I am almost finished with copying my old blog here. These older posts are written in English. My new posts are in French but as you can see at your right, you can translate my posts in English with this cool Google translate widget. Or in any other language. It doesn’t look like much but I assure you it’s effective !

Many of you have created your instructor profile, but have many different sections.  This begs the question, can I copy the work I did into my other classes.   The answer is yes.  Here’s how:

First, in the lower right corner of your Course Home page, click on Import/Export/Copy Components under Course Administration.

Leave the default selections.  You are going to copy from another “Org Unit”.  (This is D2L speak for another class.)  Click on Next.

From the drop down menu, select the course where you have already created your homepage.

Once you select your course, wait a second or two.  All of the resources in that course will appear to be copied.  In this case, you don’t want to copy all of the components, but rather just the Homepages and Widgets.  Select each of these two items and click Next.

You will see blue circles while it copies and then green check marks.  Now, you have imported the homepage, but you must set it as your current homepage.  Click on Homepages under Course Administration at your Course Home.

Click on Set to activate your home page.  Most of the time, it will be the one with the blue hyperlink as it’s name.

You will notice Frank’s Instructor Profile is now present in his new class.

Widget and Homepage management aren’t the easiest things in D2L.  If you need help, be sure to ask us and we can help.

Decided to add a bit of colour to the blog.

Added RSS subscription buttons. Lots. And badges.

And an old-hat blogroll from the past. Well, not that old.

Hope the layout looks alright: more elements, more complexity.

We are developing a series of widgets/gadgets that provide easy access to some of our local information.

At present, we have two available – one for iGoogle (compatible with any computer that has a web browser) and the other for Mac OS X.  A version for the Windows Vista / Windows 7 sidebar will be available in the future.

Currently the widget allows you to perform find-your-nearest searches with a variety of different types of location from our online mapping facility.  The “Directions” link shows you the route from your postcode location to the selected item.

More facilities will be added in the future.

See www.brent.gov.uk/gadgets for more details.

What are the can’t–live–without things on your web homepage?  http://questions.vox.com/

My answer: I would have to say the buttons to where to go to follow me like twitter and the widgets or gadgets you can add on the page as well. Thank you for coming, drive home safely. K

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The United States and China sparred over exchange rates at a meeting of Asia Pacific leaders on Sunday, pointing to tricky talks ahead for President Barack Obama when he flies to China to address economic tensions.

The discord surfaced at a summit of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Singapore when a reference to "market-oriented exchange rates" was cut from a communique issued at the end of two days of talks. An APEC delegation official said Washington and Beijing could not agree on the wording.

That underscored strains likely to feature when Obama travels to Shanghai later on Sunday following moves by Washington to slap duties on various Chinese-made products and a growing drumbeat of pressure on Beijing to let its yuan currency strengthen.

It also suggested investors should be cautious about betting on a yuan appreciation after a central bank statement last week appeared to give the green light for strengthening.

"China has pledged to keep monetary policy moderately loose, and their concern is still the economic recovery," said currency strategist Enrico Tanu Widjaja at OCBC Bank in Singapore. "They will probably let the yuan strengthen when they start tightening policy."

Chinese officials have grown testy about the pressure over the yuan. Chinese banking regulator Liu Mingkang told a forum in Beijing on Sunday that ultra-low interest rates in the United States were fuelling speculation in overseas asset markets and threatened the global economic recovery.

Obama pledged on Saturday to deepen dialogue with China rather than seek to contain the rising power, which is set to overtake Japan next year as the world's second-largest economy.

But issues ranging from the yuan and trade tensions to human rights could complicate what many regard as the most important relationship of the 21st century.

"With regards to trade, this is a difficult time for the U.S.-China relationship," said Derek Scissors, trade economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"The signs are actually getting worse instead of better."

SPECULATION ON YUAN MOVE

Chinese President Hu Jintao ignored the yuan issue in several speeches at APEC and focused instead on what he called "unreasonable" trade restrictions on developing countries.

An earlier draft pledged APEC's 21 members to maintain "market-oriented exchange rates that reflect underlying economic fundamentals." That statement had been agreed at a meeting of APEC finance ministers on Thursday, including China, although it made no reference to the yuan.

A U.S. official sought to play down talk of discord over the removal of the reference to currencies, and said the actual discussions took place among aides, not leaders.

