Technology in our classroom

After school on 12 May, I will be running a session in our computer lab for any teachers at our school who are interested in learning to blog.  I will be showing them my personal blog, our class blog and some of the student blogs.  Hopefully we will have time for them to start their own blog as well. 

• What internet safety do they need to know before blogging?
• What should I tell them about blogging? 
• Are you finding it boring, interesting or what? 
• What are you learning by blogging? 
• Is blogging better than normal writing in class and why? 

Are there any students who would like to stay until 4pm to help run the session and help teachers start their own blog?

Teachers would love an instruction sheet that gives them step by step how to organize their blog. 

• What should be included?
• Is there a student or group of students who could write this sheet to use with teachers?

If you have your own blog with Edublogs, please make sure the following have been done.  This will make life easier for you and your audience.

Log in to your dashboard: Remember to update or save before going on to the next item

Design - choose your theme and add widgets to the sidebars

Settings>General – check your blog title, tagline and time difference should be 10 not -7

Settings>Discussion – check boxes 1,2,3,6 and 7  - leave other boxes without a tick

Users>Your profile – check use visual editor when writing, under website you have written your blog URL eg http://wyatt67.edublogs.org , nickname, display name publicly as, changed your password to something you can remember

Users>Your avatar – this one will be your user avatar, which will appear whenever you make a comment on a post.  Make sure you also create the blog avatar; It can be done from the same page.

Plugins>Activate -Bookmarking, advanced editor, contact form, subscribe to comments and widget pack

Manage>Categories – create categories for: students in our class, other students you visit often and one for teachers and parents.  Give them a name that is appropriate.

Manage>Add link – now you can add your classmates blogs to the appropriate category.  You will keep adding to this as you find more blogs that you visit often.  Remember to tick which category they go under.

Comments>Awaiting moderation – remember you can moderate your comments when you arrive at school as I will have checked them before school begins.  If unsure, check with me. Also remember to check the Akismet Spam comments.

Manage>Uploads – this is where you can see the pictures or videos you have uploaded and how much storage they have taken up.

Good luck with your blogging and remember we are all learning together.  If you have any questions and I can’t answer them, I will try to find out the answers for you.

I was just reading another blog and they mentioned these two intrepid expeditioners who are planning to travel across Victoria Island in the Arctic.  They have created a website where students can follow them on their journey and there are many activities relating to the Inuit people and problems they might encounter as well.  Take some time to look at the information as well as have a go at the activities – they leave during May so please check it out.

Congratulations go to  Ebby, Braiden, Viper and Aaron who have shown Miss W they are prepared to work hard with blogging. These students have written posts of their own to add to our class blog; have made many sensible and conversational comments on posts I had written or other students had written and had visited blogs from other students and teachers around the world and left comments there.

Over this week, these students will have received an email saying how they can log into their own blog. Next week I will spend some time with these four students in setting up the presentation, blogroll and sidebar widgets on their blogs.

Photo source

I had a go this afternoon at using voicethread for the first time.  Thought I would show you my effort.  How could we use this in class?

Hi I am Braiden I am going to talk to you about rallying.  Rally is you try to beat the clock. Rallies  are divided into stages which can be 10kms to 50kms.   In rallying you don’t race head to head and cars go into a stage 1 or 2 minutes apart but in tarmac events they go 30 seconds apart. The world rally championship is the biggest rally  championship goes around  the world .                  
                          
There are all so tarmac rallies which are held on closed roads. They use road cars but with safety features . Here is a Targa  Tasmania car which is a tarmac rally.

 Miss W says:  We are waiting for permission to insert some photos from rallying websites onto this blog.
                           
                                             

I have just spent a great Saturday morning doing something I really enjoy.  I have a passion for history and I hope some of you will take part in an Australian wide competition called “The National History Challenge“.  The theme this year is “Australia meets the world”.  In this competition, you have to use primary sources as much as possible and that is why the meeting I attended this morning was held at the Hobart National Archives office, opposite the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.

At the National archives you can find diaries, letters, newspapers, photos, sound recordings about events which happened in the past.  Perhaps you can find the World War I records of your great great grandfather?  Did your grandparents arrive from another country to live in Australia?  Did they need naturalisation papers?

What could be a topic you investigate that relates to the theme for this year?

• Australia’s participation in war
• Aussie invention that is now in common use world wide
• Migrants to our shores
• Trade with other countries
• Cheap airfares allowing travel
• The world comes to us via television

Discuss with your parents and myself if you want to take part in this competition.  It can be done both in class and at home.  Make sure you check out the website for the fantastic prizes you can win and the various ways you can present your information.

Photo source 

Hi I’m viper I’m a real fan of fighter jets.

There are many different types of aircraft for different missions like there are: fighters, attackers, STOL (short take off or landing), EAs (jammers), bombers and multiroles. One of my favourite is the F 16 fighting falcon. (Shown above)
There are also VTOL (vertical take off and landing) that can make a plane hover like a helicopter.

 An EA-6B firing a missile. Photo source 

Permission sought to use photos and this is part of the reply:

Official pictures of US Federal Government agencies are “public domain” in the US. You can use both in your class blog and I’m sure there will be no problems. If you want to add the source: The upper picture (F-16) is “United States Air Force” and the lower picture (EA-6B) is “United States Navy”

Is this the reaction you get when trying to have a conversation with your teenagers?

Students, is this how you answer your parents when they ask questions about what you are doing or what you have learnt?

 Thanks to Jess for the link to the video above. Thanks to the Edublogger for showing me how to embed a video into a post.

Congratulations go to laura, binga, ash and cc who have shown Miss W they are prepared to work hard with blogging. These students have written posts of their own to add to our class blog; have made many sensible and conversational comments on posts I had written or other students had written and had visited blogs form other students and teachers around the world and left comments there.

Over the weekend, these students will have received an email saying how they can log into their own blog. Next week I will spend some time with these four students in setting up the presentation, blogroll and sidebar widgets on their blogs.

Photo source