If you read my previous article, I briefly described the online classroom. There are many different flavors of online classroom systems available on the market, but there is only one which is totally FREE and that is Moodle.

Moodle stands for Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. Consider it a modular device like an iPhone. There are many skins and applications which can be added in order to make your online learning environment fit your traditional classroom. It is designed to be able to suit all needs of education levels, elementary school through graduate school. It all depends on how you set it up.

To use Moodle in your classroom, you don’t need anything fancy or laptops. The teacher can refer to it throughout the day and the students can either refer to it later on after school, during free periods, after school or whenever. However, it works very well for environments that have computers intertwined into the curriculum.

You don’t need to be a computer genius either to begin using Moodle. After setting up your account, you will be able to get an idea of how things work within a matter of a few hours. However, I would suggest trying the various options and components before making it part of your lessons. The following video explains how simple it can be.

The nice thing about Moodle is its cost. It is financially friendly for all schools, private and public. With so many ways to set it up, it is possible for a money tight private school to implement internally or with a very simple hosting program. For schools who have the budgetary space, there are solutions that can provide extra services along with hosting, maintenance, and support.

If you’re looking for a way to use technology to further enhance the classroom environment or to capture those unique students who learn in alternative methods, check out Moodle.

Over the past few years, I have been exploring a new concept in education, the online classroom. It is a unique solution that incorporates many different technologies that can enhance the classroom. Whether it will completely replace the traditional classroom environment, that will remain a topic of conversation.

The main features of online learning environments include:

• Discussion forums
• Course information
• Outside web links
• Videos
• Repository (place to put assignments to download)
• Online assessment (tests and quizzes)
• Many more…

The general thought is that online classrooms should be a extension of the classroom to augment what happens. It should exist as a place where students can get more information about what they are learning as well as somewhere they can discuss with other students their opinions and thoughts. For some students, it may be the place where they excel if they happen to be the quiet type who are not comfortable with speaking their ideas outloud in class.

There are several different systems available on the market now. They range from Free to fee based. Here are some of the most popular.

• Blackboard
• Angel Learning
• Haiku
• Moodle (Open Source and FREE)

For those who are new to the online classroom and would like to experiment a little, I would suggest checking out Moodle. It can be setup on your local computer or installed on a web host for either FREE or a very small fee.

If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment or contact me.

Picking a medium in which to publish a new web site can be daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. The goal of your site should be the indicator for which type of solution you go with. My personal preference, in general, is to use a CMS (content management system) of some sort. The three most popular choices available on the open source market are:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal

Each one of these has its pluses and minuses, but they all perform the same duty. They enable the individual creating the content to be able to create a quality site with little web experience and without expensive software. This is a real plus since one can create and edit content from anywhere Internet access is available. It is one of the most popular and efficient “Cloud computing” solutions available.

Another benefit is that they all offer the built in feature called RSS (Real Simple Syndication). A RSS feed allows a reader the ability to subscribe to the newest published information on your site and read it without having to go directly to your site.

The last major benefit is cost. These systems are all modular, much like today’s smartphones.  Plug-ins can be installed to add various features without having to pay a programmer to custom develop a solution. A community of developers is always developing new plug-ins for these systems, so it is always worthwhile checking with your web solutions provider if there is a ready-built solution for your need.

The last major advantage of using a CMS is that it is intrinsically search engine friendly. For some reason or another, search engines love these sites. Personally, I have found this by just comparing sites I’ve built through traditional coding and those managed by a CMS (Wordpress and Joomla). The number of hits on the CMS driven sites are much higher than those for the traditional site.

So, if you’re looking to establish a new site or redevelop and existing one, I would highly recommend turning to a CMS such as WordPress or Joomla depending on the needs and size of the site.

One idea that I have been considering is offering the setup of a website and blog at the same time. The main site would be powered by the Open Source CMS, Joomla and the blog would be powered by the Open Source blogging software, WordPress.

The reason behind this thinking is that a website is a great tool for demonstrating services and products to the public, but it is not a great interpersonal marketing tool. It is meant to demonstrate to the general public. The blog on the other hand is a tool which allows a person or business to get personal with the audience so that the reader begins to build trust with the author. This relationship has become the new method of gaining clients rather than the old fashioned method of selling.

This one-two punch method does two things. First, with an inexpensive website, services and products of the person or business can be marketed. Secondly, with the blog, the author can demonstrate to his or her audience that they are experts in their field and can provide the services or products in a value added manner. The blog can also serve as a newsroom where new and upcoming events and promotions can be brought to the public.

We have all heard the phrase now “Content is King.” However, if no one knows that the new content is there, it will not be found. The key is to syndicate content so that the Internet audiences can access it as soon as possible. So, how does one go about syndicating content? The major way is via RSS feed.

All new content management systems have a unique feature to them which is not inherent to traditional HTML sites, that feature is that they generate RSS feeds right out of the box. No extra coding is needed. The feeds can then be subscribed to, imputed into social networking sites and some email marketing campaigns. Blogging systems such as WordPress, have RSS feeds pushing out the newest posts which is why they are so important to search engine optimization and marketing.

The other way of syndicating content is through pingback. In other words, each time content is created or edited, the system sends alerts to the major search engines. Pinging the search engines could be compared to the kid in school who never stopped talking or always was the attention getter. Again, blogging software has this technology built in so the search engines are made aware constantly of new posts and changes.

