Now the sidebar’s as tidy as a sock drawer . . .

let’s add

Just like a basic sock drawer, I think that my sidebar is now organised and contains useful items. But it also has a little bit of bling to add interest for readers. Like all sock drawers, the items most used are on the top for easy access, whereas you need to dig a bit deeper to find the rest.

While attending to the usual holiday spring cleaning of my wardrobe and drawers at home, I became motivated to give the Sidebar of my blog a much needed overhaul as well.

Here’s how I reorganised it . . .

• Welcome message Voki - A voki is a ‘free’ speaking avatar. The voki takes a little extra time to load, but in my absence provides a welcome message to visitors. I recently changed its message and may use it in the future to highlight things in my blog. I sometimes use a voki to explain how to interact with a page (see Putting your Avatars to Work). My students really enjoy following the instructions of a voki on our wiki however I will need to re-evaluate whether its loading time is a problem.

• RSS Feed – To boost readership I added an RSS feed for visitors who want to subscribe to updates from my blog.

• Subscribe by Email – This widget was already provided by WordPress and allows visitors to subscribe to receive email updates when a new post is published.

• A Digital Clock from Widgetbox with date included and displaying my own local time was added for a little interest. I also added a ‘fun’ analogue clock to my wiki.

• Visitors map – I love to see the red dots accumulating on my Clustrmap . I only added it a month ago but the dots are growing steadily.

• Live Traffic Feed – I find it fascinating to see who has just visited the blog and how long ago, so I added a Live Traffic feed from Feedjit.  I also liked the Flag Counter but decided to embed that on the wiki.

• Recent Posts – To easily locate the most current posts I included a list of the last 10 posts.

• Archives – A drop down box neatly hides and stores the archived blog posts listed by months.

• A list of Categories – Likewise a drop down box hides a list of categories for simple searching.

• Tags WP Cumulus  - This interesting little widget sorts all posts under common tags and displays them in a cloud format.  Just click on the tag you want, to find a list of posts on that topic. This also is a widget supplied by WordPress.

• Twitter updates – I love this handy little widget. It organizes all my Twitter links into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Just click on it and you can keep up with all the news. It also updates regularly to keep me in touch with the latest links from Twitter.

• Blogroll – This was my biggest challenge because it was such a mess. I have reassessed my list and organised a Blogroll which lists blogs I get inspiration from. I also added some useful Quick Links and some favourite Wikis and Websites.

• A Search Bar for Google Search is a handy tool to use without leaving the page.

• A Simple URL Shortener Widget for tweets – I’m still deciding whether to keep this or not.

• Meta – My links to Log in/out, admin, feed and WordPress links.

Will my Sidebar always look like this?

Just like a sock drawer often needs tidying, the sidebar may also need reorganisation.  When some socks become old and worn, we replace them with new ones. Likewise some widgets may become superseded and replaced. If we take up tennis we need some smart new sporty socks. And as the blog evolves and embraces new things, it will be fun to look for new and exciting widgets to meet its needs.

Oh Darn!

Looks like something’s needing attention already!

Original photo ‘My Sock Drawer’ by Mr T in DC.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/7471115@N08/3205393624

Original photo ‘Oh Darn’ Richard Masoner  http://www.flickr.com/photos/99247795@N00/3715832582

Then on January 7, 2011 . . . Enter the Edublogs Teacher Challenge PLN!

Suddenly you find your blog being read and commented on by other people. There are people out there who share your interests, gather ideas from your learning experiences, encourage your efforts and offer you suggestions or assistance for challenges that you encounter. This interaction makes you more aware of your audience and encourages you to pay more attention to how you communicate and share your thoughts and ideas with other people.

As the little Clustr map’s  dots grow, it is exciting to see where your readers are from and to read their comments. Curiosity causes me to turn to their blogs to find out who my readers are, what they are passionate about, and where their journey is taking them.

So now you have visited my blog. . . will you return?

I tried to put myself  in the reader’s shoes and ask the questions they might ask of my blog.

Why should I come back to your blog?

• Does a catchy title lead me to your blog post?
• Can you teach me something new?
• Will your blog inspire me to try something?
• Is your blog reader/user friendly?
• Do you have a style that I can identify with?
• Is your blog visually appealing?
• Can I interact with your blog? Will you reply to the comments I make?
• Can I subscribe by RSS reader or email to your posts?
• Will you alert me to new posts through Twitter or Facebook?
• If I don’t have much time to spare will your post keep to the point?
• Have you included useful links or resources?
• Can you entertain, intrigue, stimulate, share, guide or explain?
• Will you leave me thinking, questioning or searching for more?
• Does your blog include practical ideas for classroom application?

Please complete the poll below about new and returning readers.

