Tim Talking in Lexington

Tim Berners-Lee speaking in Lexington 12/10/05

Tim Talks in Lexington

Waiting to hear Tim Berners-Lee begin speaking at the Museum of Our American Heritage, Lexington, MA on Saturday, Dec. 10, 2005.

Setting up a blog for high school students

An English teacher in Arlington did this for her class. The kids didn't know each other's usernames, but she did. They knew she knew, but they didn't know who was who.
What I did to set up the blogs was a little labor intensive but saved me some headaches down the road. Basically, I set them all up and made passwords myself, then just gave the students their usernames and passwords. Blogger doesn't require that the email addresses be unique, so I set up a free dummy account on Yahoo and used that for all of the invitations ... the trick is that each invite only works once so you have to send the invite (while logged on to your blogger site), use it to set up that account (create username and password), and then send the next invite, repeat, repeat. So it really helped to set up all usernames and passwords in advance and put them in an Excel table so it was just "copy, switch apps, paste, tab," etc, etc. The other trick is to use two different browsers or even two computers side by side so that you don't have to log in and out of your own account each time.

Then I used that Excel table to do a mail merge in Word so that each student had some simple instructions to go with. I'll attach what that file looked like in case it can be of use.

No Nav Bar

If you don't want the top most navigation bar on your blog you can paste code into the template of your blog and remove it. This gets rid of the, Go to Next Blog option which may not always be a desirable option, especially with young bloggers. Click on the title to take you to the code directions.

Skype

Skype is a little program for making free calls over the internet to anyone else who also has Skype. It’s free and easy to download and use, and works with most computers.
I have loaded it to my 6 year old G3 at home and am looking for people to "skype" with. My name is su02420 (those are zeros, not o's as in my zipcode). The sound of the person you are talking to comes through the computer's speakers and is much like talking on a speaker phone. I have a mic plugged in and just sitting on my desktop and I can talk and type. We are planning to try Skype in Kindergarten classes to see if kids would be able to communicate between classrooms. There is a search feature that lets you see who else in online and interesting in having a chat. And they are ALL over the world! Definitely worth a try.

Photos onto a blog - EASY!

Blogger just made it possible to post images directly from your computer. You don't need Hello, or another middle man to help get the images to your blog. That's me with a smile.

HANNA in my chair
I posted this photo from my cell phone. I chose to send a photo message from my phone. I took the picture and then entered go@blogger.com as the address to send it to. I typed the caption and then sent the message. Blogger sent me back a code #. I entered the code # into the go.blogger.com web site and then directed blogger to send all future photos to this ..... or any other, blog.

Christo Gates NYC 2/2005

01 Christo Gates, originally uploaded by 02420.

Playing in Central Park.
This photo added with flickr.com

You can use Hello and flickr to load images to a blog. With Hello you access the photos stored on the computer you are using to upload to the blog. With flickr.com you access the photos from a free web account in which the photos are stored. The flickr account allows you to upload and store 2 Mb. of photos every month.

Posting a recording to my blog

Today I figured out how to post a recording to a blog! Wow!

April @ Cattail Corner

Well, there are mice nesting in my TWS @ BHS.....
And today I sent a school wide invite for teachers to post to the Cattail Corner blog Kim and Terry and I created last February. The latter is no April Fool.
Hope we can keep a journal of the wonderful puddle in our front yard at school.

AlphaSmart sending text to blog post

AlphaSmart loading a post to my blog


The AlphaSmart keyboard is attached to my laptop. I am logged into my blog with a new post open. On the AlphaSmart I open the file I want to send and press the SEND key on the AlphaSmart. It loads directly into the blog post.
When working with students, ahead of time I load all the images on separate posts. Then when the kids are ready to post their work, I open the post with their image and they SEND their words to the post that already shows their image.

intranet page


Learned a few things today.....once the image is posted to my blog, I cannot edit the caption. A caption is a required item in order to see the Publish button become active and be able to post the image. If I try to edit the caption, when I delete the caption's words, the image goes, too. It would be good to put the captions above the image, and then add the AlphaSmart content below the image. Remember if you use kid's names for captions, use only first names.

We recently used the Palm Zire which comes with a camera, to take pictures in a second grade classroom. The kids used the Palms to frame and snap images they wanted from picture books. They synch'd the Palms to a laptop computer when they were done. The images will become part of the blog the teacher is creating to post their finished written research on Native Americans. The kids have been writing up their notes using the AlphaSmarts and will upload their finished pieces directly to the blog. They hope to share this illustrated research with another second grade classroom on Long Island.
Blog address to follow.

Shirts from around the world



Your clothes are made everywhere! Take a look. Except for Antarctica, they probably come from each of the other 6 continents. Just thought I'd bring this up.

Sue,
I thought I tried to post something earlier but I guess that didn't work. So I am trying again. I still love the idea of this - but feel like I need some time to figure this all out and play -:)
let me know if you end up getting to read this.
Thanks
Kim

Sue... I this has an interesting potential. Thanks for sharing. Be sure to let me know what kind of ideas and/or projects others derive for its use in an educational setting. When you get a handle on it I think we ought to do some sharing at a department meeting. HD

illustration by a Davis student


This is the smallest image size. There are actually 3 sizes you can choose from. When you send a picture, it gets posted to the blog first and then you can edit the post and add the text. Each posting can only have one picture, I tried to put two in the same posting, but was unable to do that.

The AlphaSmart - Students enter their work



Students are able to write and save their work on these keyboards that are elephants at work.....never forgetting their files. Once work has been entered, edited, checked and approved, it can easily be added to the teacher's blog to be shared with others.

I have now figured out how to add an image to a blog.
I can also add text to the image after it has been added to a posting. It requires two applications on the machine I am using, Picassa to organize the images on my machine and Hello, to send an image to the blog. Both applications are free downloads from Google. They are easy enough to use, in fact Picassa is a nice organization, making all the images easily available. I think the image selection would be done by a teacher. Students could prepare text on their AlphaSmarts and with a teacher checking, send to a new posting on the teacher's blog. Students could take the photos using books or real objects.
Ideally, this would be useful if engaging in a dialog between two or more classrooms that were sharing information with each other on a daily basis while doing research on a topic.

This is an image sent through BloggerBot to add to my blog.It is a photo taken with a Mavica camera from a library book in our library. It was part of a second grade study of Wampanoag Native Americans.
I am now adding more text to the blog.
I Have changed the size of the text

scollins