Technology in our classroom

How do you like my great animation dancer?

If you look down my sidebar, you will see I usually have links associated with the topic my students are studying.  But where do I get these links and how do I know if they are going to be alright for my students to use?

I am thinking of looking at the topic ‘Adaptations in nature’ and have found these two links.  They look quite good as the video is made by the BBC – a reputable company and the other link includes a recommendation by a University Professor at our local university. 

Challenges this week

Would you recommend I add these to my links?  Why or why not? Leave a comment here on this post.

Write a post about an animal that you would like to see in the wild.  See if you can add a link in your post to a webcam or video and some websites about your animal.  Why do you want to see that animal in the wild rather than at a zoo?

Teachers – you might want to do something in class about verifying sources.  Do you have any other sites you use when teaching this topic to your students?

As teachers, we have a responsibility to make sure you are being internet savvy and responsible while using computers and mobiles at school.  Hopefully what we teach you will also be seen in the way you use the internet at home or out-of-school hours.

One way of being internet savvy is not to have pictures of yourself on your blog.  So below are a few sites where you can have a go at creating what is called an “Avatar“. Remember though, that age counts when using some websites and if you are under 13, then some of these sites are not suitable for you to use yet. These are where you need to have parental or guardian permission.

Activities for week 2

1. Create an appropriate avatar to represent yourself.  Save the picture as either a .gif or .jpeg or .png . 

2. If using Edublogs, when you log-in to your blog dashboard,  there is a link under the section “Getting started with Edublogs” that allows you to upload your blog and user avatar in one easy step.  If you are a user like author or editor under your class blog, you should be able to upload to user avatar but not blog avatar.

3. Once you have uploaded a user avatar this will appear wherever you make a comment.  Make sure you have your blog URL correctly written in your settings and profile.  So from now on, people will be able to click on your avatar and go straight to your blog. But if your URL is wrong, you will miss out on some interesting visitors. 

4. Now create a post to explain why this avatar represents you.  If you are using a class blog, work with your teacher to create a post or page about your avatars. If you have saved the avatars on a drive at school, then your teacher could upload each of them as images with an explanation under each avatar.  Make sure your teacher also creates an avatar.

5.  If you created a Voki, then it can’t be added like an avatar.  Check out this site if you want to add it to your sidebar and check out here if you want to add a Voki to a post or page.  In both these posts, the most important thing is have everything ready in the post or page, including tags and categories before you insert the code under HTML and finally hit publish.

 6. Still got time left this week, then make sure you visit the blogs of other participants.  Leave me a comment here about some of the blogs you visited and what the interests were of the students you visited.

Remember the most important part of blogging is the conversation you begin and follow up on.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self - top left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer - top right

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  on my sidebar

If under 13, sorry you can’t register for these.  But over 13, need parental or guardian permission.

• Zwinky
• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki

Thanks to this wiki  which gave me many avatar websites to visit. 

Reminder: Remember if writing a post or comment, mention stubc08 somewhere in your work.

Original image: ‘reading‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/16493883@N00/2628447075
by: tetsuo shimizu

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

A blog is all about you beginning and continuing a conversation with your readers. Because you can’t meet face to face (f2f), somewhere on your blog, you will need to introduce yourself.  There is usually a page called “About” or “About Me” in your sidebar. 

1.  Write about yourself or your class on your “About” page.  Remember though to be internet savvy.  Check out these sites for what to say or not say. Here are some examples of students and teachers who have already introduced themselves to their readers.   (Some themes don’t have pages, so you might have to write a post instead to introduce yourself or your class. )

2.  Any words in orange relate to blogging in case you want to begin a class blogging glossary.

3.  Why did you choose the theme for your blog?  Have you looked at some others?  What were some good or bad points?  Check out this post about the themes used with Edublogs. You  might want to write a post about your choice of theme or make a comment here at this blog.

