Category Archive

Having fun at mps! Making changes!

Well, I’ll try this again and see if it fits in the post . . . if not, I’ll try to figure it out later. The first time, I used Jing and embedded the code into my post, but it doesn’t fit.

This time I created a Wordle of ART: Evaluating Research Project Assignments and saved it from Jing to my documents (instead of using the embed code).  Now I’m going to upload it as an image and see how it works…ah, it worked!  and if you click on the image you can see it larger.

Wordle is a cool tool which allows you to make a word cloud from text you provide by 1) copying or typing it into a box, 2) providing a URL to a blog or website, or 3) entering a Delicious username. You can select color options and other editing functions to create a fun and interesting Wordle that highlights the important meanings of the text you provide. For instructions on how to embed Wordle into your blog, see theedublogger’s post about it.

Here is the wordle for my blog . . .

So, in order to learn the ins and outs of Edublogs, I’m playing around with it.  Here I am going to try to display a short imovie I made for Linda Wise, Media Specialist at Como Park Senior High.

First, I went to TeacherTube and copied the URL of the video.  Then I clicked on the Video Icon in the Visual Editor of my post, pasted the URL, and gave it a title — wah-lah . . .

CPHS: Student Stories

Now I am going to embed the same video using the code TeacherTube provides.  If it works, obviously this second option is better because the video will be directly in the post rather than yet another click away.

So, now I’m going to click over to the HTML editor, paste the code below, and click publish:

Edit:  I tried this a couple of times and it didn’t work.  I’ll try again later.  For now, click on the link near the top of the post to see the video.

I have to say I’ve been a bit HTML-phobic ever since I had to use it way back in college to build websites for my education classes . . . come to think of it, that is probably WHY I’m phobic.  Anyway, the whole web 2.0 revolution has opened up a whole new world for people like me — we don’t NEED to deal with HTML because it is done for us like magic!

Well, most of the time . . . lately I’ve had to go in and play with the code to get pbwiki to do what I want.  And now it turns out that we have to use the HTML tab in Edublogs to embed things like videos and such. (Before you get confused, the “Add media” icons in the Visual Editor are for things downloaded to your computer or at a URL — not for things with code.)

The good part about this is that it sounds like you can embed almost anything.  The bad news is that you have to toggle back and forth between the “Visual” tab in the Editor and the “HTML” tab in the Editor.

For details see The (wonderful) Edublogger’s post about this.  Quick and dirty:  If you want to add an Animoto video or a GooglePresentation or anything with code . . .

• Write everything you want in your post using the Visual Editor first
• When everything is done EXCEPT adding the code, click on the HTML tab
• Find the place in the your post where you want to add the code
• Copy the code from wherever it is and paste it into the HTML Editor
• DO NOT CLICK BACK TO THE THE VISUAL EDITOR OR DO ANYTHING ELSE
• Just click “Publish” and wait for it to be done publishing.  When you go to “Visit Site,” your video (or whatever) should be there looking pretty

I just tried it with some GooglePresentations (post) and Animoto Videos (post) and it worked well.  One thing to be aware of — the next time I went to write a post the Editor was still in the HTML tab, so you may have to make sure that you are in the Visual tab every time. (I’m not sure, but it did that even though I have the Visual Editor set as my default.)

So, don’t be HTML-phobic — it is easy!  After all, it is really only copying and pasting, and we do that all the time anyway.

This is a cool site where you can spell things with copyright-free letters from flickr: Spell with Flickr.  Type a word in the box at the top of the page.  When the letters appear you can click on each one to get different pictures.  When you are satisfied with the letters in your word, copy the code in the box below the letters and paste it into your blog.  Note that you can choose to square-off the letters so that the images are all the same size.  Have fun!

Here are the GooglePresentations I created for Metronet’s poster session at the Information Literacy Conferenc in June.  These give an overview of the highlights from the Metronet Information Literacy Initiative of 2007-2008.  You can view more about last year’s MILI at http://mili20072008.pbwiki.com/.