You are welcome to visit, have a look around, maybe leave a comment or even a link to your own blog. Let’s share our thoughts, our musings, our passions, our learning journeys, our excitement, and our discoveries in our own individual ways . . .

Learning CAN be fun!

We want children to be engaged, enjoy what they are doing and be learning at the same time.

With my blog down for maintenance over the weekend, I decided to explore a few more media tools, and found a couple of ways to get the kids laughing AND learning.

‘Blabberize’.

Blabberize is free and easy to use.

1. Upload your photo. You need to choose a photo where the mouth is large enough to be seen clearly. Crop if necessary.
2. Position and shape a mouth onto the mouth of the photo you uploaded.  This is the part that will move when the mouth opens and closes with the voice you record later on.
3. Record your own voice or add a sound file you have already made.
4. Convert to a video or just grab the HTML code.
5. Sit back and have a good laugh.

Too much fun to be educational, you say?

Because it was my first attempt, I just experimented and had fun with it, but how could you use Blabberize in the classroom?

Here are a few suggestions for classroom use:

An endangered animal making a plea for help; sing a rap about something you’ve done; advertise a product you have developed; explain how something works; Blabberize a cartoon; or for LOTE, speak in a foreign language; read a poem; present a short argument or a deliver a speech; be a person in history and talk about what you did; Blabberize your blog with information about it; draw your own picture; write a script for the image and read it aloud; make a book character come alive; present a maths problem for students to solve.

Fotobabble.

Fotobabble is similar to Blabberize but without the talking mouth. Although this was very simple, the on-line recording was a bit limiting.

All you have to do is -

1. Upload a photo.
2. Record a message online.
3. Save and embed Fotobabble or share.

Suggested Classroom Uses:

• Sing a jingle.
• Present a point of view.
• Describe what’s happening in the photo.
• Make up a story about the photo.
• Use a news photos and report on the news.
• Review a book.

I’m sure there are lots of applications in the classroom for both Blabberize and Fotobabble.

Please post your ideas on a sticky note on this Wallwisher.

You can also see what other people have added.  Click on the image link below.

Hidden benefits –

• Learning how to record a sound file. (plus uploading it in Blabberize)
• Emphasis on using expression and speaking clearly when recording.
• Keeping the text brief but informative.

Grab some POPCORN and let’s go to the

MOVIES.

In this week’s Edublog Teacher Challenge #6, we look at embedding media into a blog.

Here is an idea I tried last term with the year 5/6 students. They did a great job, but we were rushed for time and there are a few things I would like to focus  more on next time.

What is a Book Trailer?

A book trailer is like a movie trailer you see at the cinema. It’s a short movie made to promote a book so that people will want to read it. A book trailer offers a way of responding to books that is creative, but encourages critical thinking and analysis.

How do you make a book trailer?

Look at the prezi ‘How to make a Book Trailer’ and then research other book trailers that are similar to what you would like to do. (Prezi by Michelle Harclerode)

What steps will I follow?

• Choose a book.
• Read the book.
• Analyse the book – what was good, unique, interesting etc. – brainstorm/list/mindmap
• Write a first draft – impressions, the feeling, important points.
• Create a storyboard.
• Plan effects (transitions, sound, colouring, etc.)
• Review the plan – with teachers, other students…
• Find and download images to match your words or take your own photos or movies.
• Find music, create voiceovers.
• Create and publish the trailer using either – movie maker, animoto or powerpoint.

Here are some samples of each type.

Movie Maker using images by Emily and Ashleigh. ‘Witches’ by Roald Dahl.

Movie Maker using video by Annabelle and Georgia. ‘Scatterheart’. (You’ll need to turn the volume up to hear this.)

Movie Maker using visual effects by Brandon and Michael. ‘Guinness World Records.’

Movie Maker using great text effects by Alex. ‘The 39 Clues’.

Animoto video by Jack andTom. ‘Bear Grylls’.

If you sign up to animoto for education you can make full length movies. It also allows you to give each student an email address attached to yours. (I created a gmail address for the task.)  Students found this tool very easy to use.  The movie can be edited or remixed even after you have finished. It has an embed code but can also be downloaded to the computer.

Powerpoint converted to a movie by Josh and Liam. ‘Ranger’s Apprentice’.

To convert the powerpoint to a flv file I used a program called E.M. Powerpoint Video Converter.

At first I was unable to make these videos visible on the blog, but they worked after I first uploaded them to You Tube and then embedded the codes.

You could be only one click away from the perfect picture too. Everyone has a digital camera or phone these days.

So get out your camera . . aim . . . click . . . and then surprise yourself with how creative you can be (and how much fun you can have).

