Work to complete Week1

Hyacinth, Gemma and Julian with rain on their faces....

Creative Commons License Bennilover via Compfight

G’day Mr Samphier’s students,

In my previous post I mentioned the area in the header labelled “Work completed”. It is now up to date as at today. You will notice the green squares mean you have completed that work, red squares relate to the word in red in the first column, yellow means you have done part of the activity and a blank square means you still need to do the activity.

Many of you have timezone in red; this is because you haven’t gone to dashboard>settings>general and changed to Hobart and then saved that change by going to the bottom of the page and clicking the big button.

As you complete something, leave me a comment on the Work Completed page and then I will check it and mark it off on the sheet.

If you have a question about something you are asked to do, leave a comment again on the Work Completed page again.

Over this next week, try to complete the work up to and including the bootcamp comments. Some of you have written your comment about logging in and your profile which was step 1. But step 2 is about creating your avatar and writing a post – you need to leave a great comment for Sue Waters for me to mark off step 2.

Next week, we will look at embedding some widgets so you can know where people are coming from to read your blog posts. Once you have added a visitor counter, I will start mentioning your blogs to my teacher friends around the world and they might leave you some comments on really great posts you have written.

Welcome new student bloggers

Welcome to the students blogging with Mr Samphier. I spent some time with you this week and I was very impressed with the amount of learning you covered in about a four hour period.

You will notice below the header area in this blog, there is a page called “Work completed“. This is where I will be keeping a record of the blogging you do over the rest of the year. Students who have completed all the work will receive a gold certificate at the end of the year and the students who have completed most activities will still receive a certificate.

If you are unsure about the work to do, leave a comment on the work completed page. I will either leave an answer there for you or I will direct you to a post which explains things.

Hope you enjoy blogging this year and remember

  • You can blog on any computer, anywhere in the world
  • You just need to know the URL of your blog and how to login
  • Remember to log off your blog though, if other people use that computer

How to … create a Voki

A Voki is like a talking avatar. Follow these instructions to create your own Voki and add it to your blog sidebar or in a post.

Visit the Voki website here

Click on create

voki1

This will take you to the Voki dashboard

voki2

Start customizing your character

voki3

  1. Choose your person by
  2. Moving the arrows across to find a group that you want eg anime, politics, holidays
  3. Do you want male, female or all choices?
  4. Scroll up and down if there are more than 9 choices – you can’t choose one with a hat in the right corner as these are for the paid version of Voki
  5. Finished the type of person, now head back to the top to choose clothing
  6. Last step is choosing bling like glasses, lipstick etc
  7. Finished – click done

Now it is time to give your character a voice

voki4

As you are in Australia, you don’t use the telephone but you can

  1. type the text
  2. use an inbuilt microphone or attach a microphone
  3. add an audio file you have already created
  4. When typing your text, make sure it is correct spelling and punctuation as this will make a difference when the Voki speaks.
  5. Click the arrow to play back the text as you go
  6. Choose the accent or language you will be using
  7. Choose the voice – male/female Aussie/English/American etc
  8. Finished – click done

Now for the final touches – tweak your colours

voki5

Choose the background you want for the Voki

voki6

Decide on the colour theme of the Voki player before you add it to your blog.

voki7

Now it is time to share your Voki

  • Click Publish
  • Give a name to your scene and save
  • When the email screen comes up click on No thanks then close on the next screen
  • Choose the size of your Voki
  • Copy the code making sure you scroll down to get it all

Adding Voki to a post

  1. Start a new post
  2. Put in the title
  3. Click on Add Media button above the post writing box
  4. On the left hand side choose Insert embed code
  5. Paste in code in the box then bottom right corner Insert into post
  6. Your post writing box area will now have a grey square

Finish writing your post explaining why you created the Voki and what it is about. Include a link to the Voki website as well so your readers can visit and have a go for themselves.

Adding Voki in sidebar

  1. Go to dashboard> widgets
  2. Drag a text box up to the sidebar area
  3. Paste in the code in the box
  4. Give a title to your text box
  5. Save

 

 

Welcome to a new year of student blogging

It is great to see many teachers now having students with their own personal blogs.