He also signaled Obama was prepared to discuss the yuan when he gets to China. In an interview with Reuters last week, Obama said he planned to raise the issue on his trip.

Washington says an undervalued yuan is contributing to imbalances between the United States and the world's third-biggest economy. China is pushing for U.S. recognition as a market economy and concessions on trade cases that would make it harder for Washington to take action against Chinese products.

The yuan has effectively been pegged against the dollar since mid-2008 to cushion its economy from the downturn.

China is coming under growing international pressure to let it rise because its manufacturers have gained market share at the expense of rivals in countries whose currencies have risen against the falling dollar.

China's central bank said last week it would consider major currencies in guiding the yuan, suggesting a departure from an unofficial peg.

However, Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Chen Jian on Sunday played down talk of a shift in policy as well as expectations of a rise in the yuan's exchange rate.

Beijing may have forced APEC to tone down its language on currencies to avoid encouraging bets on yuan appreciation that would suck speculative capital into China and fuel asset bubbles and inflation.

By Friday dollar/yuan volatilities were implying the strongest expectations the Chinese currency would appreciate since June, and the market for offshore non-deliverable forwards pointed to a 3.6 percent rise in 12 months.

GLOBAL IMBALANCE

Obama told APEC leaders the world economy was on a path to recovery but warned that a failure to rebalance the global economic system would lead to further crises.

He said the world could not return to the same cycles of boom and bust that sparked the global recession.

"We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth. If we do, we will continue to drift from crisis to crisis, a failed path that has already had devastating consequences for our citizens, our businesses, and our governments," Obama said.

Obama's strategy calls for America to save more, spend less, reform its financial system and cut its deficits and borrowing. Washington also wants key exporters such as China to boost domestic demand.

The APEC statement endorsed stimulus measures to keep the world from sliding back into recession and urged a successful conclusion to the Doha Round of trade talks in 2010.

APEC is the last major gathering of global decision-makers before a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in three weeks meant to ramp up efforts to fight climate change.

Those negotiations have largely stalled, but a U.S. official said Obama had backed a two-step plan by the Danish prime minister to aim for an operational agreement and to leave legally binding details until later.

The APEC statement dropped all references to emissions reductions that had been in earlier drafts.

(Additional reporting by Neil Chatterjee, Caren Bohan and Lucy Hornby and the Beijing bureau and Paul Eckert in Washington; Writing by Dean Yates, Editing by John Chalmers and Bill Tarrant)

China-U.S. discord on currencies clouds Obama visit

An application of principles of modern discourse on the Weight Watchers Program Framework for over 40 years, Weight Watchers has helped millions of people around the world lose weight. Since its conception in the early '60s, the program became a rock industry of weight loss kid food. While other fad diets come and go over the decades, Weight Watchers has remained as a major reliable system for losing weight. The program began in 1961 when Jean Nidetch began inviting friends to his home each week to offer each other support in their struggle with weight loss. Over the years, Weight Watchers has evolved to include not only weight loss, but nutrition, physical activity and make decisions to live well in their program.The program Weight Watchers, like most diets, is based on balancing food intake with exercise.Guides loss program healthy weight by encouraging members to keep track of what they eat and make healthy decisions about diet and exercise.However, Weight Watchers key to success in their mission to treat weight loss as a "change of lifestyle rather than just another plan. By participating in weekly meetings or become members of the Internet, participants are encouraged to share their experiences, support each other and take advantage of the wealth of tools and information available to them through their weight Watchers.The difference between Weight Watchers and diet programs, most others is that Weight Watchers offers its members the ability to communicate and support each other by their experience weight loss while encouraging members to take decisions which agree as individuals. Also, Weight Watchers has recently completed its program with electronic tools online and expanded to incorporate more flexible diets, such as the new reorganization plan ® enables members to choose either option PlanPOINTS Flex ® or the new Core Plan, which contains no points counting at all….

Read full article: The Hot News: Window Watchers in a City of Strangers

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – Asia Pacific leaders struggled to agree a final statement on Sunday as Washington and Beijing debated the wording on market-oriented exchange rates and trade protectionism, an APEC delegation official said.

The official, who declined to be identified, told Reuters the statement had been delayed because of discussions between the two global giants on the sidelines of an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum meeting in Singapore.