This heart-shaped word mosaic was created on Image Chef. Here you can add text to a sketch pad, create a poetry poster, make word mosaics, use an assortment of frames, or remix from user made examples.

Let’s look at some ways you can add fun to your day and artistic pictures to your repertoire.

5 Image Story

Here’s my 5 image story. Well, it’s actually a sentence that represents a big part of my life.  Each picture represents one word of the sentence. Can you read my sentence?

To get these effects, I used 2 programs, Be Funky and Fotoflexer. Both programs are easy to use and give you lots of options.

BeFunky lets you apply photo effects, enhance and edit your photos online. Effects include cartoon, sketch, painting, pop art and lots more…

Fotoflexer lets you add effects, fonts, shapes, doodling, distortions, layers, and best of all RE-TOUCH! Re-touch allows you to easily fix blemishes and wrinkles, so anyone can look 21 in all their photos again. (What I’ve been waiting for!)

I also used Fotoflexer to make this collage to see at a glance what amazing effects can be applied to one image.

Another program which allows you to create collages of your photos is
Shape Collage. It’s free but you need to download the program to your computer. Use your own images or photos from the web. You can make your photos appear in the shape of a rectangle, heart, circle, letters, or even draw your own shapes. This is also a quick and easy tool to use.

Make a Movie from your Photos

It’s great to find things that are quick and easy but give good results. I use animoto a lot and the students absolutely love it. We now use animoto for education which allows you to make longer movies and students can have their own accounts which you can view from your emails.

Here’s how we combined Wordle and images in an animoto video.

Playing with images is fun, but there are many applications for the classroom which I will be exploring further. Meanwhile I’m off to play some more . . .

The Edublog Teacher Challenge Activity 5 – “Images – the eyes of the blog” has some great suggestions and advice on how to find and use images in your blog in both the Beginner and Advanced posts.

Photo attributions for 5 Image Story

Original image: ‘oil slick eye’ licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike2.0Generic http://www.flickr.com/photos/27021814@N00/22613927

Original image: ‘under my umbrella’ licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic http://www.flickr.com/photos/36613169@N00/1828177743

Original image: ‘let peace’ licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic http://www.flickr.com/photos/37309069@N04/3822829488

Original image: ‘reading time’ licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic  http://www.flickr.com/photos/12692384@N00/255230682

Original image: ‘what I’m reading and re-reading’ licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic   http://www.flickr.com/photos/61787893@N00/163867388

Imagine a picture of yourself on a billboard for everyone to see!

That’s how I felt about putting an “About Me’ page on my blog. I felt as if  I had ‘revealed’ myself to the world.

The Week 3 Edublogs Teacher Challenge of adding pages to a blog was the hardest one for me yet – for 2 reasons.

The first, was that I did not have an ‘About Me’ page, nor had I previously needed or wanted one. I must confess that I had NEVER looked at anyone else’s ‘About me’ page before, and was very surprised to hear that blog statistics show that the ‘About Me’ page ranks high in the most visited posts of a blog.

The second, was that I’m a pretty private person and until now I’ve managed to remain fairly anonymous on the web to all but people in my PLN. The task really challenged me to take the biggest step yet in my web journey.

My blog and I had to do some deep soul searching this week to decide whether we had come far enough to be able to add pictures and personal information.

Our questions and thoughts went like this . . .

Why should I share details about myself?

When you visit a blog you get a certain sense of what the person is like by the subject matter and the way they express their thoughts. A few personal details help complete the picture, and assist the reader to understand and identify with this person’s message. The person becomes real, not just words on a page and you are more likely to return to the blog if you know and trust the credentials of the author.

What information should I share?

The information that you share about yourself is what you feel comfortable and safe with. Each person is different and will focus on different things. Whilst some people share a detailed page of photos and information about themselves, family, holidays and celebrations, there are others who focus more on their work and the people and blogs they follow. We are out there already leaving a digital footprint, so we should be thoughtful about what we do.

What message would I like to convey to readers?

My blog describes my journey as I interact with the web and learn new things. It is a reflection of the steps I take and the experiments I try. It reflects my educational learning journey. Whatever knowledge and ideas I gain I share directly with my students and colleagues. Through my blog posts I share my knowledge and ideas with the world. But there is a person behind the blog, and it may be time to introduce myself.

I eventually decided to take the plunge.  

Here goes . . . You can find out more ‘About Me’ here.

(Hint: If you want to make the Glog larger, click on the Glogster Edu sign and a list will drop down. Click full size for easier viewing.)   Made at Glogster Edu

Having

Trouble

Making

Links

It was time to investigate!

What does HTML stand for?

eHow Definition: “HTML is an acronym for HyperText Markup Language. It is a language that is used to produce documents for the internet. HTML instructs browsers on how to display the text, hyperlinks and images on a web page. HTML pages are distributed on the web using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)”.

