Edublogs Tutorials

If you like the idea of a Clustrmap but would like to take it one step further, you could have a whos.amung.us live map. The visitors actually on the site show up as flashing points and this is a great motivator for students who want to see who is looking and from where. Click on the ‘Map widget’ tab to choose your map

As you may have gathered, there are now adverts showing up in your posts, just when you thought your Edublogs site was completely free and school friendly.  At $3500 a month for hosting and bandwidth, I think James had to take some action, but not sure if this is the only way to go.

There are lots of views on this and if you’d like to take a look, go to the two forum areas

on ads

contentlink ads

and perhaps, you’d like to add your comment there or here

This is a test post for using Google docs to publish to Edublogs

See post Setting up Google docs to edit and publish your posts

An application for this is multiple posts to a class blog from different students and locations.  The Google account has an age limit of 14 I think so some limitations here

Hi fellow Edubloggers - did you notice that there’s new functions in your toolbar.  Just click the kitchen sink icon on the far right of your write toolbar

Great stuff James - we can now choose different font sizes, embed media, undo, add custom characters etc

Have fun

Thanks to Glassbeed via twitter

This PhotoFunia looks great for adding effects to your pics - I think the kids will love it

This took me a few minutes to work out but is basically quite simple

1 Get a free Flickr account
2 You need a phone (or pc) with email facility
3 Sign into your Flickr account
4 Go to http://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile/
5 Under ‘Tips & Tricks for Uploading’ click on ‘upload by email’
6 Your account will now be given an email address to send your photos
7 Under this is a place to add a tag to a specific set - this tag can then be used to select all those photos you send and embed them in a slideshow. Save this setting
8 Save this as a contact on your phone under ‘Flickr’
9 Take a photo
10 Choose to send it by email
11 Add a comment in the body of the text message - this will be a descriptor for the photo when uploaded
12 Send
13 In Flickr, search the tag you added
14 this will now select all those uploaded pics
15 If you want to embed them in a blog etc, just choose share and copy the code
16 Paste this into your blog/website as html
17 Voila

With a focus on “Remixing Library Collections for Digital Youth”

This summit is aimed at bringing together publishers, authors, technology leaders, editors, librarians, other educators to explore where content is headed and how we can take advantage of this dynamic world to fully engage both students and teachers.

Since the change (I call it demise) of Springdoo - now called Bedroom tv! I’d like to suggest the simplest podcasting tool ever.

Vocaroo needs no sign up - just use it.  You can record a podcast (voicemail) and then email it or post it online using an embed code or an email link

Link to the file

Well done Vocaroo

Thanks to Joe Dale for the tip

If your school posts its dates onto a Google calendar and you happen to keep your information on Google too, you might want to use the merge facility to add the school’s dates to your own.
It really seems to be very simple.

• Just open up the school calendar
• In the bottom RH corner, there is a Google Calendar logo with a + sign
• Click on the + sign
• This will load up your Google calendar and ask you if you would like to import the calendar
• Agree to this and you have successfully merged them

I hope this is useful

BTW - I haven’t managed to find and undo functionm for this - perhaps someone can help

Searchme stacks is a great tool for sharing and showing resources, including web pages and video

Take a look at the video

If you want to sign up your students for a web 2.0 application and this requires an email account, simply use your free gmail account

You can register different unique account names numerous times using your own e-mail address by doing this:

emailaddress+1@gmail.com
emailaddress+2@gmail.com
emailaddress+3@gmail.com
emailaddress+4@gmail.com
emailaddress+5@gmail.com

Carey Pohanka suggested that you could use the student’s name instead of a number, and then you won’t have any problems identifying them

emailaddress+student name@gmail.com

I didn’t know that trick, many thanks

All activity the websites under these accounts will be sent to your original, derivative e-mail (i.e. emailaddress@gmail.com). This way, you’ll be able to give each student a unique application account, while also being able to monitor their account’s activity.

Thanks to Jane Knight for collating and producing this list. You might want to to check out if there are new ones you’ve perhaps missed

Google has many tools which are not readily seen by all of us, perhaps they pop up when least expected. This one came up in the K-12 online conference and although I’d heard about them, I’d not really made the connection - are you like that too?

So, if you want to get some opinions easily, then just use Google Forms - you can get the analytics when the form returns start coming in.

1. sign up for a free Google account
2. go to “My account”
3. choose “docs”
4. click on “new” menu then “form”
5. start filling in your requirements

you can have a whole variety of answer formats, from multiple choice to checkboxes

Check out the K-12 feedback form for a good example

What a great video this is - I highly recommend it to those trying to engage others in a discussion on why to use web2.0 tools in the classroom or for CPD

As probably the final part of my recent research into streaming video, I came across Stickam after a callout from Dean Shareski to trial it.  Along with a couple of others, we conferenced and explored the functionality of Stickam.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

I was impressed with the simplicity of the interface and the range of functions it could perform.

As usual, it’s free and is to be used with 14+ - I plan to use it to work with a group of leading teachers to continue the conversations begun at a conference.

So, I suggest you get together with a group or do a shoutout on Twitter and have a look at what it offers.
 

Just as a a follow up from UStream.TV I posted earlier, I had a question

“How do I stream live from my mobile to my blog”

In fact, you might wonder why you would need to.

There are lots of reasons

You might wish to do a range of interviews at a conference and allow colleagues back at school to hear them live, or listen later.

You might be at a field trip and have lots of interesting things to relay to other members of the class - perhaps someone who is being schooled at home due to illness, or cannot participate for some other reason.

You might want to be broadcasting on-the-fly to keep the content alive and raw and for lots of folks to access this live

Perhaps you might have some ideas that you could add as comments

Just sign up for Qik - it’s free

you will then get a text message

click on the link and install the software

Start streaming - it’s really simple

Also records your video to the Qik site

Allows iTunes subscription

To achieve this you need

1. a mobile phone with unlimited data package
2. a mobile phone that is supported by Qik
3. a mobile phone which takes video

How many times have you wanted to show part of a YouTube video starting in the middle.

Well, now you can specify when the video will start from - it’s called Deep Linking

Here’s an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bibCui3lFM#t=1m45s

the bit at the end determines where the video will start - in this case,

1m 45s in - simple eh

read more at TechCrunch

TWA = time wasting activity

Well I think friv has it all - around 200 arcade games to keep you occupied for those dark winter months

thanks to A really different place

Thanks to Amit Agarwal for his tutorial

Why would you want to convert a PPT file to video anyway?

Well, you may want the PPT to go out with music to make it more appealing or you may want it to be iPod compatible.  Both of these are possible

Basically, your powerpoint needs some action

• slide transitions with timings or
• voice narration

if you don’t have any action, then it will remain as a PPT file.

• Get an authorSTREAM account (free)
• upload the PPT file
• wait till it is converted - may take an hour or so
• Download the video file or
• embed it into your blog or add it to iTunes (not managed to do this bit yet!)

You can also do all this from within PowerPoint using authorPOINT lite (free)

• this adds another item to your PowerPoint menu bar
• click on the authorPOINT icon
• This will then allow you to directly upload to
• WizIQ or
• AuthorStream