Strains over trade will be high on the agenda when U.S. President Barack Obama visits China this week, after Washington recently slapped duties on Chinese-made tires and followed up with action on oil well pipes.

An earlier draft statement to be issued by APEC leaders would have pledged its 21 members to "actively reject protectionist measures" and maintain "market-oriented exchange rates that reflect underlying economic fundamentals."

That earlier statement had been agreed at a meeting of APEC finance ministers on Thursday, including China, although it made no reference to the Chinese yuan currency. Chinese President Hu Jintao has been under pressure to let the yuan appreciate, but in a speech at an APEC business summit on Friday he ignored the issue and focused instead on what he called "unreasonable" trade restrictions on developing countries.

One of the major themes when Obama visits China will be its yuan, which has effectively been pegged against the dollar since mid-2008 to cushion its economy from the downturn.

Washington says an undervalued yuan is contributing to imbalances between the United States and the world's third-biggest economy.

China's central bank said last week it will consider major currencies in guiding the yuan, suggesting a departure from the peg.

APEC leaders are still expected to pledge to keep stimulus policies in place to stop the world from sliding back into recession business cards design.

Obama arrived in Singapore late on Saturday, missing most of the day's formal talks and speeches where several leaders suggested the world's largest economy was hampering free trade through policies such as "Buy America" campaigns.

Speaking in Tokyo before he arrived, Obama called for a new strategy to rebalance global growth, referring to the excessive consumption in the United States and the over-reliance on exports from some countries that many blame for the economic crisis.

CLIMATE TALKS IN FOCUS

APEC is the last major gathering of global decision-makers before a U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen in three weeks meant to ramp up efforts to fight climate change.

Those negotiations have largely stalled, but a U.S. official said Obama had backed a two-step plan by the Danish prime minister to aim for an operational agreement and to leave legally binding details until later.

The APEC draft earlier dropped a reference to emissions reductions of 50 percent by 2050, and pledged instead to "substantially" cut carbon pollution by 2050.

The statement said job creation would be at the heart of economic policy, a hot topic as unemployment has risen across the industrialized world and put pressure on governments to act.

"Looking beyond supporting the recovery, we recognize the necessity to develop a new growth paradigm for the changed post-crisis landscape, and an expanded trade agenda for enhanced regional economic integration," the draft APEC statement says.

(Editing by John Chalmers)

China-U.S. debate delays APEC statement

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A collection of gold and other medals commemorating India’s most significant heritage sites has been unveiled.The first ones to be launched feature images of monuments and buildings such as the Taj Mahal, the Chola temples and Humayun’s Tomb, the Press Trust of India reports.Each gold medallion weighs 8g and it is hoped that 27 medals bearing pictures of Indian heritage sites will be released in total.The coins were unveiled by UNESCO in conjunction with Indian state-owned trading firm MMTC and Swiss refiner PAMP. UNESCO is hoping to launch medals and coin featuring all 890 World Heritage sites in due course.The aim of the scheme is to raise awareness of the need to preserve historically significant structures, monuments and locations around the world diamond carat.Commenting at the launch of the first Indian medals, UNESCO director-general Koichiro Matsuura said: "This programme will contribute to raising awareness of heritage sites in India and will also generate new financial support for preservation activities."Other UNESCO World Heritage sites in India include Agra Fort, the Sun Temple in Konarak, the Elephanta Caves, the country’s mountain railways and the Red Fort complex.

Gold medals featuring Indian heritage sites unveiled

WASHINGTON – States are jockeying for a new $5 billion pot of education money even before the contest has begun.

The Obama administration was opening the competition Thursday for grants for ideas like charter schools or judging teachers based on student test scores. Applications are due in January and the first round of grants will go out in April.

Fewer than half the states are likely to win the money, and several already have rewritten education laws and cut deals with unions to boost their chances.

“States have been doing some things to get in the ballpark,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Now states have to think about how they win. We’re going to reward excellence here.”

President Barack Obama’s agenda is controversial. National teachers’ unions, typically Democratic allies, have chastised him for relying too heavily on test scores and charter schools when the administration first proposed rules for the competition.

Their criticism is tempered now. “The department worked really hard to find the right balance,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.4 million member American Federation of Teachers.

Unions had argued that student achievement is much more than a score on a standardized test, in part because only about one-third of teachers teach subjects and grades that are actually tested.

