I haven’t had much time to hunt for goodies online, but I have stumbled onto two finds that I want to share…
Bubbleshare
Bubbleshare.com is a great slideshow service. Here is what they have to say on their site:
Create a free account and upload photos to share with friends, family, or the world. Unlimited storage means you’ll never run out of space to keep hundreds, even thousands, of your favorite pictures.
Add fun clipart, audio captions, video captions to your albums. Perfectly frame your photos with over 20 themes. Print stunning photo books, calendars and more!
This service can be used when creating digital stories in your classes and if the students create accounts, they can work on their assignments from home if they have access. You could also take powerpoint presentations, save the slides as pictures (file>save – in the save as file type area at the bottom, choose .jpg from the list) and create a bubbleshare slideshow of your powerpoint to post to your website or blog.
BubbleShare: Share photos – Craft Ideas
Box.net
Box.net is an online file storage service that offers various levels of online file storage plans. They actually have a free plan with 1GB of online storage space. This is great and all, but the best service is box.net’s widget creator. The site allows you to upload files to their site and widget code is created. You can then place the code on your website or blog. See the sample in my previous post.
When you go to the site box.net/widget you can create an account quickly and upload 3 files. You can adjust the way your widget will look. When you are done, you will receive the widget code in the page. If you have more files, all you have to do is go to box.net, log in, and go to the my files tab. Here you will see a folder that has been created; open the file folder and upload any additional files or delete unnecessary files. This is a great service for those of you who want to include handouts on your sites!
Going Live
The first step to creating a classroom blog is making sure it is an authentic educational experience for the kids. It has got to be more than a novelty, or the kids won’t use it.
Once you have an idea about how you want to use a blog in your classroom, you are ready to make your blog ‘live’. Follow this module to get your blog student ready:
Step One: Cleaning up your blog
Choosing your design – Design>Theme; click on the theme to choose it. Some have customizeable features, others don’t. Find one that works for you.
The sidebar widgets – Design>Widgets; if you don’t add any widgets to the sidebar(s), the default widgets will be shown. Click the add link by the widget you want, Save, click the Edit link on the widget to make changes, Save. If you want text on your sidebar, add the text widget (just make sure you Save before you click Edit); if you find code online for a widget, you would paste it here.
Your Settings – Click the settings link in the upper right corner of the window. Go through the settings and adjust any information needed. One place to make sure you go is Discussion. Determine how you want to be noitified of new comments, and what information you want from the kids. Here is a sample of what most teachers are choosing…don’t forget to scroll down and save after you do this.
Deleting the default post “hello world” – Manage>Posts; click the checkbox and then the Delete button.
Your About page – Manage>Pages. Click on the page title (about). Edit the body of the page to include any information you would like to share. Click the Save button (on the right side of the window)
Add a “Blogging Rules” page – Write>Page. Create an appropriate title, include your rules in the body area. Click Save if you are not ready for the rules to show on your blog; click Publish when the page is ready to post. Here is my page with some sample blogging rules.
Step Two: Creating your first post
From the main dashboard, click on the CREATE A POST link or on the menu bar, choose WRITE>POST.
Enter your title, this will show up larger and bold.
Enter the body of your post. You will see some formatting buttons. To see more, click the last button (show/hide kitchen sink). Format your text as you wish.
Post Options:
Tags: Tags are keywords within your post. For example, for this post I may tag: blog, widget, format, post, manage. What happens is that if I tag each post with keywords, I could add the Tag widget and all tags would appear in the sidebar (aka: tag cloud). Then you could click on the word format and all posts with a tag of format would show up.
Categories: You can categorize your entire post using this tool. It is just another filtering tool like the tags.
**If you had to choose between Tags and Categories to start…choose categories. Tags can be a little overwhelming, and categories seem to be a good first step.
Advanced Features
For beginners, the most important of the advanced features are the Comments & Pings and the password protection. If you want comments turned off or want to password protect a post, use this area.
Finishing
Click Publish when your post is ready. If you are not ready for the post to be available, you have two options, you can just click Save. Then you would go to Manage>Posts, choose the post and then click Publish. Or you can determine when the post will publish. Above the Save/Publish buttons you will see an Edit link at the end of a statement about when the post will be published. You can set the date and time the post will publish here.
Done with all of this already?
Find a widget online to add to your sidebar or a post. Examples would be a clustrmap, poll/survey, voki, etc…do a google search for widget and see what you get. When adding the code to a post, you must click on the HTML tab (in the upper right side of the body area, you will see Visual and HTML) and paste the code here. If you are adding the widget to your sidebar, see the sidebar widget instructions at the beginning of this post.
Add a picture to a post. Download the picture to your documents. Create a post, and click the add an image button to the left of add media. Upload your picture. Once the picture is uploaded, a windwo will pop up with info about your picture, if you scroll to the bottom, you will see a button to add the picture to your post. Move the picture to the desired area. If you upload a few pictures, you can see them by going to add picutre, then the gallery; click the Show link.
Add a video to your post. You can follow the same instructions as adding a picture. Or if you have the html address of the video (from teachertube.com, edublogs.tv, etc), you can enter it in the window that comes up when you click add video (to the right of Add media).
Add intersting widgets to your blog
I have been experimenting with the widget options here at edublogs and wanted to pass on two cool widgets.
The first is clustrmaps. If you notice on the right side of this page, there is a map of the world. Each time someone visits my blog, this map will show their location as a red dot. As of now, it looks like I have had people in California, Wisconsin, and somewhere in the Middle East! Wow!! To add a clustrmap to your blog, get to your dashboard and choose PLUGINS (to the right). The last plugin is the WIDGET PACK; activate it. Now, click on the DESIGN tab, and choose widgets. Add the ClustrMaps widget, move it into the desired position on the sidebar, and save. Now you have clustrmaps!
The second widget I would like to talk about is actually one you get elsewhere online. It will allow you to add music to your blog. This widget can be added into a post (as mine has here) or in the sidebar…but more on that in a minute. You will want to visit playlist.com, create an account, and follow the step by step instructions, and get to the screen where you are given a bunch of code. Highlight and copy the code.
- If you want the playlist in a post (maybe you want the kids to listen to a song and write about it, analyze it, etc) you will create a new post, click on the HTML tab (upper right corner of the post body area; and paste the code. Save and Publish your post.
- If you want the playlist to be a permanenet fixture on your blog, go to DESIGN>WIDGETS on your dashboard. Add a text widget. Save. Move the text widget to the desired position on the sidebar. Save. Edit the Text widget; paste the code into the body area. Save and Publish. Your playlist will now be on the sidebar!
- NOTE: this playlist does not show on school computers because of the district filters…