OK. So I know what it stands for and what it is, but how do I use it?

Thanks to the very helpful Sue Wyatt and Mrs Yollis’ blog, I was starting to unravel the mystery of HTML. For some more great instructions for setting up blogs, I also found Sue Waters’ blog extremely helpful.

Now all you have to do is carefully follow these steps.

• To make a hyperlink use the following HTML code and add a URL and your own link words.

<a href=”url”>link word</a>

<a href=”http://pmniewman.global2.vic.edu.au/”>DigitalDewey</a>

When published this will become the hyperlink Digital Dewey

• To make text bold, place this HTML code around the text:

<b>bold</b>

• To put the text in italics place this HTML code around the text:

<i>italics</i>

But here’s the best part . . . some TIPS to help you remember what to do.

1. Mrs Yollis suggests leaving a document on the desktop with the regular HTML codes plus a few blank code links. Then you only have to copy/paste the URL and the word link into the blank one and you’re ready to go.

2. Finally here’s my tip – I copied the HTML code page into my Dropbox. Now it’s ready to access wherever I go.

Time for a coffee break.

Just put the pieces of the jigsaw together and YOU can solve the puzzle of how to write an effective blog.

(You can also solve my problem of which jigsaw you like by mentioning your preference in your comment)

CLICK ON THE PICTURE TO START

20 Effective blogs (Jigsaw Planet)

(Jigzone)

The Edublogs Teacher Challenge task for this week was to discuss the characteristics of effective blog posts.

Let’s see if the blog post I chose for discussion completes the puzzle for you.

Being a newbie to Twitter, I have spent quite a bit of time engaged in following some wonderful educators.  One of these is George Couros, who in less than 140 characters, conveys a wealth of leadership qualities, and yet a touch of the human side.

His blog, The Principal of Change aims to help and inspire others to find their passion.  (Well that caught my attention!)

His blog post Pockets of Excellence demonstrates some sound blogging techniques.

• The title is short, but catchy . . . I’m interested in the word ‘excellence’, and the word ‘pocket’ to me sounds like it’s small and do-able.
• But the first sentence “I was totally inspired by this video clip last night” was what actually drew me into reading the post.
• Using  media (video) to support and illustrate what had inspired him, appeals to visual learners.
• He writes with passion to illustrate something he believes in, using words like . . ‘moved me’, ‘enthusiasm’, ‘amazed me’, ‘ALL pulled together’, ‘powerful’, ‘teamwork’ and ‘camaraderie’. . .  It also reveals a little of his own personality – his own passion for what he does and his relationship with students and colleagues.
• His style of writing keeps it real by drawing on his own experiences at his school and makes me feel as if he is actually talking to me.
• He supports the points he was making on the importance of ‘community, collaboration and sharing individual gifts’ by making links to two posts about similar amazing celebrations at his school – Identity Day and the Portfolio project.
• The post ends with questions to think about. “How do we make these projects happen more in school?  How do we respect the individual gifts and autonomy of teachers while bringing the entire school together in activities such as the one in the video?”

It left me inspired and thinking that we all have a pocket of excellence within us, but when we all step up and share our gifts it has an extremely powerful result.

One final thing . . . the post was not too long, so I also had time to read his previous post People Business . . . . sad, but again, very inspiring!

Thanks to George Couros ‘The Principal of Change’

Note: I made the graphics for the puzzle at Bubbl.us and the puzzles at Jigsaw Planet and Jigzone.

I’m very excited to be taking part in the Edublog Teacher Challenge, as it not only supports my needs at the moment, but creates more opportunities to indulge my ‘lifelong learner’ cravings.

The first challenge encouraged me to look more carefully at my blog – its purpose, visibility and the way information is presented.

As I read other blogs, I am in awe of the way people can express themselves. Whether it be reflecting, describing or explaining, the right words seem to flow skillfully and easily across the page.

Not so me!!!!! With a Thesaurus page in the background, my fingers hover over the keyboard in anticipation until my thoughts catch up.

My realisation as I reflected on my blog, was that I am a very visual and tactile person. Seeing something ‘does it’ for me. And then I need to try it out for myself before I can understand it . . . not unlike the primary school children that I teach!

Therefore, although I will try to develop a style of informative and reflective writing, my blog may tend to be fairly visual.

The main purpose of all my learning is to take new pedagogy and technology into the primary school classroom. Therefore, my ‘blog reflection’ is a Goanimate presentation. It’s the first time I have used it, but except for a few ‘frozen’ screens, it was lots of fun and I would love to try it with the year 5\6 classes.

GoAnimate.com: My BLOG by pamn

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!