

And here’s another cool site from the same program, this one a collaboration between kids in Bayonne, NJ and Bayonne France. Cool!

The Introductory Compostion instructors at Purdue are all blogging with their classes. Alice’s Drupalrama is one example, with links to other instructor blogs at right.

Here’s a blog about building kayaks, which I think is a pretty interesting use.

Here’s a class blog for an Introduction to Educational Technology course being taught at St. Petersburg College in Fla. (I think.) The good news is that teachers in training are learning about wikis! What a concept!

As always, if you find more good practices, let me know.
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