November 2011
2 posts
Effective use of Twitter for organizations →
I just attended a workshop by an organization I’m a member of, where they rolled out Twitter with great hoopla. A few things arose which informed me that this organization still doesn’t understand…
Effective use of Twitter for organizations →
April 2011
2 posts
Responsible Voting vs. Strategic Voting →
You do have a choice. “Strategic” voting has done nothing but backfire. In 104 ridings in the previous election, the NDP came in second place (and they won an additional 37). Strategic…
Dropped my land line...
Well, I’ve cut ties with Bell. I’ve got myself a LG Optimus One Android phone from Koodo, and I’m on a pretty good plan with the cell phone as my only phone. For the same price that I was paying for a landline plus $20/month for 200 minutes from Virgin, I’ve got basically an unlimited cell phone that includes some 3G Internet (the phone also has wi-fi).
Overall, I like...
Another essential accessory for occasional... →
An MP3 player with a collection of appropriate music and podcasts can be a great tool in the classroom, whether it’s curriculum-related podcasts used to enrich a lesson, or The Lord of the…
January 2010
1 post
Thoughts on the iPad →
December 2009
4 posts
Harper to prorogue Parliament... again! →
As the CBC has reported, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has again shown his disregard for our democracy by asking the Governor General to prorogue Parliament in the middle of session.
While it’s…
Ontario college teachers set to go on strike →
Ontario’s college teachers are set to go on strike in January, and I can already hear it… students and their parents complaining (most likely to the workers who aren’t the problem, rather than to…
Budgeting for Change →
As we approach the end of the year, we’re reaching the deadline to make charitable donations which can be deducted from this year’s taxes. This can be problematic, because we’re also at that time of…
The Dark Side of Privatization →
Across Ontario, hundreds of USW 9511 workers are striking outside their employer, Ontario’s DriveTest driver examination centres. Their strike is now entering it’s fifth month. The…
November 2009
1 post
The Union Movement Online →
You know that you’re part of a union, but maybe you haven’t figured out yet exactly what that means. Or maybe you’re interested in what unions are all about (or even better, interested in organizing…
October 2009
1 post
Replacing a Palm with an iPod touch 64GB →
I’ve used Palm organizers for many years. With my Palm E2 becoming long in the tooth, I decided to switch platforms and see what all the fuss was about with the iPod touch and the…
September 2009
1 post
Register your router to enable iPod touch... →
The iPod touch, unlike the iPhone, doesn’t have a GPS to help it know where it is. Yet the iPod touch manages to know its location using its wi-fi capability. How does it do this? The…
August 2009
1 post
Building yet more web presence, and possibly have found an outlet for easily and quickly monetizing all the bits of expertise I have… Squidoo.
First two “lenses” I’ve created:
http://www.squidoo.com/giftedness
http://www.squidoo.com/markcarter
June 2009
3 posts
Galileoscopes →
To celebrate the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, a simple, inexpensive, and well-designed telescope, called the “Galileoscope” is being produced. It costs $15 US plus shipping. I’d…
An Inconvenient Truth →
I watched An Inconvenient Truth tonight. Very well done. Watching it, though, I was really struck by how unconscionable it is that they’ve known about this problem for decades, and they’ve just sat…
I did two tai chi sets and a sabre set in the moonlight beside the Henley Regatta course (there’s a man-made moor there, unlit and connected to a park, that was created for the World Rowing Championships) tonight. Cool place to do tai chi. Very relaxing; I hadn’t done tai chi in too long. Reminded me of practicing in the dark at night in the upper practice hall at the Centre.
...
May 2009
2 posts
Teach Copyright Right! →
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has just released curriculum for teachers to teach students about their rights and responsibilities when it comes to copyright.
…
I just bought a Virgin Mobile prepaid Samsung M320 phone online… should get here in a few days. $15(with PayCheck promotion)/month for 200 minutes is about the same as my 7-11 Speakout phone was costing me, but I’ll have double the talk time. I’m going to closely monitor my usage, and perhaps drop my landline.
