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Showing posts from April, 2013

Using the Localized Resource Builder

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Last week I had to use the localized resource builder for localizing an application for one of my clients. After searching a while I did find an article about the topic , and although it didn't meet my needs, it did point me in the right direction. Localize with the Data Page Builder Here's the scenario - I have a custom HTML page that has descriptive text to be localized. This is easily accomplished by adding a second data page builder (the first is for the data on the page) that points to the variable created by the localized resource builder. Here's the HTML I used for page1: <html> <head><title>Default Test Page</title></head> <body> <div name="contact"> <span name="name_label"/> <span name="name"></span> <br> <span name="phone_label"/> <span name="phone"></span>...
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How to Make a Foldable in PowerPoint!

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For the last few weeks, the poll has been temperamental, but I  hosted it through PollDaddy this week and all of the votes counted!  Sorry for the issues the previous weeks! The poll looks a little different, but it's far more stable!!! Now... for the tutorial! You can download this tutorial as a PDF by clicking this picture! Note: This tutorial is hosted on Google Docs.  To save it from there, just open the file and click File > Download to save onto your computer! For  next week's poll, I'm going to do something I haven't done before... I'm going to leave the three remaining options up without adding a new options.  Don't worry... I have plenty of ideas to add to the poll and plenty of requests I plan on adding to the poll in the near future, but I really want to blog about one of those options that's been on the poll for a long time!  I feel so bad every time someone contacts me that they've been voting forever on an option that hasn't been pi...
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My Writing Analogy

When I finish a book, I always expect there to be a sense of pride and accomplishment or sadness and emptiness at leaving the book and its characters behind, particularly at the end of the series. But almost every time, I feel nothing. Not like "numb" nothing, but like... just nothing. I mean, I love writing, I love the world and characters, otherwise I wouldn't spend so much time there, but when I'm done, I'm just... done. For me, writing is the same as having to pee really bad. Like holding-it-for-the-last-hour-of-a-really-long-car-ride bad. There is an intense urgency and immediacy when I write, like I need to get it all out this second or the world might end. And then there is something very satisfying in the act of the writing (much the same way there is in peeing after holding it for a really long time), but then when I'm done, I don't feel proud or sad. It's just something that I had to do, and I did it, and now I'm moving on. That is best a...
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Editable Spelling Practice Book!

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Yikes!  This cold has taken its toll on me this week... I even missed my Wednesday linky party!  I thought I had scheduled the post but I managed to leave it as a draft so it didn't post! Anyway, a few months ago I made this cute spelling practice book for my class, and it has made a world of difference for my students.  One of my parents even said, "Thank you for sending the book home.  He never wanted to practice his spelling words since they weren't printed on a sheet that said 'homework' and now he has no excuse!"  My kids love bringing in their book each Friday, and I love how well they're doing on their tests. I still do lesson plans in class for spelling, but this book has made a major difference in getting them to practice at home! This editable book allows you to input your own list of 5 or 10 spelling words. It has special instructions to encourage your students to practice writing their words at home every single night! Just type in the da...
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Standalone Java Webapp made easy with Maven

Introduction As you may already know, creating a war archive and deploying it on a preinstalled Servlet Container is not the only way running a Java webapp, since you can also embed the Web-Server in the application itself. Sometimes such artifacts are delivered as standalone executable programs that can be easily started and stopped in the commandline and even run as a service in the background. Maybe you should also consider producing your app this way and benefit from its huge advantages: No preinstalled Webserver/Servlet Container required that would take additional maintenance. Easy Cross-Platform. Same artifact can of course be run on any System. Complete Standalone Software Apache Sonar is a great Example of such Software. It uses an embedded Jetty Server and creates an embedded H2 Database for persistence that can be replaced in configuration. As you can see here they prepared startup scripts for any Platform that execute the actual StartServer class. Embedded Tomcat In my t...
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Technology Tuesday Postponed

Unfortunately I have to postpone the "Technology Tuesday" tutorial this week.  I'm feeling a bit under the weather and my sinus headache is really making looking at the computer difficult! I'm going to extend the poll... but it's been really temperamental this week!  I know a number of votes were lost (I checked earlier in the week and it had 7 votes, then it reset and 5 other people voted, then it reset again and now it only has 3 votes... ugh!)  I hosted the poll through another site ( Poll Daddy ), which is known to be more reliable... be sure to vote again!
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Watersong Blookclub!

With Tidal 's release only six weeks away, I thought a fun thing to do would be to do a kind of interactive book club for the Watersong series. People who have already read the series can have a bit of a refresher for the newest book comes out, and for new readers, it's a great way to get involved with the series. Plus, I just thought it would be fun. I talked it over with people about how they thought it would be best to do a bookclub, and they suggested Wattpad . It has a great community of readers and writers over there, plus it offers an excellent way to post excerpts. You can go check out my profile there now: http://wattpad.com/AmandaHocking The first 8 chapters of Wake are up there, along with the first 16 chapters of Lullaby , and the entirety of the short story Forgotten Lyrics . As the weeks go on, I'll be posting fun facts, behind the scenes stuff, bonus content, and sneak peeks of Tidal , as well as answering questions and talking with readers. So if you're...
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Editable Vocabulary Worksheets (Flash Giveaway!)

