Group items tagged

So, what's a blog? Let's start at the very beginning by defining the word blog. Blog is short for weblog (a term which is not used frequently anymore) and is an online journal where entries (called posts) are written in chronological order with the most recent appearing at the top of the blog.

Everyone wants to have a unique design for their blogs or websites, but all of us won't have skills necessary to make a unique design. Thankfully there are many resources on the web to help you in tweaking your design. In this post i will list tools available for generating background images for your blog design.

"Kidblog.org is designed for elementary and middle school teachers who want to provide each student with an individual blog. Kidblog's simple, yet powerful tools allow students to publish posts and participate in discussions within a secure classroom blogging community. Teachers maintain complete control over student blogs. "

Twitter has become one of the most useful social applications for bloggers. Many bloggers choose to feature their latest updates in a widget visible in their blogs." I see this as an opportunity to 'microblog' short thoughts and have them posted to a blog or e-portfolio. Later, they might be developed into full posts when the author has time to reflect. Twitter is great for sharing short bursts of ideas (140 characters or less). I think it helps make expression of ideas more concise with that limitation.

"One of the main reasons I started using Blogs with students was so their work had permanence, and wasn't just shoved in a box in the back of an attic, but published in an authentic venue, where people could continue to interact with it. For years to come. I still have people leaving comments on the first Blog that I set up for students over 5 years ago. It remains a living, breathing organism. The students can still go back and see their previous work."

FTP stands for File Tranfer Protocol. It is the sister of the more commonly used HTTP. Both protocols deal with transfering data across the internet. FTP is a way for you to take files from your computer and upload them to another computer, usually a web server. Or, it is also a way of downloading files from another computer to yours. "Support Search this page: Installation General Usage Account Manager Properties Options Tools Troubleshooting Miscellaneous Questions Walkthrough for Beginners by Floss Manuals A Walkthrough for Beginners by Prisca Schmarsow "

This is a very nice blogging application. Would be nice if it were multiplatform. Microsoft gets a lot of heat for crappy things but this one of the things coming out that is actually fairly good.

Writer makes it easy to share your photos and videos on almost any blog service-Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, and many more.

free software for generating podcasting feeds for your blog

Have you ever wanted to create short "how to" video for your students to use for homework, remembering facts, and solving math problems. How often have your students stated, "I could not complete the homework assignment, because I could not remember the steps and no one could help me." Well the answer is to create a screencast or video for posting on your class wiki or blog for students to view at home or anywhere else they have web access.

Today there are lots of creative blogging tools for students to use at school, but the five below are specifically catered towards a K-12 audience and come with lots of useful features for teachers and students. So, if you are itching to get your students online, consider the following options.

One True Media helps you turn your photos and video into awesome slideshows and video montages for free. Embed your slideshow or video montage onto MySpace or any website, share via email or links. Get it on a customized DVD or share to your own personal TiVo channel. With amazingly easy tools you can edit your video and photos, add in cool effects and transitions all without a software download. One True Media supports dozens of social networking and blog platforms, including MySpace, MySpace Blogs, Bebo, Blogger, eBay, Facebook, Friendster, Hi5, livedoor, LiveJournal, Piczo, Sina.com, Sohu.com, Tagged, Typepad, Windows Live Spaces, Yahoo! 360 and Xanga.

Great academic uses for Twitter!

Great Ideas for using Twitter to encourage and extend learning beyond the classroom. Written for university but easily extends to high school or adult ed. Great idea to increase connection for distance students.

Wikis are an exceptionally useful tool for getting students more involved in curriculum. They're often appealing and fun for students to use, while at the same time ideal for encouraging participation, collaboration, and interaction. Using these ideas, your students can collaboratively create classroom valuables.

Teachers love to share their best ideas and resources with others. In the past, this was done by word of mouth, but today they blog about it.

My Timelines is a new cut and paste service from the makers of Backlinkr, RSS to Javascript and Trackbackr. My Timelines let's you easily add an AJAX based timeline that displays your most recent blog entries.

Vicki Davis is asking for some help for her kids. "They have been using Google Lively as part of the Digiteen Project teaching digital citizenship (http://www.digiteen.net), however Google has announced it will shut lively down on December 31st." See her 'coolcatteacher' blog --> http://coolcatteacher.blogspot.com/ for more details.

Clockmaker Icon Generator is an Adobe AIR app that lets you generate cool CS3 style icons or Web 2.0 badges. The app is simple to use enter the text you want to appear in icon and select the background color, it will generate the icon automagically. Click on the Create icon to save the icon to your desktop. It generates 4 icons with variable sizes in PNG format, 128×128 px, 48×48px, 32×32px and 16×16px. If you like to use it as Favicon for your blog you can convert this png image to Favicon.