Make sure you visit these blogs which include new student bloggers on the sidebar:

Grade 1/2 Mrs Moore

Grade 2/3 Miss Johnstone

Grade 3/4 Mrs Coe and Mrs McKibben

Grade 8 Ms Ferencz

Grade 9 Mrs Smith

Grade 10 Mr Waddilove

As more teachers get their students blogging on their own, I will add them to this list.

 

 

Term 4 blogging

Student challenge 2015

There will be no formal online classroom this term. Instead you will be taking part in the Student Blogging Challenge. You can find this by clicking on the badge on the sidebar or on your own blog if you have added the badge and linked it.

Week 1 is about avatars and your online personality compared to your real life personality.

Complete either of these activities then leave a comment on the blogging challenge website under the week 1 post. Make sure you mention which activity you did and if you enjoyed it.

  1. Describe your avatar and how it represents you – remember to include your avatar as an image in the post
  2. How is your online persona and real life persona the same or different?

Week 2 is about commenting and there is only one activity I want you to do for this

  1. Open a new post on your blog.
  2. On the challenge blog, click on the page above the header labelled October 2015 students.
  3. Find 4 blogs of students your age or with your interests.
  4. Leave a comment on one post or the About Me page on each of those 4 blogs – before submitting the comment, copy it and paste it into your new post on your blog. Make sure you include the URL of your blog in the comment so they can then visit your posts to leave comments for you. Once you have submitted the comment, click the URL of the blog and copy that also into your post.
  5. You should now be able to improve your post so it looks something like these: Mia included the URL as a link while Rachel down near the end of her post actually included the URL
  6. Once I have published your post, go to the challenge blog and leave a comment on the week 2 post mentioning what you did and include the URL of your post.

Week 3 is about using images.

From this week on you have free choice of which activity to do. If you choose to do a lot of commenting on other student blogs, then you need to write a post similar to the week 2 post. There are also special event posts – the first one is about #RaiseYourVoice – you can do these as well if you want.

Admin Work

Remember each week to moderate any comments that might have appeared on your posts. You don’t have to approve it, if it doesn’t make sense or isn’t a quality comment. Reply to the comment on your blog if the person asks a question. If they leave their blog URL in the comment, go visit them and see if you can leave a comment on their blog.

If you look on the Work Completed in the header of this blog, you will see which work needs to be completed by the end of term. I will be publishing your work on a Friday evening so you will be able to leave a comment on the student blogging challenge website after that time – remember to include the link to the post I will have published.

If you have any problems throughout the rest of term, try to work it out between yourselves, or ask Mrs Brooks or email me like Zach did the other day. I will try to have my email open Friday afternoons so I can answer you quickly.

 

Creating a poll

So you want to ask your readers to vote on something like favourite music or favourite animal. I have been looking for a great web 2.0 tool you can use easily and embed in your blog.

Here is my poll about blogging.

What do you enjoy most about blogging?

What do you enjoy most about blogging?
pollcode.com free polls

How to create a poll

Step 1. Here is the website to visit.

Step 2. Make sure you make all your changes on the left hand side before hitting the big blue button. You can see on the right hand side what your poll will look like as you make the changes.

Step 3. Once you hit the blue button, you will then have a choice of tower or drop down embed code. Choose tower and copy the code.

Step 4. Return to your blog post which you have already written (including tags and categories). In the top right corner, change from visual to text or HTML and paste in your code.

Step 5. Hit the submit button immediately then close your post page. DO NOT change back to visual. Do that next time you open a new post.

STOP PRESS     STOP PRESS     STOP PRESS

I noticed that the poll looks different from the edit post area and what actually appears in your post. I will have to work out how to change this.