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I love to introduce my students to advanced vocabulary, but some Tier 2 and Tier 3 words can be hard for them to grasp!  I decided to come up with a worksheet to help my students learn some of the more advanced vocabulary to go along with each of our units.  Since everyone's lesson plans/vocabulary words always seem to differ, I figured I'd offer this item as an editable template! This item includes two templates... just input your word and definition and have your students practice using their new vocabulary words!  These “superstar” themed vocabulary worksheets have only the clipart locked down… everything else is editable! Change the vocabulary words and definitions to the ones you are working on in class, and even use your favorite font! Click the picture below to see the item on TPT! Win this template right now by guessing which TV show I am watching right now!  I'll give you one hint only... it's live on TV, not on DVR!
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In Light of Things

I'd planned on writing a blog this week to talk about Wake and Lullaby being in paperback, as well as a few other things coming up. Then the bombing at the Boston marathon happened. And then the factory blew up in Waco. And then the MIT shooting and the incidents at Watertown. And everything about my books felt trivial and unimportant.  But the reality is that I need to talk about my books because 1) I enjoy writing them, 2) Some people enjoy reading them, and 3) I want to continue being able to write books and have people read them for as long as I possibly can. So here's what I'm going to do: On Monday, I'm going to tell you about my books and what's going on with them ( including a book club going on over at Wattpad ). But for now, I'm going to leave links of where to donate money to help those effected in the recent Boston tragedies as well as the Waco explosion. I'm also going to encourage everyone to help as much as they can. If you can't afford ...
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Getting to Know Each Other! Skittles Style!

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I came across this linky party and I love it!  I could see myself doing something similar with my kiddos!  Latoya at Flying into First Grade is hosting a linky party to get us more acquainted... and the theme is Skittles!!! Here is the code for the linky: Red - Favorite Ice Cream Flavor Orange - Favorite Memory from College Yellow - Favorite Sports Team Green - Favorite Fast Food Place Purple - Wild Card(Tell anything about yourself) RED I absolutely love Cookie Dough, Cookies and Cream, and Vanilla... but I have a new ice cream downfall... fruit ice cream!  It's healthier and it works out way better for my lactose intolerance!  And of course... I found it on Pinterest!  Click the picture below to check it out! ORANGE This is a tough one... I have so many great memories from college!  My husband went to school up in Boston and even though we visit friends up there frequently, I miss being able to walk to everything... particularly in spring and summer! YELL...
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Remove Scrollbars from syntaxhighlighter

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It's easy to remove the scrollbars that's generated by the syntax highlighter plugin  go to the CSS file you using provided in the plugin for example" shCoreDefault.css" or the cutom css theme file you're using. and find class   .syntaxhighlighter  and comment or remove   overflow: auto !important; that's it the scrollbar's that's created by the plugin is gone and you'll get the default scroll bars of the browser window Comment the lines shown above
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What Did They Say!? Wednesday! (A Linky Party!)

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The things that my kids say are just hysterical!  I'd love to hear all the funny things your students say as well! <div align="center"><a href="http://aturntolearn.blogspot.com/" title="What Did They Say!?"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIhmtxluCS0/ULwEfazkl1I/AAAAAAAADpM/MMMzxm23B0Y/s320/What+Did+They+Say+Wednesday.png" alt="What Did They Say!?" style="border:none;" /></a></div> Isn't it the best when students admit guilt without even knowing it?! Student: "Ms. Jessica, he's copying me!!" Me (typical response): "He's copying you sitting criss-cross with your hands folded?" Student: "No. He's spitting and making noises!" Me: "Oh no, so you're telling me that you're spitting and making noises?" Student: "No! He was doing it first!" Me: "So you copied him spitting and making noises?" Student:...
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How to Make Your Own Cut and Paste Items in PowerPoint!

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Cut and paste items are incredibly popular with the kids... and this tutorial reminds me that I really need to incorporate them into my lesson plans more!  This tutorial has a lot of steps, but it's actually really quick to do! Here are the poll results for this week:   Now, onto the tutorial! You can download this tutorial as a PDF by clicking this picture! Note: This tutorial is hosted on Google Docs.  To save it from there, just open the file and click File > Download to save onto your computer! As for next week's poll, i'll be adding how to make a foldable in PowerPoint!
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Addition Uno! (Flash Giveaway and Sale!)

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So many people have requested that I made an Addition Uno game, and I finally got around to it!  This center game will be perfect to go along with your addition lessons plans for Kindergarten or 1st Grade!  Grab it tonight only for 25% off! If you want to win the set for free, be the first person to correctly guess how many days long my addition unit is!  Be sure to leave your email address!
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What Did They Say!? Wednesday! (A Linky Party!)