April 2009
3 posts
Participated in my first Scrabble tournament... →
I participated in the Niagara Region Literacy Council’s Scrabble for Literacy fundraising tournament tonight, my first Scrabble tournament ever. It was a ton of fun. Great buffet dinner,…
Had a good time last night… dinner and games night with Mensans in Toronto. Not as far as I thought, so perhaps I’ll start making the time to participate with the Toronto group more often.
I Stand With Diane Campaign Success! →
The I Stand With Diane campaign has had an important victory. Diane, a hotel worker in St. Catharines, was fired by her employer for trying to organize a union in her workplace. She was reinstated…
March 2009
6 posts
Well, I had a good week in Ottawa… did some tai chi, had dinner with some Mensans, went to a comedy club… lots of fun stuff.
I’ve also just registered two new .TEL domains, markcarter.tel, and mcarter.tel. When registering my other domains, obviously “mark”, “carter”, and even “mcarter” weren’t available in any of the TLDs, but I was...
The Story of Stuff →
I just watched a great video called The Story of Stuff. It takes you through the life cycle of consumer goods and discusses the implications of it all. It’s fast paced, engaging, and…
Inspired by my work this past weekend at the NDP convention, I’ve purchased a camcorder, a Canon FS100. Just within the Local, I can think of a couple of events coming up where it’s going to be useful, and really, the possibilities are endless. I’ve always been very much a written word person, though, so it’ll be an interesting challenge expressing things through video.
My debut as a videographer →
This past Saturday, I made my debut as a videographer. Well, I ran the video camera at least. ;-) I was at the Ontario NDP leadership convention with Ish Theilheimer of …
Voting just scratches the surface →
The Ontario NDP elected a new leader today, and it’s inspired me to talk about participation in the political process. Most people simply vote in general elections. At best, they’ve read…
I’ll be at the Ontario NDP convention this Saturday helping Ish Theilheimer of Straightgoods.ca do some video interviews.
February 2009
6 posts
I just got the job of fundraising intern for Straightgoods.ca, an independent media newsmagazine!
I just cast my vote for the next leader of the Ontario NDP.
The Case for Investing in Occasional Teachers →
I recently read an interesting article that delineated the number of jobs created with a $1 Billion investment in various areas. Here’s the quote: “If you put a billion dollars into tax cuts, it…
Micro-Blogging for Teachers using Tumblr.com →
Micro-blogging refers to “blog” services which are intended for very short entries. The best-known service is Twitter, which limits entries to 140 characters of text and has tightly…
I’m heading off to the Lantern Festival banquet at the Tai Chi Centre this weekend…
January 2009
10 posts
Staying in for the rest of the day… the roads out there suck right now.
Happy Data Privacy Day! http://www.intel.com/policy/dataprivacy.htm http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/raising-data-privacy-awareness.html
I’ve set up this tumblelog to automatically import my blog feeds, so every time I make a blog post you’ll see a link to it and the first few sentences. Set up this way, my tumblelog is kind of like an aggregator of Mark. Instead of subscribing to all my blogs individually, you could just subscribe to the tumblelog.
I just popped over to Google Reader and took a look at the...
Conservative Budget Fails to Help People in Need →
Today’s federal budget gives the appearance that the government has taken its head out of the sand, but it fails to address major issues. Firstly, the requirement of provinces to match funds means…
I just watched the pilot episode of Big Bang Theory, and I now have a new favourite TV show. ;-)
I just finished blogging about today’s federal budget… read my thoughts at politics.markcarter.info
niagaraot.tumblr.com
I just created a tumblelog for my teachers’ union local, at niagaraot.tumblr.com
It should be an interesting experiment, both because it’s a team tumblelog (I invited all the other Executive members to be contributors), and because it’s yet another new medium for communicating with and trying to engage our members.
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