Moblogging and PowerPoints

Keep an eye on www.haythorneg.parislavieenrose.blogspot.com over the weekend as Niamh is going to be getting the students on the Paris trip to moblog (remote blog) using their internet/camera phones from France.

It is easy for you to post a comment for them to read while they are away, if you wish. You will just need to type your e-mail address, an anti-spam word and a comment in the relevant boxes on the website above.

Would welcome any feedback or ideas after the weekend.

Meanwhile, Toby has found out for me how to embed PowerPoints in Blogger. Whilst it is a bit more complicated than the obvious route in edublogs it looks really neat. Sign up to www.scribd.com and upload your file to the scribd website. Then paste the code they give you into the html tab side of a new post in Blogger. Done. If you have problems, it may be that the width of your Blogger template is not sufficient to accommodate the PowerPoint. If that is the case you can go to "Templates" and "Edit" from your dashboard to check out what width you have available and edit te scribd code down accordingly. Anyway, I have to say it worked really easily when I tried (i.e. without extra editing) and you can see the results below.

Dustbin Game

At www.classtools.net you will find 15 flash games or templates you can use to create great activities in class, from essay planning and timelines to prioritising activities and arcade games. You can then embed the activity on an IWB flipchart page or in your blog by copying the code they provide. This is my first attempt (took a grand total of 10 minutes to make) - so if you can still remember your O Level (GCSE?) French, have a go...

Click here for full screen version

Take the Tube

YouTube is not the only video-sharing site out there. Go to www.teachertube.com to search for videos illustrating issues in your subject, from erupting volcanoes and grammar presentations to synchronised swimmers demonstrating cell-division. Once you've found something helpful you can embed the video into your blog. To do this, scroll down to the bottom right of the teachertube page where you will find lists of codes to copy into various different blog types. In this case I copied the Blogger code and pasted it into the HTML tab side of a post entry. Dadah! One click on the site now and you're away.