Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

Aspire - astrophysics science project

The ASPIRE Lab is now one of the most innovative and interactive science education websites available on the Internet. You will find not only fun interactive labs, but well designed and produced curriculum content, created by teachers for teachers. The powerful combination of inquiry-based content, along with interactive, hands-on labs provides a powerful visualization tool for you and your students to use. Best of all, the ASPIRE Lab is free!

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Go on a virtual field trip!

a tour of the microscope including views and checklist.

I can’t leave out some blogs!

Sandwalk - the blog of Larry Moran, a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto

Useful Chemistry - lots of links here and a wiki

Molecule Of The Day - “This site is by a chemist who enjoys rambling about the relationship between chemistry and real life to non-chemists.”

Okay so I don’t look like a scientist! I just thought this needed a picture and so here I am “Simpsonized!” (Thanks Comp Day for the idea)Have a great week everyone!

I should have already posted on my study but I have been distracted! I am planning to follow the PISD staff and their blogs. I want to see how many who originally started blogs, whether in this class or in one of my blogging classes, will follow though. I am interested in how many people will read other blogs and how many might even end up starting personal blogs. I am interested to see if teachers will eventually see this as a valid learning vehicle.

I’m hoping to see more communication between campuses. There is such an awesome body of talent in this district and not being from here I don’t know may folks at other campuses very well.

I’m like to see more cross communication between districts in the area and this seems like a great way to facilitate that but so far I can only find librarians playing.

I am teaching a class on the sixteenth on blogging the next step - hoping that folks who have started a blog will come learn some ways to tweak things, how to create and use static pages, upload pictures, and more.

My subject is still vague but I’ll work on that. I don’t teach students so I had to improvise a bit.

I have a secondary possibility - I have access to computer usage data but I’m not sure what I could do with it so unless I get some inspiration it will be blogging.

It will be here any minute!! well pre-conference starts October 8

3 Reasons Meme

three reasons to participate based on my experience from last year!

1. It is staff development the way I like it - at home, in my jammies, with a cup of decaf latte.

2. No Crowds! No driving! No hotels! No airports! (yes I know - technically that’s four - so sue me)

3. You can go back and review the sessions at anytime (unlike virtual conferences where you have to get everything you can right then because when its over, it’s over)

Ya’ll come!

You might be writing a post about a great shot made by one of our basketball players and you caught the moment on film and have it uploaded onto your computer. You know the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” ! How do you get the picture to your blog?

I’m going to explain one way you can do this.

Login, go to your dashboard, write. Just under the editing box where you will write your post there is another box that lets you upload files. Click Browse and navigate to the picture on your computer. Click upload. Now you will see a box that will let you choose a size and send the picture to the editor.

If your picture is really big you don’t want to have that huge picture on your blog. You can check thumbnail at this point and a small version will be displayed on your blog that a visitor can click on to view the full size. In the editor you will be able to choose how the picture is aligned with the text, if it will have a border around it, and what text you want to display if someone is viewing your blog with a computer that doesn’t have the ability to see the picture.

This is only one of several ways you can add pictures to your blog and I will show you more in later posts.

Go to Google and click the More button. You will see a list - click on Reader. If you do not have a Google or Gmail account you need to sign up for one now.

Click Create an Account Now. There will be some information to fill out including your current email address so they can email your password to you.

Once you have created your account you can log in to Google Reader and start adding things to read.

On the Google Reader page there is a blue button that says “subscribe“. You can drag this button on to your browser bar and when you get to a page you want to subscribe to just click the subscribe button in your browser toolbar. When you see the preview in Google Reader, click subscribe to confirm that you want it.

That’s it - you have a start in Google Reader.

Addendum August 20, 2007

If you are on a computer that others use and can’t drag the button to the toolbar you can just click add subscription on the page in your reader and it will give you a box in which you can type or paste the URL for the blog you wish to subscribe to. Click enter and you should be subscribed.

What is a tagline? If you have just created a new blog you have probably given it a cool theme and a catchy title. Under your title in smaller type you may see the phrase “just another wordpress blog” or something similar. This is your tagline and the phrase I mentioned is the default. If you want to change it to something that goes better with you title just make sure you are logged in. Go to your dashboard either by clicking site admin or just make sure that the URL is the following http://blogs.parisisd.net/yourname/wp_admin . Now you can click Options, General, and type whatever you want in the tagline box. Click Update Options or your changes will not stay. That’s all there is to it!

