Do you want to be a famous blogger?

This cartoon is by Dave Walker.  You can see more of his work at http://www.weblogcartoons.com/
and find out how to post his cartoons in your own blog.

Media literacy or communiation skills?

This video, from Edutopia, is titled "Visual Acuity: From Consumers to Critics and Creators - Critical-thinking skills -- and fluency in multimedia production -- are integral to media literacy".

"Filmmaker and George Lucas Educational Foundation chairman George Lucas thinks it's time to change "English" class into "Communication" class, where students learn the grammatical rules of graphic arts, film, and music along with English grammar. "It shouldn't be taught as some esoteric, arty thing. Communication skills should be taught as very practical tools that you use to sell and influence people, to get your point across -- especially in this age, where kids are, more and more, using multimedia."
Until then, teachers will spend less than an hour each school day teaching "English," leaving students to their own devices -- cell phones, TVs, iPods, PlayStations, and laptops -- to enjoy their eight-hour independent-learning adventure in the fun house of digital media."

Institutions vs. collaboration

Watch this older (July 2005) TED Talks video: Clay Shirky: Institutions vs. collaboration and think about the use (and support) of ICT in schools as you listen...

"In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning."

Animoto

Animoto is a great way to make static images more interesting. Upload or connect to the images, choose or upload the music, and Animoto creates the video. See Animoto for Education.

Marisa de Dios created this presentation on how blogging can be a motivating teaching tool in and out of the classroom:


Uploaded on authorSTREAM by eoimarisa

Bloging resources

I've been preparing resources for a few workshops this fall. Two 90 minute sessions for our school's pedagogical in-service day: one on "Working in a Cloud" and one on "Blogs, Nings and Wikis" - the wiki is here. Another is a weekend workshop for classroom bloggers - that wiki is at this link. A third one, telling the story of one classroom blog's birth and growth is still in development.

Embedding sound files in your blog

There are many sites on the web to help you embed simple mp3 player on your blog.

This code creates a generic low-key looking QuickTime file player: Be sure to add the enclosure tags
<> the beginning and the end of this code

embed src="http://www.YOUR FILE'S LOCATION.html" autoplay="false" width="160"
height="176" href="http://www.YOUR FILE'S LOCATION" target="myself"
controller="true" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/"

You can see a sample here (the two small videos in the middle column)


This code from Odeo.com plays a flash file:

<br /><br /><embed src="http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf"
quality="high" allowscriptaccess="always" wmode="transparent" 
type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
flashvars="valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=http://keepps.tripod.com/2i/noise.mp3"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"
height="52" width="300">embed><br />

like this:






(The links, of course, would be your own!)

This page at Oreilly Digital Media will send you on to a very confusing page, with choices of several skins for an mp3 player for your blog.  You can build a play list of music from around the web, or upload your own.

A registration at podOmatic gives you a podcast page to show off your podcasts, and embed code for a player, and the choice of recording straight onto the site or uploading a file from your computer.
Here's a sample podOmatic podcast:


    


This silent video shows how to paste in the code on a Blogger post.


Tutorial: Embed Audio In Blogspot


Blogger Help gives instructions about how to embed the player, and suggests sites to host your files