Olga LaPlante

• Okay so you have tried your hand at blogging on Portland Schools Blogging Server - now what?

Have you used this tool in the classroom? How? Have you used it outside of the classroom? How?

What are some things you would like your blog to do?

TEXT ANNOUNCEMENT IN SIDEBAR

Some of you have been using Donorschoose for raising money for your projects. Announce it on your blog! View a short video on how to do it.

One way to do this is add a text widget. Go to Presentation, Widgets, and add one Text widget (as simple as drag and drop. WARNING: If you have never changed your sidebar (with widgets), it’s the default configuration. This means that if you modify it in any way, the default sidebar WILL DISAPPEAR, and you will have to recreate it. Drag and drop all the widgets you find helpful. Some may be: calendar, links, meta (which allows you to log in from your blog’s page), recent posts, categories, archives.)

Once you have Text in your sidebar, click on it. Give it a SHORT, and concise name. After that if you are planning to link to your donorschoose page, use the following text:

<a href=”http://yourlink - copy and paste it” target=”_blank”>Your project name</a>

Around this html code you can have your short paragraph describing what this is and why anyone would visit it.

You can add your picture the same way if you would like, but the html will be a bit different.

<img src=”http://blogs.portlandschools.org/laplao/files/2008/01/photo-8.thumbnail.jpg” align=”right” height=”50″ hspace=”5″ />
To read more about me, go to the ABOUT page.

Your image has to already be online (upload it to your blog and then get the URL for it).

COPYRIGHT

We all know that there is an array of resources online - easily viewable, and not so easy to get through the filter. Here is what you must remember:

- if something is publicly available (you can view it from a site, hear it on a site or download it from the web), provide a link - it’s the safest way to share resources. If you would like to print an article, do so using the proper reference - only for your students. If there is no explicit permission to print or save a copy, ask the publisher - it’s safe, and fun in a way. Most likely, if you state your purpose, the publishers will give you permission. If they don’t respond, you may still use the material, but keep an eye for an email or a letter from the publisher, just in case it comes late and has a “NO” in it. If this is the case, just stop using whatever you were denied the permission to use.

- If you find a cool educational video on YouTube and YouTube is blocked - talk to your network administrators. They need to know that the school system fails to provide you with educational materials, and you should make a case to change the district/school AUP policy and the “no-no” list. You are the ultimate decision-maker - that’s why you were hired as teacher - to provide best possible education for your students. Stand up for your rights.

This also means that you may be canny, or cunning, enough to work around it - like, say, download a video from YouTube (in case you can’t find a copy of it on TeacherTube.com) and play that copy off your computer. DO NOT upload the video to your own blog - that is a violation of copyright (unless it is explicitly stated that you may download and redistribute this video). Always reference the source. You may also embed the video using YouTube code, but don’t expect it to play at school. Students may view it later though, as soon as they cross the street to go to the library.

- The same is true of images. There are some things to remember:

• if you use your own image - excellent! Just make sure it is scaled down so you can upload it safely and quickly. Big images are awesome - they are high resolution - but not suitable for the web. Make them smaller. Your photo upload application can do it, iPhoto can do it (export or share your photos and define the size), or use Bitmap - does the same. Grabbing the corner of the image to resize it is not going to work - it just makes your huge file look smaller, but does nothing to the properties of the 1-2 Mb file. Be nice to your visitors, too; if your blog takes too much to download on a computer, who would want to go there? Not these kids!
• If you are about to use someone else’s image - make sure it’s okay to use it. Do you have the permission? If not, obtain it! Then, scale it down if the image is too big. Normally, 20-30 Kb is plenty.
• Do not insert an image by copying its location (although it seems ok). Well, at least try not to. When you insert an image by using its URL, your page pulls the image off the original server, thus using its bandwidth. Wikipedia calls it “bandwidth theft” among other things. I assume you will cite the source anyway, but it’s not quite enough in this case.

EMBEDDING FLASH FILES

If you find videos online that add meaning to, or a different perspective on, the topic, you may link to them. Linking is easy.

Or, better yet, and in compliance with copyright, you may embed the video in your blog. Oftentimes, video collections give you the opportunity to embed (spread the word about) their video(s) by providing you with the [code] which you can copy and paste like I did below. That sounds really easy. And it sometimes is. Just copy the embeddable code and paste it in the CODE VIEW of the post. Normally, the default mode is VISUAL, so you will have to switch.

The trick then is to find the right code! For example, if you embed a video from TeacherTube, use their EduBlogs version of embeddable code. Like I did below.

- NOTE: Search a video collection for “in plain English”, great resources! Another note - if your video is from Google Video or YouTube, it will not miraculously bypass the school’s filter. But it will play at home or at a library.

Download Video: Posted by leelefever at TeacherTube.com.

HANDLING DOCUMENTS

If you have a document you would like to share with your readers, you can upload it to your blog! Easy, right? The best part - if you simply must keep your files in .doc format, anyone can still preview them by using the ThinkFree Viewer - just click on the word VIEW - URLS Kit Resources

SHUTTER

If you liked how you can see the images in this post when you click on them, you can do it too! This feature can be found under Plugins. All you need to do is activate it. Try clicking on the picture below. See? Very sleek!

So, you decided to go paperless - that’s great! How are you going to do it?

If you would like to ask questions, go to (in Firefox):

http://show.zoho.com/remoteclient.sas?_inv=C7705nI6875sBd670ml9VN0qgy7J9Ed88T8Fx80×6G0×67020x703GT7c1

Luckily, for schools, there are simple and complex solutions totally free! In fact, you might discover that your school already has an account all set up.

One option worth exploring is Think.com.

 MEVL - Maine Virtual learning Site.

This came in one of the emails on the eMINTS listserv, and I thought it would be nice to share it. Dan Tripp is the author of the tip below.

This is not a true podcast, but I discovered how to add audio to your webpage. I have added voice over for my WebQuests so students can listen to the text on the page. This is great for struggling readers and a way to differentiate.  In Dreamweaver, you can add a plug-in to listen to the music, but it plays automatically when you open the page, or you can add a sound behavior, but it plays on another page. Here is the script to embed music so it does not play automatically: you have to add the autoplay=false and loop=false

<embed src=”sound.wav” autoplay=false loop=false width=”150″ height=”32″></embed>

Here is a video tutorial that I made that shows how to record your voice and add it to your WebQuest or Web Page.  *I don’t know if this works for MP3’s.

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=838f2daf9aadf44ca5ba

Dan Tripp

There you have it! You might want to explore TeacherTube as well, and contribute to it with your own video tutorials.  It’s not blocked in PPS!

Soooooo…

Let’s first learn a little bit about Kidspiration and how it works:

A collection of video tutorials from AtomicLearning

Now, browse examples of how Kidspiration may be used in the classroom.

MISTM project has been proven a success when technology-assisted strategies are used with improved classroom techniques.

We’ll start off with this assignment. Use the handouts to assist in your process.

When finished, click on the MISTM link to explore what the site has to offer.

We’ll poke around the site and then move on to the Math Course on MEVL - the statewide virtual courses site. You can look around with guest access, however, I will give you your login information for today so you can use and complete assignments and possibly participate some more in the course.