Three Things

After perusing all the teacher blogs in Middle School, a few things stand out:
1. Teachers have  increased the frequency of their posts.
2. The diversity of topics covered has increased

and the focus for this post..
3. many posts lack an engaging look and feel

pic source@Flickr

Here are…

7 Tips to Add Some Punch and Zing to Your Blog Posts

1. Insert a picture per post. Too many posts are large black blob of text. Using a picture sets the tone for your blog post. Be sure to use and show attribution of the Creative Commons photos you use. Two easy way sot do this are by using Compfight and Google Advanced image search.

2. Chunk it. Draw the eye and create a smooth flow for the reader by chunking your text into short(er) paragraphs.

3. Add scanning points. Utilize the bold and text color options to emphasis key words and ideas to your reader.

4. Make lists. Readers like lists. They …

• draw attention to the most important step

• emphasis key ideas

• make it easy to scan

5. Awesome titles and subtitles. Be a student for a second- would you be more likely to click Meet the FlyGuy! or Class Animation Projects.

6. Crisp links. Link the site name itself or a catchy word rather than linking a long ugly URL.

You can check out Mr. Pasamba’s cool class site is a little freiendlier than http://pasambag.ism-online.org

7. Engage your students. Get the students involved by asking a question, creating a contest, requesting a headline to a funny pictur, etc. and encouraging them to respond. Here is a good example of a teacher site that encourages dialogue.

To make learning and communication as easy as possible for HS students, I and David Collett developed the “HS Student Portal“. It serves as a one-stop location for viewing their teachers’ websites, teachers’ calendars they subscribe to, their Google Docs, and important information from the HS Office, CAS, ATAC and ISSBA – all in one location.

Additionally, we built in the functionality to view the ISM Portal, library resources, and even Powerschool.

Simple, effective, fun.

Below you can view the screencast that I created for students and teachers.

I just learned about this feature yesterday.

1. Search for a topic using Google.

2. Click on ‘More Search Tools’

3. Click on ‘Reading Level’

4. Click on the reading level that best fits.

I found this article use in throwing out some ideas on how to leverage Google Apps in Education.  Check-out the below article.

100 Ways Google Apps Can Make You A Better Educator

If you haven’t already visited the new ISM Google Apps below is the URL and a screen shot.

ISM Google Apps

40 Alternative Assessments for Learning

Our Promethean resources have been updated with some interesting resource packs.

BrainPop
Tim and Moby icons. KWL charts, sounds

Classroom Management Activities
activity timers, pulling names from a hat, more

You will also see more icons an graphics to help build your flipcharts: These include: graphic organizers, Technology Icons, Science ClipArt, Bullets and Arrows,

Sounds
number of files has been doubled

If you discover a resource pack at Promethean Planet that you feel would benefit all ISM teachers, please let you respective IT integrator know.

Promethean Resources are now available to all. We have amalgamated various sources into an easily navigable list of training lessons, flipcharts, and animations.

To access the resources..

0 First choose view>browsers.

By choosing the following, you gain access to…

1 Resource browser. From here you have access to resources.

2 My Resources This is where you would save resources particular to your class that you choose not to share with other teachers.

3 Shared Resources. These resources are open for all teachers to see. (This is the active window that the screenshot shows.)

4 Library. Here you find, sounds, templates, backgrounds, etc.

5 Where you to share your creations This is where you will share created materials with fellow teachers. You are able to save to these folders. This should become the most valuable resource the contents are tailored for ISM students.

6 Subjects. A wide range of tools can be found here.

7 Training. All materials use in the recent professional development can be found here.

This section also includes to-the-point how-to’s on how to use particular tools.

What is a “blog”?

From WordPress:

“Blog” is an abbreviated version of “weblog,” which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog is a frequently updated, personal website featuring diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects.

Many blogs focus on a particular topic, such as web design, home staging, sports, or mobile technology. Some are more eclectic, presenting links to all types of other sites. And others are more like personal journals, presenting the author’s daily life and thoughts.

Here’s a quick video to help explain things visually: Intro to Blogging

Generally speaking (although there are exceptions), blogs tend to have a few things in common:

• A main content area with articles listed chronologically, newest on top. Often, the articles are organized into categories.
• An archive of older articles.
• A way for people to leave comments about the articles.
• A list of links to other related sites, sometimes called a “blogroll”.
• One or more “feeds” like RSS, Atom or RDF files.”

