six words August 26, 2007
Posted by Al Upton in 6 words, Blog Challenge, Edublogs, connect, fun, learning, miniLegends.35 comments
Ernest Hemingway was a very famous author.
He was encouraged to write a story in just six words.
Here is one that he really liked and thought was one of his best works … so the story goes.
‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn.’ [This started a brilliant class discussion]
Please add your own 6 word stories in the comments.
Please let other people know so they can visit us and join in the fun.
We will collect them and present them for everyone to share.
Our negotiated task
- Write a ’story’ using 6 words.
- our 1st one – by Kyle “We have lots of fun here”
- It can be any 6 words but sentences are good too
- no swear words, it must be appropriate for our age (8 and 9 year olds)
- remember ! “…” , ? capitals . ‘
- it must be a story, give the sense, idea or part of a story … people can read into it what they want
- twists (unexpected endings) are fun
minLegends - write as many as you like for a post in your own blogs but please add a comment here with your best one.
Click here to read some examples – opens ‘6 words’ page above in a new window
— feel free to leave comments there as well 
Our Google Map August 25, 2007
Posted by Al Upton in Blog Challenge, connect, learning, miniLegends.add a comment
This is a map of our school and a couple of other things. The marker points to our door – we have the classroom looking over the oval. We plan to add more to the map like pictures, text, sound (if we can) and video!
We decided that too many videos and interactive sites embedded in the blog can slow things down at school and make people not want to visit so we are putting in more links.
This screenshot is our first attempt that didn’t save for some reason 
We have/will also put a link to our school/classroom location in a textbox widgit in the sidebar.
Here is a link to our archives (older posts) when we looked at maps and navigation
http://alupton.edublogs.org/maps-latitude-and-longitude/
This link to other sites -
last year’s miniLegends blog (thinking about how we might blog this year)
http://alupton.wordpress.com/2006/12/11/writer-for-the-kids-2007/ includes maps.
Animation Links – ScribeFire test July 25, 2007
Posted by Al Upton in Edublogs, Telling Our Stories, animation, connect.add a comment
Amazing Kids! Animation Lessons
Download for this ‘1stop-movie-shop’
This is also a test to blog from within Mozilla Firefox (the web browser I now use at home on my laptop – rather than Internet Explorer)
I am using the add-on ScribeFire which allows me to easily
select which blog to post to, add tags, even open and edit other posts/pages
All I do is right click anywhere on a page I want to include in a blog
I was actually cut off during this post (dial-up at home!) so this is also a test to see if I can work off line [it works - ScribeFire can also be my offline editor!]
The WYSIWYG editor is simple but not cluttered with features – very user friendly
- live preview
- source editing
- normal/rich/visual editing
- bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
- strong, em
- quote
- text size, (does not transfer to Wordpress/Edublogs)
- hyperlink
- image
- colour
- ordered/dot point lists
-
justify
- post a draft/publish
- save content (great to cross post, post excerpts etc)
- notes and more
Powered by ScribeFire.
I’m liking Firefox and SribeFire – enough for now
Technorati Tags: movies, animations, Scribefire, blogging, edublogs, Mozilla, Firefox
Term 3 Surprise July 24, 2007
Posted by Al Upton in Edublogs, Telling Our Stories, animation, connect, global, learning, miniLegends, video.16 comments
Our theme is ‘Telling Our Stories’
hover your mouse over these pictures to see the start of an exciting story
click to enlarge the pictures > use the back button to return here
‘Telling Our Stories’ July 22, 2007
Posted by Al Upton in Edublogs, Telling Our Stories, animation, connect, global, learning, literacy, miniLegends, safe and savvy, video.add a comment
This is our Term 3 theme and as decided last term will include some animation. We have much to discuss, negotiate and decide. It will be another exciting theme I’m sure.
http://tinyurl.com/2ebr8s
This is a search of the word ‘animation’ in teachertube.com
It is this term’s spring board.
Please remember, stay safe and savvy, share your learning (comment/use your own blogs) and have fun! Cheers, Al
Test podcast using box.net July 20, 2007
Posted by Al Upton in Edublogs, Telling Our Stories, animation, connect, filtered sites, global, groups, learning, literacy, miniLegends, other countries, podcasts, safe and savvy, search, technology, video.add a comment
Why is Web 2 Important to Education? Al Upton 2 MB Nov, 2006
[this file has now been 'embedded' into this blog]
Stored on box.net – a free storage site http://www.box.net/
Upload your mp3 (sound file) – perhaps use audacity
To get the link, click the file in box.net and copy the url (address at the top of the player)
You can also paste in the public link
(IE visitors to your blog can link across to box.net to listen to recording/podcast)
http://www.box.net/shared/qd1kz42r6g
BUT this technique is likely to be blocked/filtered in SA government schools. This means you will need to upload and embed the files away from your site. It is possible for a site administrator to unblock sites at the local level but I do not promote this.
In the editor (when you write a post or a page) there is an icon with an ‘A’ on it. This is for embedding (copy and paste) the URL of different media files such as You Tube, Google, Metacafe, iFilm etc – not all are recognised but it’s worth a try – very quick, easy and powerful. NB You do this in the Visual editor (not Code) but will see code until you save the post or page.
