Sunday, September 30, 2007

Have bookmarks, will travel.

So now with 3 computers at home and computers at school that I can't save bookmarks on, I needed some sort of way to have community bookmarks. Now I believe you can save your bookmarks in iGoogle. I already use iGoogle as my homepage but I wanted to try out something else. Donna recommended Del.icio.us. So I exported all of my bookmarks from my home computers and tried it out. Now I have access to my bookmarks anywhere that I have the internet. There is a button to download and attach to your web browser (a quite simple process). The button makes it quick and easy to access my links.

Del.icio.us has some other features that aren't available in most web browser bookmarks. It has a more powerful organizing tool. You can apply numerous tags to each link. You can then organize your links based on tags. You can also sort them by how often you use them. Del.icio.us even lets you subscribe to other users bookmarks. This means that when they add a new bookmark you will get access to it as well. (I haven't tried that feature yet.)

I have mixed feelings about Del.icio.us.
PROS:
- I can access and edit my links from any computer.
- Sorting options. (Love the tag idea.)
- Networking your bookmarks with other users.
- You can export your existing bookmarks to and from Del.icio.us

CONS:
- It is not quite as quick to use as the built in bookmarks tab on my web browser.
- I can't install the Del.icio.us buttons on the work machines.

Well, I will keep using it and I will make my final decision later. You can check out my Del.icio.us links on the right side of this page. Please ignore the fact that I obsess over my hobbies.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Telling the New Story

A good example of using blogs in the classroom.

For those of you who were at the inservice you have all seen this video. For the rest of you this lady makes great use of blogs to teach writing. Watch it. She is definatly not a tech geek so it goes to show that anyone can do it.

Coming soon - video posting instructions.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Well I added some HTML text.

I think I just did something a little dangerous. I added a hits counter to the bottom of the blog. (For those not quite so web savvy that is a little application that shows how many times somebody visits my blog.) I say dangerous because the last thing I want to know is how few people actually visit my blog.

Anyways, how did I do it? I Googled hits counter. It led me to a how to article on the Blogger site itself. The site listed several free counters and I picked EasyHitCounters at random. It gave me some HTML code to put directly into my blog. I added a new page element. When it asked me what type I chose an HTML element. I cut and paste the code from the counter directly onto that element. Done.

Okay- a couple of thoughts. First of all the free counter I used requires me to leave a link to the website that created it. Advertising for them. I am not the most comfortable about that (and may try a different counter later). I guess that they did provide a service. The other thing is that I could have set the starting number at any number I wanted. I thought about it for a minute, but who would believe me if it said that over 1000 people had visited my blog in the first week?

Difficulties and Roadblocks Already?

So I got to school today and was utterly excited about what we learned yesterday. My pricipal was asking what we had done so I went to show her the blog I started developing. I was completely surprised to find out that our computer techs had seen fit to block http://www.blogger.com/www.blogger.com and Blogmeister. How am I supposed to create and maintain a blog for my staff if they can't even access it at school? Now we talked to the division techs and I hope that they have cleared it up. Unfortunatly they believe that it is better to block anything with even the slightest chance at problems rather than to let us teach students how to use the internet appropriately.

It doesn't help that they took out the section of the blocking pages that allowed us to respond to the administrator (about the blocked pages). Apparently some of our more expressive students were sending colorful messages when they were blocked.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Next In-school Instructional Support Teacher PD Day

The next day is November 6.

Ohh, lookie, lookie!

We now have links on the side! Yipee!

The links page really wasn't very hard to add. I just went and edited the blog template. I clicked on the link "Add Page Element." I was asked next what tipe of element I wanted to add. There were about 10 types. A link list is what I used.

Adding animations.

Here is another test of adding animations. It is created by http://http://www.fodey.com/generators/animated/wizard.asp

Wizard Animation

An experiement.

Learning and Technology

I am just experimenting with adding web links to my blog. Here is the address to the In-school Instructional Support Teacher PD information. This is from the presentation where I got all my information from. There are tons of links here to tools that help you use the web to teach.

Adding the link was not too tough. I typed the label I wanted to show. Then I highlighted the words and then clicked on the link button in the window (button has a globe and a chain link on it). It prompted me for a web address to attach to the label and then I was done.

If you want to just show the raw web address then just skip adding a label. Hit the link button without having anything highlighted.

Now I say that it was not too tough but it took me 3 tries to get it right. I just made some silly mistakes.

Just started.......

Well, here I am. Finally published on the web. Under my own name no less! No hiding behind anonomous usernames for me. Now I just need to see how much I will use this for work and how much for play. Check back to get an insight into my head.