Access those sites you like off-line

There you are - all ready with those great new web resources to show your students and either (a) the network isn't functioning, (b) it is but what loaded really quickly when you first tried it takes ages now, (c) for some reason surf control forbids you to access it in that classroom, (d) you get rescheduled to a room with no internet access or (e) something similar happens!

We've all been there. In fact we've all been to a hotel or meeting venue with no internet access and had to try and describe enthusiastically with arm waving and various other antics having to substitute for the real thing. Well, why not download the whole site, or the bits you need, onto your laptop and run it from that? No network connection needed. No waiting. No-one need know any different unless they examine the address bar.

There have been a few applications that do this but HTTrack Website Copier does was it says on the tin and is open source, free and eay to use. I've just downloaded it, installed it and copied the whole of a 50MB site in about 30 minutes. That was a huge site (an old one of mine and the size was due to thousands of old files I'd forgotten were still there!) and you should find you need nothing like the 4000+ files I had so the operation can be done in the few minutes between lessons if necessary.

You can try it at www.httrack.com and it'll certainly help me get over some of the barriers to moving e-learning forward - especially in those 'hard-to-reach' areas. Not much to do with SWOT analysis again but may as well use this space for something.

Andrew

Peter's Pond

Absolutely nothing to do with SWOT analysis but thought anyone dropping by might be interested in this amazing web cam of live visitors to a watering place in Namibia. Currently a lovely elephant and various gazelles and things wandering around with full live sounds too. Now, just have to find a way to include it in my lessons when the inspector calls.