Help! How do I add, edit, or delete a link on my blogroll and what is a blogroll anyway? A blogroll is the list of links on the side of a blog. They are usually organized into some sort of categories.

Login to your blog and navigate to your dashboard. Click Manage, then click Blogroll. If you are adding a link you will follow the steps we already talked about - click add link, add title and address and click update. But what if you have added the link and you notice you mispelled something? Click edit next to the appropriate link and you can change the spelling or add it to a different category and when you are through, click save changes. You can now view your site and see the results.

You can also do editing to a group of links from this page. What if you have a group of links and you have decided that all of them need to be in a different category? Click in the boxes on the far right and then you can edit or delete the entire group.

Notice that near the top of this page there will be a section that says currently showing (all) links ordered by (name) and a link to update. If you have a lot of links and want to view just the links in a particular category you can click the drop down arrow and see a list of your categories to choose from. They are going to be listed in alphabetical order according to the site names. You can change that view to alphabetic by web addresses if you need a different look. You are really catching on to this blogging business now!

We talked about how to add a link to your blog in my last post. Now we want to add a link on your web presence so visitors can find you.

First you will go to WebEdit and login. After you have logged in you will need to make a decision. You can either add you blog link to your linkbar on your main page or to your links page if you have created one. Either place is fine - it’s up to you.

Now I have to introduce you to a new term - permalinks! There are two main ways to link to your blog. You can link to your main blog or you can link to a particular post(a permalink). Your main blog URL will look like this : http://blogs.parisisd.net/yourname

while a link to a post(permalink) will look like this:

http://blogs.parisisd.net/yourname/2007/11/07/posttitle.

You will probably want to make sure that the link you use on your webpresence is the main link to your blog.

If you choose to place the link of your link bar on your main page you will click Edit link Bar. You will then click New Link, enter a title and the URL and click Update. Now you can click View Site. Remember if your new link isn’t showing up you will need to click Refresh up on your browser toolbar.

If you want to add the link to your links page just click Edit Links Page and then click New Site. Add a title and a URL and click Update. Again you can click view site and then click on your Links Page and you may need to refresh. Now you have a two-way connection between your web presence and your blog. You can use these same steps anytime you want to add a link to your web presence.

On my next post I will show you how to change or edit your links on your blogroll or sidebar.

    See you soon!

If you have created a school blog you will want to add links so that people who arrive at your blog can find your web presence and vice versa. We will break this down to make it less confusing. This post will show how to add a link to your web presence on your blog.

You will need to login and go to your dashboard. From there you will click manage and then click blogroll. Next click Add Link. Here you can add a name for the link - I just called mine My PHS Web Presence. Whatever name you give it is what will show up on your sidebar. Type the name into the name blank and then type the URL for your web presence page into the address blank.

If you have already added categories you can check the box next to the category you wish your link to appear. My category is PHS Related but you can choose whatever makes sense to you. If you haven’t added categories yet you can do so now.

Just type a category name in the box next to add on the right hand side under categories and click add. You can always change your mind later and I will show you how to do that in another post.

When you have everything the way you want it click the Add Link button and then you can view your page and you will see your shiny new link on the sidebar. Give it a click to try it out if you want but I bet if you followed these steps you will have no problem.

Use these same steps anytime you wish to add a link to your sidebar.

People litter, we get calls from telephone solicitors, junk mail and spam in our email. It’s an irritating fact of life and unfortunately the trash finds it way to your blog as well. It comes in the form of comments. This is a very good reason for setting up your blog so that all comments have to be moderated by you.

When you receive a comment you will get an email and through that email you will be able to see if the comment is a real comment or a junk. You will have several choices of links to click. One will let you accept the comment. One will allow you to delete it, and one will let you designate it as spam.

When you click the link you will be taken to your blog login page. Login and then you will see a page that lists the moderated comments and asks you if you are sure you want to complete the accept, delete, or spam process. Click yes and you will be done.

It’s an inconvenience, but as simple as taking out the trash!