In response, the Education Department changed the rules to say that teachers and principals must be judged on several different measures of student achievement, but that test scores should play a significant role.

“I’m disappointed there’s still a lot of focus on test scores tied to individual teachers,” said Dennis Van Roekel, president of the 3.2 million member National Education Association.

“But I think as time moves forward, we’ll have opportunities to work on that. I think there’s more flexibility than there was before.

“I feel good that they opened the door a little,” Van Roekel said. “They didn’t open it far enough, but at least it’s open, and I appreciate that.”

While the unions feel better about the competition, plenty of criticism remains. Some education groups say the rules don’t go far enough or miss the mark.

Saying test scores are “significant” leaves too much to interpretation, said Jeanne Allen, president of the nonprofit Center for Education Reform think tank.

“I think you’ve got the right intentions, and you’ve got some positive movement,” Allen said. “But unless you’re willing to be strict and firm about your expectations and leave nothing up to interpretation, a lot of people will get money without having done very much.”

Duncan said that states won’t be able to downplay or ignore test scores. “We’ve said `significant,’” he said. “We simply won’t reward folks that do that. We mean what we say.”

The Education Trust, a children’s advocacy group, said the contest doesn’t do enough to make sure poor and minority kids have good teachers. Those kids are more likely to have teachers without a degree or certification in the subjects they teach.

The rules say poor and minority students should have equal access to “highly effective teachers,” which are defined as those whose students show high rates of academic growth.

But it will take time to figure out how to measure that growth, and even then, there is no guarantee it will work, said Amy Wilkins, lobbyist for the trust. Instead, she said, officials should use information they have now — which teachers majored or minored in their subjects, how they scored on state licensure exams, how many years of experience they have.

All those qualifications have been shown to make a difference, she said.

“They are ignoring those indicators that are within reach, that people have in their hands,” she said. “They didn’t give poor kids and kids of color access to strong teachers. When poor kids are taught by better teachers, they do much better.”

Joanne Weiss, the Education Department overseeing the grants, said states will be rewarded for taking aggressive steps to ensure that schools with large numbers of minority and poor students have teachers who are just as effective as schools with wealthier students.

Charter schools and test scores fit into four broad goals that Obama wants states to pursue — tougher academic standards, better ways to recruit and keep effective teachers, a method of tracking student performance and a plan of action to turn around failing schools.

A state will have to meet a series of conditions to earn up to 500 points and boost its chances.

Obama uses school dollars to prod states to change

I’ve been playing again. Playing with widgets that is. I know what you must be thinking, but I am perfectly sane and normal, really please believe me.

The widgets I’m referring to are those you can find on WordPress.com. So many widgets, so little time. Just which ones do you pick to make very best use of the opportunities that arise.  I can’t make my mind up between displaying pages or not, having a category cloud or a category widget (I’ve gone for the later incidentally).  The problem is that each widget you use makes your page longer and longer, that’s not a problem on the home page as I display my most recent 10 posts, but when a reader visits a page like this, then there’s an awful lot of white space at the bottom of the page.

So, my solution was to change the theme (that’s the second time in less than a month) to see if I could find a nice three column layout that I liked the look of.  It’s still difficult, the one I’ve settled for, I’d really like to be able to change the background colour to a luverley shade of pale puce (not!) but I can’t unless I purchase the upgrade – so now I have a new question, do I risk irritating Anne who thought the previous theme was dark (and gloomy) and keep the background grey, or do I hope that my pretty rainbow of eggs provides enough colour for one blog to bear.  You see, too many choices.

So back to the widgets.  I’d like people to be able to find my other websites – I have several you know, I’d love them to be able to read (if they were at all interested) the other things I write about on those self same websites.  I also want more people to subscribe to my blog and event to comment on my blog – the numbers are growing every time I write something that is of interest.  Ah! so there in lies the heart of the problem, writing something of interest.

I guess one of the things I need to overcome on this blog is that it’s so random, I talk about just about anything that takes my fancy – hence the question of widgets – and then some.  It’s not a business blog, it’s not designed to be a business blog, this is just Lindy’s space on the web to explore, play and have fun with the things that interest me.  I hope you’ll agree it’s eclectic (Laura, if you even read this, then there’s a potential word of the week for you!), I hope you think it might be interesting, but above all I hope it sparks your enthusiasm and interest in all things blog.

Now, where was I?  Oh yes, widgets.