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Spring is in the air... and spring fever or not, my class is still being their silly little selves! <div align="center"><a href="http://aturntolearn.blogspot.com/" title="What Did They Say!?"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIhmtxluCS0/ULwEfazkl1I/AAAAAAAADpM/MMMzxm23B0Y/s320/What+Did+They+Say+Wednesday.png" alt="What Did They Say!?" style="border:none;" /></a></div> I love when my former students come to visit me! One of my former students comes up to me and says: Student: "I have a secret to tell you!" Me: "What is it?" The little boy cups hands around this mouth and leans towards my ear to whisper his secret... then he drops his hands and gives me a big kiss on the cheek and smiles, Student: "That was the secret!" (followed by him running away!) How can you beat that secret?! Now... it's time to share your cute kids story from this week! Rules for the Link...
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I18n of JPA Entities

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Sadly the support for i18n for Entities in JPA is actually very poor to non-existent. There's just basically no out of the box solution provided by Hibernate & Co, although i18n is a feature that could be considered mandatory for a powerful ORM Framework. If you take a look at PHP for example Doctrine supports i18n very well. So besides some really unpopular i18n extensions on forums/github you are basically on your own. So how do you do it? There isn't really a general solution to achieve i18n. There are many different ways and you have to choose which is actually best for you. If you do have a relatively small amount of data and ordering by translations is not necessary you can store "keys" in your tables that are being translated by Spring i18n for example. Spring i18n could store the translations in separate property files. Since you wont have to worry about performance, this is a very easy way to achieve i18n. But lets say you have lots of data, and you need ...
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How to Make Items That are Easy to Cut!

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Cutting out lamination can be such a pain... but if you make your classroom games/signs yourself, you can actually make them incredibly easy to cut! the cards that I have in the preview only took me three slices to cut out! Here are the poll results! Now onto the tutorial! You can download this tutorial as a PDF by clicking this picture! Note: This tutorial is hosted on Google Docs.  To save it from there, just open the file and click File > Download to save onto your computer! As far as cutting the lamination, I also recommend getting a nice paper cutter. I have one like the one below, which seems to cut nicely through cardstock/lamination. As for next week's tutorial, I'm going to add something a bit more specific... how to make your own cut/paste items in powerpoint!
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Quick and Easy Addition Game

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Yikes!  I was looking at my recent posts this morning and so many of them are focused on technology.  Don't get me wrong... I love technology, but I love teaching as well!  I figured I'd share a quick picture of an addition game I did today.  It was so easy to make, and the kids had a blast doing it! I kind of want to start a weekly feature for hands on activities... but I can't think of a cute name for it... any ideas?!  Maybe Friday Fun Day?"  Or "Hands-On Fun Friday?"  What do you think I should call it? I'm open to any day of the week... not just Friday!!!
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Daylight

Lately, I've been going to bed at night, and getting up in the morning, and it sucks. Normally, I go to bed in the morning, and get up in the early evening. This is how things should be. I can't even explain it, but being away during the day just isn't for me. The days seems to take forever and they're boring and I get restless and confused. During the night, everything makes so much sense. In another life, I was probably a bat. That would explain so much.
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Georgia O'Keeffe Art Project and Writing Piece (Flash Giveaway!)

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First of all, I'm loving the flash giveaways that I'm doing with my new products, so be sure to keep your eyes open for a lot more of those! Second of all, one of my favorite art units is coming up... Georgia O'Keeffe.  Each year I teach my kindergarten students about her, and they learn how she created such beautiful images of flowers.  They are always inspired by her work and love using colored pencils to try to be an artist just like her!  After their artwork is done, I have them do a follow up writing piece describing their flower or trying to convince someone to plant their flower in their garden.  It's always adorable to see what they write! I finally made the project a little cuter and posted it up on TPT.  Be sure to check it out by clicking the picture below! Now for the flash giveaway... guess which month I teach this unit in!  Leave a comment with your answer and email address! Update 10:00pm: I teach this unit in April!  Congrats to all of ...
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What Did They Say!? Wednesday! (A Linky Party!)

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It's amazing how much I missed my kids over break!  I'm so excited to be back to hear their funny saying! <div align="center"><a href="http://aturntolearn.blogspot.com/" title="What Did They Say!?"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-OIhmtxluCS0/ULwEfazkl1I/AAAAAAAADpM/MMMzxm23B0Y/s320/What+Did+They+Say+Wednesday.png" alt="What Did They Say!?" style="border:none;" /></a></div> Here's a quote one of my students said after the previous break: Me: "What did you do over break?" Student: "I went to Canada, and I had snowball fights!" Other Students: "What? There was snow?!" Me: "Well, it normally snows in winter so it makes sense that there would be snow.  So, did you have lots of fun in Canada?" Student: "Yeah, but nah. I like America better. because my family is here." How precious is that?! Now... it's time to share your cute kids sto...
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How to Save Your Files as a .Zip File!

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This week's tutorial is on that I suspect will be very popular with TPT sellers... how to "zip" your files! I can't believe how many people voted for this option on the tutorial... it won the poll by a landslide! The directions for how to do this are totally different for Mac vs. PC, so be sure to check out the two different tutorials below! You can download this tutorial as a PDF by clicking this picture! Note: This tutorial is hosted on Google Docs.  To save it from there, just open the file and click File > Download to save onto your computer!   As for next week's poll, I'll be adding how to make items that are easy to cut out!
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