Whether it be through RSS feed or pingbacks, both technologies play a significant role in search engine optimization. The more the search engines are aware of changes to your site, the more often it will come back to it thus improving your rank.

So, do yourself and your website(s) a favor, take advantage of one or both of these methods of announcing new content and you will see how much your traffic will increase.

Hi all,

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The most popular kid on the block for blog software has got to be Wordpress. It is used by well known corporations around the world, small businesses, and personal sites.  But, did you know that with the large arsenal of plug-ins that are available for Wordpress, it can be used for a lot more than just blogging.

Wordpress, for the small script that it is, could be compared to a Swiss Army Knife or the iTouch and iPhone for the amount of functions that it can fulfill and the number seems to be increasing. The last time I counted various uses, I came up with at least five. For those of you who are not sure what Wordpress can do outside of a standard blog, check out these uses.

• Website engine: Did you know that you could use Wordpress to run your website rather than using traditional HTML? With the right options set, you use Wordpress to display pages rather than posts which end up giving you the same effect as a web site except that it is dynamically generated.
• Shopping cart: Wordpress also has the capability e-commerce by adding a shopping cart plug-in. There are many tutorials on the web which demonstrate how to setup a Wordpress based shopping cart.
• Photo Gallery: For photographers out there who want to showcase their photos to the world, Wordpress can help you out here as well. There are a few plug-ins which extend the content management to support photos as content as the original nature of Wordpress is typewritten content, not photos.
• Membership Site: Membership sites are on the rise as the amount of profit to be earned on information grows. The core of a membership site is a plug-in which requires visitors to pay a fee via Paypal and other systems before getting access to the article. Memberships can be setup to be individual access, weekly, monthly or yearly.
• Contact Manager: Using the custom theme and plug-in from Rolopress.com, Wordpress can become a searchable contact manager. So, here’s your change to convert that old manual Rolodex into a easy to use contact manager that is accessible from any web browser.
• Dating Site: There is a lot of money to be made on the dating scene. Wordpress can also be morphed into a simple dating site as well, believe it or not.

With all these various types of uses, I’m sure with a little bit of imagination you can come up with a reason to employ WordPress to use in your next Internet project.

Since I started the business back in 2001, I have struggled to identify the exact niche that I would set out to fill. The idea finally started to become clear to me back in 2005 when I looked back at what I really wanted to pursue after college, graphics, publishing, and web communications. So, from that moment I began to seek out ways to rediscover opportunities in those areas, but with current and upcoming twists.

Nowadays, just about everyone offers web design services, however, very few seem to specialize in content management systems, helping clients determine which system is best suited for their needs, and developing Internet marketing strategies using this technology.  The challenge is that every solution is different as each client has different needs. But, in general, the common factor in this early period of the 21st century is the need to be heard and visible on the Internet.

However, it seems like sites go up left and right, but there is very little emphasis placed on developing systematic approaches to Internet marketing tactics. In other words, incorporating search engine optimization, email marketing, blogging, social media marketing, and analytics should be as a whole rather than individually. There seems to be a lot of back tracking rather than developing a synergistic system from the start.

If we were to plan the end goal and develop an Internet marketing plan with all the pieces put in place at one time, we would not only get more results quicker, but also at a much cheaper rate.  Much like anything else that involves labor, doing more at the same time saves money rather than having to go back and retrofit at a later time for another larger sum of money. This is the technique that I am planning on marketing in order to save my clients marketing time and money.

There are three major parts that make up a quality Internet Marketing campaign. They are:

• Search Engine friendliness
• Social Media Marketing
• Email marketing

The main question that surfaces is which ones to use and in what order. The answer to this problem is not simple. If there was a simple recipe it would have been figured out by now. But a good strategy to use is:

1. Develop good content on your web site or blog
2. Include related keywords into the various pages and references to those pages
3. Utilize the different social mediums to announce it to the general public (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)
4. Develop and email marketing strategy to grab the email addresses of those who have visited your site to keep them coming back.

This is just one strategy to use to develop a stream of traffic to your site. There are many other deviations, but to start this is a tried and true method.

Today we need all the help we can get to market ourselves to get our foot into the door. Whether it be into a new job or to impress a client. One has to come across as the “firstest with the mostest”. There are two major ways of accomplishing this unique marketing tactic.

First, the tradational Powerpoint presentation with voice narration. Unlike your hard copy resume, this method gives your potential boss or client an additional carrot to consider. When building your interactive profile, take an inventory of your personal skillsets. What do you want others to learn about you that is not already on your resume? Consider hyperlinks to websites that have influenced you. What you include is up to you, but make it more than just your resume in another format.

The second means of delivering  an interactive personal profile is through the development of a personal website that describes you and your background. The two things you would need to secure are a personal domain for yourself and a web hosting account. It is now possible to get a .me domain for your name rather than the traditional .com version.

Building a website is not a difficult take nowadays. Many web hosting companies now offer website building packages as part of their offer. Check a few out!. There are also a number of self-installing scripts that can get you setup a quick and professional site within minutes and a few hours of customization. The benefit of these scripts that that allow you to edit your website from any Internet enabled computer. Three of the most popular scripts are:

• Wordpress
• Joomla
• Drupal

Want to kill two birds with one stone? Why not do both and offer your Powerpoint profile as a download on your website. Doing this will prevent you  from having to burn CDs of your profile.

The possibilites are endless when it comes to how you can market yourself electronically. Just think outside the box and you’ll quickly find yourself working with those you want to be in with.