For teachers who want to work on freely available blogs, with more control over students’ blogs, check out The BlogMeister. You’ll need to email David Warlick for a school code before you can proceed to register.
Sharing at ICCE 2005
Today’s the first day of the 13th International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE2005) and we were invited to share about our HPINIT2 journey.
I have created our presentation using CMAPTools (by IHMC) and the windows version of CMAP can be downloaded here. Download the presentation files here. I have updated the zipped CMAP package with web resources where possible to reduce download size/time. A single non-manipulatable jpeg version of the cmap is also available.
I must take this opportunity to thank Adrian Miles from Australia for spending time to repackage the video prototype 3, otherwise the sharing wouldnt have been possible. You can read more about his development ideas in the hypertext version of his Blogtalk Downunder paper entited “Media Rich versus Rich Media (or why video in a blog is not the same as a video blog)” here.
The “Weblogs in Education” video which I mentioned, featuring Will Richardson and his school & students can be downloaded from the local mirror for your viewing pleasure. There’s another video by Teachers’ TV in UK thay may also interest you.
The few user guides (HOWTOs) that may help you to start off blogging are listed here:
1. Blogger.com HOWTO
2. MSN Spaces HOWTO
3. Windows XP CL Input method editor (IME) setup guide
4. Bloglines.com (RSS) HOWTO
Hope you have found our sharing useful. Thanks for being with us this afternoon, cheers and have another 2 enjoyable days ahead!
MT plugins – for 3.2
Here’s the URL to access the plugins for Movabletype 3.2.
On videoblogging
Well, videoblogging (or vlog) is slowly taking its place in the family of blogs. Until we solve the problem of bandwidth and video equipments, using vlog in our classroom would not be as pervasive as we would like to. In the meantime, some links/resources for those who would like to explore vlog:
If you would like to start viewing/subscribing to some vlogs, Mefeedia is where you can find thousands of videobloggers (video podcasts), and subscribe to their feeds to watch independent videos in the browser, or even on your video iPod or on your PSP.
Besides Mefeedia, if you are monitoring updates in some vlogs, get FireANT. It is a RSS reader for vlogs, featuring automatic downloads and many other features.
If you want to start your own videoblog today (for free), check out Freevlog, a step-by-step guide to setting up a videoblog for free.
Last but not least, if you would like to just READ more about vlog, download this article entitled “7 Things You Should Know About Videoblogging” by EDUCAUSE. It’s only a 73KB PDF! 🙂
Teens wear their hearts on their blog
This report from USAToday.com writes about how millions of youth who grew up with a mouse in one hand and a remote control in the other are pourring out their hearts, minds and angst in blogs.
The section on “Advice for blogging” could be useful for teachers who may be embarking to allow students to blog for their subjects:
Anything on the Internet is public. For safety, Parry Aftab, executive director of WiredExperts, and others recommend:
– Treat everyone you meet online as if he were a stranger, even after you’ve traded information. Lying online is easy.
– Leave out identifying information like your name, where you work and go to school.
– Use e-mail addresses that don’t use your name and can’t be traced to your other online activity.
– When possible, protect your information with passwords.
– Obscure identities in pictures.
– Post only stuff you wouldn’t mind seeing on a billboard.
– Team up with a buddy to check each other’s sites for problems.
– Teens under 13 should only blog with constant supervision.