About Alan...

Alan Zisman, that is...

Alan is a Vancouver (BC, Canada) teacher, musician, and computer journalist. At the end of June 2010, he retired from teaching students in grades 1-7 to use computers and the Internet at Vancouver's Chief Maquinna Elementary School. Alan lives in Vancouver, BC, and has visited Central Europe in 2002, Cuba in 2004, London and Paris in 2005, the eastern Mediterranean in 2007, the Rhone valley and Barcelona in 2008, and Rome in 2009. From 1968-77, Alan lived in Montreal: mementos of that era are at Plastic Roseland. Alan plays piano and other keyboards, and is currently playing piano with two Vancouver-based swing bands and accordion with the Gram Partisans and Mojo Zydeco. In 2009, Alan joined the boards of directors of the Deep Cove Big Band and the BC Western Swing Music Society.

Technology journalism

While letting computers take far too much time and energy in his life, he has managed to turn this addiction into a writing career, with over 1500 articles published since 1991 including weekly High Tech Office columns for Business in Vancouver newspaper and articles appearing in other print and online business, technology, and education publications.

Computer tutorials and links

Alan has developed and posted a series of workshops and tutorials. These include tutorials on Internet Security, web page creation and other topics. The Poledit tutorial comes up first on Google for this admitedly obscure topic! There is also a growing list of free software and links of interest to teachers, students, and computer-users in general.

More online life

You can probably tell a lot about someone by what they do online. I have a bunch of domains registered and manage a few others, for myself and my friends. Along with zisman.ca, Alan also maintains: adamraskin.com, squeezeboxcircle.org, grampartisans.com, brucefreedmanjazz.com, lindareadjewelry.ca, westernswingmusic.ca, katezisman.ca, plastic-roseland.ca, proto-barbarism.ca, teachingforpeace.org, gourmet-provence-et-vous.com, and columbiajournal.ca. The SqueezeboxCircle.org site is Google #1 for searches for Vancouver Accordion.

He have a YouTube channel and playlists with video clips including: Christmas Band 2008 and 2009, Deep Cove Big Band, Gram Partisans, Information at Your Fingertips, Louis Jordan, Mojo Zydeco, Rodgers Brothers, Squeezebox Circle, and The Black Band. Check 'em all out!

You can follow him on Twitter and receive updates of new articles published, music gigs, and random thoughts.