Some helpful articles:

Introduction to Blogging

First Steps with WordPress

—–

The following information is here to get you started, and serves only as a brief reference. If you’d like to participate in training sessions with Brandon, please sign up in the faculty tower.

Ready to get blogging?

1. Please visit the link that was sent out via email, and log in with your username and password.
2. Immediately go to your profile, which is located at the top of your screen (probably says “Howdy, ____”) OR you can go to the left side of the screen and under the dropdown menu for ‘Users’, you’ll find “Your Profile”.
3. At the bottom of your profile be sure to change your password to something you’ll remember!

The Dashboard:

• Control center of the blog – the “brain”, where most aspects of the blog are controlled and the magic happens. Various tabs may be accessed via the left sidebar. We’ll break these down briefly:

Settings:

• General: change things like date/format, email address, blog title, time zone
• Writing: you may with to change the “size of the post box” to something larger like ’20′. I personally find 10 lines of text too cramped when writing posts.
• Reading: you may decide if you’d prefer for the viewer to first land on a ‘page’ or ‘posts’. More about that later.
• Discussion: readers may comment on your posts and offer feedback via the commenting box. I highly recommend checking the box: “An administrator must always approve the comment”, for the first few weeks. Any comments posted will therefore first be received by your email account for approval / denial.
• Delete Blog: yeah, just don’t click this one. Please.

Posts:

• Let’s get started by clicking ‘Add New’
• First add a title representing the content of your post (the post being the article itself). It’s best to be accurate and concise with your title, as this is what will help viewers and search engines pick up on your posts.
• Add content to your post; the buttons above the writing area contain various formatting options, adding hyperlinks, and methods for posting media such as images, sound, and video. Let’s save that for another time.
• Once finished, you may wish to add this post to a category. Very briefly, categories help to organize your site for quick access to information. A nice explanation may be viewed here.
• At the bottom of the page, you will see an option for “Allow Comments on this Post” – you may check this off if you do not wish to permit others to comment on your particular post.
• Click “Publish” on the right side of your screen, and you’re all set!

Publish: your blog post is now live for all the world to view.

Draft: periodically the blog post is saved automatically, but if you are not yet finished writing the post and wish to save it for later, use draft.

Preview: click to view the post as it will be seen publicly, but without it actually being live on the web.

Understanding “pages”:

In WordPress, you can write either posts or pages. When you’re writing a regular blog entry, you write a post. Posts automatically appear in reverse chronological order on your blog’s home page. Pages, on the other hand, are for content such as “About Me,” “Contact Me,” etc. Pages live outside of the normal blog chronology, and are often used to present information about yourself or your site that is somehow timeless — information that is always applicable. You can use Pages to organize and manage any amount of content.

What Pages Are:

• Pages are for content that is less time-dependent than Posts.
• Pages can be organized into pages and SubPages.
• Pages can use different Page Templates which can include Template Files, Template Tags and other PHP code.

What Pages are Not:

• Pages are not Posts, nor are they excerpted from larger works of fiction. They do not cycle through your blog’s main page. (Note: You can include Posts in Pages by using the Inline Posts Plugin.)
• Pages cannot be associated with Categories and cannot be assigned Tags. The organizational structure for Pages comes only from their hierarchical interrelationships, and not from Tags or Categories.
• Pages are not files. They are stored in your database just like Posts are.

To wrap things up, I hope this post will help serve as a brief introduction to the world of WordPress, but please feel free to drop by the workshop sessions I’ll be running for more hands-on training. We may be offering a follow up session for more in-depth training and delving into the possibilities that WP may provide. Please feel free to also contact me via email at any time for quick questions. I’m here to help!

Newspaper Map is a free application that allows anyone the chance to read many newspapers from around the world, translated into other languages. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth a try! Click here to see Newspaper Map in action.

Looking for ideas on how to use Prezi as an engaging resource for students? Check out Mr. Highland’s most recent Prezi on Heat Transfer. You’ll find that is layout is organized and easy to follow.

Check out some other Prezi creations from Mr. Highland here: Transformations and Systems.
You can find even more by seeing the links while viewing one of his presentations.