INSTRUCTORS:

 

Middle School:  Nona Allen,  Paula Raines, Marvo Reeves, Donna Tanner, LaChanda Davis

High School:  Karen Young, Jill Connell, Trudy Coates, Linda Banks, Michelle Hope, Karen Vogelsang

Curriculum Consultant:  LeAnn Dowty

 

OBJECTIVE:  Students will learn about the worldwide blogging phenomenon and produce a blog about the activities that take place during the week of the Institute.  Each group of students will use Edublogs to design and create a blog about the week's activities (or another topic of interest).  They will post entries, make edits, moderate and respond to comments, and incorporate digital photos and hyperlinks in their blog posts.

 

COURSE OUTLINE

Students will combine skills learned in designing, writing, editing, and commenting on blogs; incorporating digital photos and hyperlinks; designing avatars; adding widgets; and become familiar with RSS feed aggregators to create a final product.

 

Blogging Curriculum (utilizing Edublogs)

Blogging Basics -

1. what is a blog?
2. Blogs in Plain English video (provided on DVD)
3. reasons to blog
4. different types of blogs
5. examples of student blogs
6. importance of internet safety

Designing a Blog

1. choosing a blog theme
2. choosing a blog title  

 

Writing a Blog Post

1. blog etiquette
2. writing basics
3. understanding categories and tags
4. incorporating digital photos into posts (see details below)
5. including hyperlinks in posts
6. comments  

Adding to your Blog

1. designing an avatar (see details below)
2. adding widgets (see details below)
3. adding pages

Using a RSS feed aggregator

1. what is a RSS feed aggregator
2. RSS in Plain English video (use DVD provided)
3. three types of methods for viewing feeds:

               a.  personal start pages (iGoogle, myYahoo, netvibes, Pageflakes)

                 - lets you add feeds and widgets (calendar, weather, a TODO list)

               b.  web based readers (Google Reader, Newsgator, Bloglines)

               c.  desk top readers (FeedDemon, NetNewsWire)

                 - more features, more powerful, but are computer-specific

Incorporating Digital Photos into Blog Posts (utilizing iPhoto or Picasa)

Transferring images from the digital camera to a computer

1. Create and name a folder to "hold" the pictures.
2. Connect the digital memory card to the computer using a USB card reader or using a cable connected from the camera to the computer.
3. Instruct the download to place the pictures in the folder that you have created. (part of being better organized)
4. Or use Picasa or iPhoto to import and organize your photos.

 

Working with photos

1. cropping photos
2. adjusting the image, red eye
3. simple special effects

 

Upload finished photo into blog post

1. uploading pictures
2. position and spacing 

Designing Avatars (utilizing Bitstrips)

Create avatars (utilizing Bitstrips)

1. explain Bitstrips
2. creating cartoon characters
3. capturing character as a picture
4. uploading avatar to blog

 

Widgets

Adding Widgets to your blog

make sure you have the text widget in your sidebar

www.widgetbox.com

search by category (example: weather)

Click on one (example: simple weather)

settings page (set width/height or leave as default, set state, set background color to blend with sidebar color)

Click Get Widget

Box pops up with JavaScript-like code

Click Copy

Open the Blog Tab

Edit TEXT

Paste in the TEXT box

Save Changes

To embed things, switch to HTML, rather than Visual, then start with <p> tag on first line, then paste in all that code.

Final Product: Student Blogs

 

Resources:

http://www.commoncraft.com/blogs

http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english