Opening a blog and creating a post

You'll be opening your own blogs this week. I'd like you to watch the following video that'll guide you to do it.



You will also find instructions to:

1. start posting.
2. publish the post.
   
3. add images.
4. edit your posts.

Uploading a video to your blog

And here's another tutorial that'll teach you how to upload a video from your computer to your blog.




You'll also find instructions about how to add a video from YourTube to the blog.



This last video is something you've already done, but it's always good to have at hand. It about Adjusting your Blogger privacy settings:

Goear

GOEAR is an interesting friendly using tools that enables you to upload those sound files you have in your pc and would like to include in your blog or wiki.

Here's an example, a song by Clay Aiken:

SOCIAL BOOKMARKING

If you don't know what book marking is, watch the following video. You'll save time!



del.icio.us. It's cool!

Here's another site I'm using right now. Watch this video and learn about it:

MOVIE MAKER

You can also invite your students to create movies at

http://www.dfilm.com/live/moviemaker.html

Their classmates can later give opinions about these movies.

HOW ABOUT DRAWING?

If you like drawing, here are some sites to start practicing:

*Drawing Art Pad: http://artpad.art.com/artpad/painter/

*Drawing Billy Bear: http://www.billybear4kids.com/Learn2Draw/PaintProgram/drawing.htm

*Picasso's head: http://www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html?skin=original

*Drawing sketch: http://www.sketchr.net/draw/

Voxpop

VOXPOP is a global message board where anyone can add voice messages to ongoing topical discussions. Share your personal interests or hobbies, debate hot issues or find answers to questions.
They've combined features of podcasting, text forums and live voice chat to create a whole new way to talk.

See how it works with the following posted discussion: http://www.voxopop.com/topic/8e19280d-41f7-484c-877e-e2a0eb158dd1

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Voki enables users to express themselves on the web in their own voice using a talking character.

You can customize your Voki to look like you or take on the identity of lots of other types of characters… animals, monsters, anime etc.

Your Voki can speak with your own voice which is added via microphone, upload, or phone.

Get a Voki now!

Click on the arrow and listen!

What's Puzzle maker?

Puzzle maker at DiscoveryEducation.com is a puzzle generation tool for teachers, students and parents. Create and print customized word search, criss-cross, math puzzles, and more using your own word lists.
It took just a few minutes to create this one:




Across
3. A person from Nigeria is . .
6. A person from The Netherlands is . .
8. A person from Mexico is . .
9. A person from Japan is . .
Down
1. A person from Switzerland is . .
2. A person from France is . .
4. A person from Egypt is
5. A person from Germany is ..
7. A person from Thailand is . .

Quia

What is Quia?

Quia is pronounced key-ah, and is short for Quintessential Instructional Archive (free for 30 days). Quia provides a wide variety of tools, including:

• Templates for creating 16 types of online activities, including flash cards, word search, battleship, challenge board, and cloze exercises. Quia activities are designed with different learning styles in mind to suit the needs of all your students.
• Complete online testing tools that allow you to create quizzes, grade them with computer assistance, and receive detailed reports on student performance.
• Access to online activities and quizzes in more than 150 categories. All of the shared activities have been created by teachers from around the world.
• A schoolwide network that lets you collaborate with your fellow teachers quickly and effortlessly.
• An easy, centralized classroom management system including a master student list, archive of student results, and the tools to conduct schoolwide proficiency testing.
• A class Web page creator that includes a course calendar and an easy way to post your Quia activities for students and parents.
• Online surveys for gathering student and teacher feedback.

Voice Thread

Just double-click on "O.K." and you'll listen to a brief description of what Voice Thread is. An interesting tool!

Voice Thread is the easiest to use. Dashboard is really user-friendly, with simple functions like upload and record.
Comments can be left in voice or text forms.

Pictures can be uploaded from your computer, flickr, facebook or you can just type their urls.

You can create only 3 threads for free in the same account

Ideas are always welcome. How about this one?: you can ask students to post a picture in the class blog and record themselves saying what that photo means to them, describe it in differents ways.

Free technology for teachers!

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
Here you will find seventeen ways of using Twitter.
Here is an interesting link to a blog post about ways to use Twitter for academia (link from Moira at the ESP for Web 2.0 group).

follow me on Twitter

Some more tools provided by the wonderful BAW-08 Workshop !!

Motime: http://www.motime.com/
Blogger: http://blogspot.com/
Edublogs: http://edublogs.org/
Wordpress: http://www.wordpress.com/

Image Editors
East Thumbnails: http://www.fookes.com/ezthumbs/
Image Editor: http://www.imageeditor.net/
My Imager: http://www.myimager.com/

Web 2.0 & Language Learning

I'd say it is really educational. What do YOU think?

Presentation of Web 2.0 for Educators interested in language learning and emerging technologies.