4. What does your tagline say about your blog?  My class one says: Using Web2.0 in Miss Wyatt’s room  My class blog is all about showing my students lots of things they can learn or have a go at while using Web2.0 tools. Maybe you need to think about what your blog is about and choose an appropriate tagline.

5. How do the introductions of Sue Waters and Miss W. differ? They are both teachers yet one gives out more personal information than the other.  Why?

Just visited Nancy’s blog and found this fantastic games site.  It has over 200 games on the one site.  Many are educational, others arcade type games and all very addictive. 

Which games do you like from this site and why?

Was reading a blog which had a link to this site, which allowed you to put captions on your photos.  Sorry kids, but again you need to be 13 or older to use it.  I uploaded a photo I took of a bison in Yellowstone National Park when I was there a few years ago.

Have you found any sites suitable for the under 13’s to use which allows “phiddling with photos”?

One of our activities relating to the Olympics is to create a scrapbook of highlights. 

If you are 13 years or older, perhaps you would like to use this program called “Scrapblog”. 

Rules still apply though, about finding images that have the correct attribution.  Have a play with this program and upload your scrapblog to a post on your blog.

You might create a sport scrapblog or one about a famous athlete participating in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Original image:’Project365 Scrapbook’

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64673380@N00/1034662822 
by: Summer

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Well we are now in the month of August and beginning our study on China and the Olympic Games.  But this week we have had students presenting their work on sumo wrestling that they have researched throughout this term.  Most decided to present using a powerpoint even after being reminded that this meant:

• the powerpoint was just used in the background as a reminder
• you don’t have lots of words on a slide
• you will have to give a talk in front of your classmates relating to the powerpoint

Students took out extra words, found more diagrams, wrote their notes on cue cards and for their first efforts, did a great job.  Presentation afternoon and out came the video camera -  the battery was not fully charged.

“Can we use our phones?”  Go for it. So we had about four budding camerapersons videoing the events. 

I was so proud of students who got up to present in front of the class for the first time this year; a student with a teacher aide organizing an interview as part of the presentation and another student whose powerpoint was run completely from the Smartboard without any help from me. 

But this is now where I have no idea what to do next.

“Do you know how to download from your phones?”  Cords were brought to school and hopefully tomorrow the talks will be downloaded. 

But readers, what do you suggest we do next?  How can we get these videos or powerpoints on the students’ own blogs?  Firstly, we will need parent permission, then do we use slideshare for the actual powerpoint?  But what about the videos? 

I’m at a seminar at the moment and just learnt about a quick, easy way to give attribution to images. Visit this website which allows you to search for creative commons images.  It also gives you the attribution which you need to include with the image on your blog. You may include it with the photo or add it under the photo.

Original image: ‘Tassie devil’
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30805622@N00/351640307
by: Adam Tibballs

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial License

Steps to follow:

1. Search for photo by putting in a tag eg sumo or Tasmania or fishing
2. Click on photo you want to use
3. Click on “edit image in-house”
4. Click on “Add attribution” if you want it included with the photo – see my picture on the right
5. Right click and “save picture as”
6. Follow normal instructions to add images to your blog

Be careful, though, when adding the attribution to the photo.  What has gone wrong with mine?

Many students are now taking photos in class and wanting to upload these to their blog.  They have taken part in the marine centre trip, or been to the yo-yo exhibition or have taken a photo of their Hatchet map.

Well here are the steps to follow:

1. Begin a new post and do all the writing first.
2. Decide where you want to put in the photo and whether you want it to be on the left or right of the post or maybe in the centre.
3. Find your photo by clicking on Add media> add an image.
4. Choose files to upload from computer – make sure your image is going to be the right way up as you can’t adjust the direction once the image is uploaded.
5. Copy the link URL.
6. Save all changes and close the upload window.
7. Click on green tree.
8. Paste in the URL you had copied, align your picture and put 5 in vertical and horizontal then insert.
9. Now you click on the photo and adjust the size using the corners.

You have now uploaded a photo from your school computer.

Photo source:  Miss W’s trip to Japan – cleaning sign when shinkansen is being cleaned