Drew the ALF's blog

There are often times when you’ll want to add an iframe element to your site. Many services offer cool widgets that come as iframes. Unfortunately iframes are also a bit dangerous, they are like windows into other websites which could be like windows into terrible alternate dimensions! For that reason… Read more

We have a Hangout culture in ALC land. At least once a week  I get on a Google Hangout call and talk, coordinate, share, or co-work with my peers. It’s great fun and easy (especially when we’ve set up special hangout links that are always the same, but that’s for… Read more

I held the first ever Network News Call September 11th at 11am ET. It was broadcast live using YouTube. This call will covers Network news and information for the ALC community. Check out a recap from the call. This post will go over how to run the Network News Call. The Setup Created… Read more

I use Google Drive to save and share documents. With Google Drive one can upload big files and share them with people. Often times I’ll host files on Google Drive and create links to those files on web pages. If I need to update one of those files I don’t… Read more

The ALC Network relies heavily on a modified version of Theme Foundry’s Make theme. The front page of my site and the network home page both use the Page Builder “template”. This post will cover the basics of using the ALC General Theme (which is based on Make). You can learn more about… Read more

As the ALC Network expands into communities with different languages it is becoming necessary to translate our content to serve those communities. To accomplish this I’ve installed the polylang plugin which gives any network site the ability to configure multiple languages to display pages in. Most of our network level pages… Read more

I got the following questions from a teen I know: Ok so the question I had was basically How do you stay motivated doing all the website projects you do? And more then that How would I find something that worked for me? Motivation for me has a few different parts.… Read more

If you’re doing network work with ALC you’re probably using the ALF Slack team. Slack is a wonderful service which provides a slick platform for teams to chat with each other (rather than email!). In this post I will link you do some great help pages that Slack offers then… Read more

I’m happy to announce version 0.1 of the ALC Tuition Sliding Scale Plugin. This plugin, adapted from code written by ALC NYC parent @geva, allows anyone to place a sliding scale on their website! Here’s a working example: How it works You can add a slider into any section of your… Read more

This is a quick tutorial for creating nice images that link to videos in your newsletters. ALC Oahu and Arcadia Learning Commons are having screenings of Class Dismissed this week. Both sent out email newsletters letting their communities know about it. Emails can’t display embedded videos, but Oahu wanted to share the trailer.… Read more

I was asked to introduce Gameshifting to ALC Oahu to help structure their meetings more intentionally. I introduced the concept, co-created it with the community, then worked with them to implement it into their daily practice. Click to learn more about what Gameshifting is and how I went about creating… Read more

Do you have a bad habit you wish you could get rid of? Do you have a practice you wish you could incorporate into your life? Making or breaking habits is a very common desire. Maybe you want to stop drinking soda or start meditating everyday. This takes willpower and… Read more

I wanted to write up a quick post about posting to this website. Sometimes we, as facilitators, help our students publish their blogs. Maybe they write them in a text document and ask us to perform the technical task of publishing them or perhaps we type as they dictate. However… Read more

This post will cover how to write a post that covers how to do something (so meta!). One of the Agile Roots is to create sharable value so that you, and others, can visualize your learning. I like to model this root by creating tutorials that cover doing things. The wonderful… Read more

I wanted to share this print template so you can make your own foldy! Here’s a picture of the template below. Download a Photoshop version (with layers and guides) or use this PDF version for printing (or print the image below). Here’s an example of the “Yay School” foldy I… Read more

Collaboration is the name of the game inside ALC. We are all actively engaged in collaboratively building schools, community, and (importantly) documentation about such efforts. Wordpress (the system this website is build on) offers great features for collaboration through it’s post editing process. I’d like to quickly share one powerful feature… Read more

There has been a discussion about blogging on the All ALF’s email list recently and it touched on blog privacy. I wanted to write an outline of what your options are in terms of privacy when it comes to this site. First of all as a general rule, anything you… Read more

I really like the kanban. Before I had any idea what to call it I was using it. This was back in 2010 when I was a freelance web designer/developer. I had struggled with task management for some time, tried out all the different apps and computer based programs. From… Read more

Yesterday was our first day back, the start of a new term. I’m hoping that the theme of this new term will be more parental involvement. Last year the students learned the process, intention setting, collaborative play, and reflection. We carved out the space, now it’s time to fill it.… Read more

I’d like to share something I found out East at Acorn Community. If you’ve ever lived with any number of other humans you know the universal pain point that is chores. You’re either doing them all or dealing with passive aggressive notes. To over come this sticking point Acorn used a… Read more

The following is a review written to the Web Dev team at ALC Everett about their website: Illuminati Xtremists Alliance Amazing work here team. I’m very impressed that you have taken on an entier web project from concept to execution. You are off to an amazing start and with diligent study and… Read more

I’ve been studying Javascript on codecademy.com and was inspired to make a virtual dice today! var diceRoll = function(number){ return Math.floor(Math.random()*number + 1) } It might not look like much but it creates a function called diceRoll, which I can add any number of sides to and it will output… Read more

I did a hangout on air early today and spoke about Blogging. Read more

So I’ve been asked to do an online class on how to use the blogging platform here. I will post the video in a later post, for now I want to go over a simple function of the site. The “admin bar” and blogging So you want to blog* a bit… Read more