Adding widgets

In this week’s lesson, you each added a clock widget to your sidebar. Here are the steps you followed, in case you need to change the clock:

  1. Open student blogger’s blog and right click open in a new tab on Miss W’s clock in the sidebar.
  2. This takes you to this website. In the top header, hover over free fun and click on  make a clock for your site.
  3. Make any changes you need to the clock and keep clicking on Continue.  You can see what the changes are as you make them by looking at the clock on the right.
  4. When you have finished creating your clock, you need to copy the embed code. This is also called HTML code.

Now come back to your blog dashboard> appearance> widgets to embed the code in a text box which you have dragged across to your sidebar area.

Put in a title for the widget them paste the embed code and save.

There are many different widgets you can add to your sidebar. They all work the same way – create the widget on their website, copy the embed or HTML code then come back to your dashboard and add the code in a text box under widgets. If you can’t find the embed code easily look for these words or icons:

embed code      HTML     publish     share    application,xml,code,html

Try now to create one of these widgets:

Here is a video about how to create a Voki, start at about 1.00 minute.

Visit other student blogs to see what widgets they might have like a flag counter, bookshelf, brainpop riddle, wonderopolis question.

Can you find any other great widgets to add to your blog sidebar?

Write a post about widgets.

Creating with Animoto

Today we are going to make a practice animoto.

You will need at least 4 photos which you have saved on your computer.

Now check out this video and page of information from Animoto website.

You should have received an email with your email/password for animoto. Check your school email.

Login at this link.

  1. Choose a style for the video
  2. Upload your images/photos
  3. Add text
  4. Rearrange to order you want
  5. Change your music
  6. Check the settings to personalize your slideshow
  7. Preview and produce – I will get an email when it is ready to be embedded on your blog

We will do that next week after you have created your own animoto

  • about your holidays
  • your favourite things
  • your family

What other things could you create an animoto about?

 

 

Creating slideshows

After the holidays we will be learning how to create a slideshow and how to embed it on your blog.

So your homework over the next three weeks is to take at least 12 photos and have them at school on our first lesson back. Make sure you have saved them to your drive at school or on a thumb drive that you have brought to school from home.

Her are some examples of slideshows I have put together:

Using Animoto: You add the images, choose your music, choose the theme and then it will create it for you. You copy the embed code and put into your blog.

On a trip overseas, I visited a zoo and took lots of photos of animals.

 

Still using animoto, but this was a display of avatars created.

Finally still using animoto, this was a maths/art display by students in one of my classes when I was teaching.

 

Links, pet and comments

If you didn’t get into our online classroom this week, then here is the new link to join us. The blackboard collaborate link is now on a server in Australia, rather than in Europe so the URL will have an au at the beginning rather than eu.

Each week, check the “Work completed” page in the header of this blog. You can see what you need to do by the end of this term. As you complete the work for the work completed page, you could tell me while in the online classroom lessons on Fridays or you could leave me a comment on this post or the work completed page.

This week’s work

  1. Add the new link to our classroom onto your sidebar links area. Read this post if you have forgotten how to add a link to your sidebar. Steps 4/5 are the important ones to read. Add it under the Get Help area. Seth – also add link to Mr Samphier’s students Zac – add links to Mrs Moore, Mrs Coe, Mr Fenn’s students as well.
  2. Luka – go to next activity. Seth – finish football on the oval draft. Zac – finish ANZAC Day march. Boys – to get to your draft, dashboard> posts> all posts, then hover under your draft and click on edit. This will open into your post area for you to finish the post. Remember to explain things well and take note of anything I have written in red. Delete my red writing before submitting.
  3. Luka and Zac – go to next activity. Seth – you need to change your blog theme to something that is mobile friendly – dashboard>appearance> themes, choose mobile friendly category then choose theme.
  4. Create a pet for your blog sidebar. Here are the instructions.
  5. Visit some student blogs listed on the sidebar and leave some comments.
  6. Write another post maybe explaining why you chose that pet, or explain the comments you left on other student blogs.

Notice you all need to complete an “About Me” page. To do this copy what you wrote in the about me post and paste it into a page instead. Refresh your own blog once I have published it and it should appear near sample page in your sidebar.  If you can’t see sample page on your blog anywhere, then go to widgets and drag across the pages one.