Blogging Guidelines

November is upon us, which means summer and its memories are fading away quickly.  There are some unusual "holidays" in this month.  Did you know November 2nd is Cookie Monster Day?  Or that November 3rd is National Sandwich Day?  Have you ever heard of Use Your Common Sense Day? Well that is on November 4th.  I am not kidding.  Of course there are some much better known holidays in this month.  What is your favorite November holiday?
I wonder if there is a National Blogging Day?  I will have to check that out and get back to you. Speaking of blogging.....Before we can get started creating our blogs and posting, it is important to know the guidelines; what you can and cannot do and what you can and cannot say.  You have been given the job of making sense out of the puzzle of the BPS Blogging Guidelines.  This assignment has been placed in Google Classroom.  You should have received an email from me about this assignment. You have everything you need to complete this assignment.  We will review your results at the end of class.
We will also take a look at some advanced search techniques you will need when you start your blogs.
Have a super week!!

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Blog Post Two for Some

Many of you have finished your first blog post and are ready to create and publish post #2!  My classes meeting on Thursday will find me missing, and Mr. Yetman will be in my lab.  Please do a super job in my absence.  I have told him how wonderful you all are!  Please read the rest of this post carefully before beginning.
You will be working on agenda items #'s 5 and 6 today.  Please don't worry about widgets and gadgets. We will resume our work with them next week.
Step 1:  Launch Google Chrome, sign in to your "Drive" and open your ILT folder.
Step 2:  If you didn't finish "polishing" your first blog post last week, please start there. You will open the "First Blog Post" doc, make your corrections, copy the text, paste it in to Blogger **, then upload images, add image URL, check one last time, and then "Publish."
**You should already have a draft of a post with a title and labels.  You will need to go to your dashboard, select "post" under options, and click on "edit" to continue.  Use this resource to help you with this.
**If you make corrections to your post and want me to take a look at your work to change your grade DO NOT give your rubric to Mr. Yetman.  You will need to bring the rubric to me on Friday morning during homeroom.
Step 3:  You will need to begin creating your second blog post.  Please use the Helpful Hints resource I have created for you.  It is available here, and a copy can be found next to your workstation.  I have also left a resource to help you with your image searches.
Please do a super job in my absence.  Remember:  No watching videos or listening to music during class. You will not be needing your iPads today as you will be using your workstations.  Please put them "apples up" in the safe place, next to your workstations.  I cannot wait to see your next post!!!

Shop 'Til You Drop

Okay guys......the pressure is on!   You will need to continue shopping during class.  Some of you will be down in the other lab with a substitute due to schedule rearranging because of sixth grade math MCAS.  You don't need me though, you know what to do!!  Please help one another.  Remember to upload those images to your Picasa web album and to put the URL's on your Google doc.  Please don't forget to clean out the download folder on the desktop of your computer.  (It is in the "My Documents" folder)  Shopping will need to be complete by the end of next week.  This will include music, but we will talk about that next week.  Use those filters in "Advanced Search" and you will have better luck narrowing down your searches.
Have fun and happy shopping!!!

Time To "Shop!"

This week you will be finding, saving, and citing the images for your digital stories.  At this point in the school year I feel as though you have enough confidence and experience to find and use resources to help you with this task.  Therefore, I will not be leading you step by step through this process.  I will point you in the direction and be available to help you problem solve and to encourage your critical thinking, but I will not be handing you a resource with all of the answers laid out.  Please check out my recommendations below and remember I am here to help; just not to tell exactly.

Before you get started on your image hunt, I want you to take a look at a couple of videos.  The first is called, "Anti Bullying Ad", and the second is called, "Talent Show."  Do you think these are PSA (public service announcements) or digital stories?  We will talk about this at the beginning of class one this week.

I would recommend using Picasa to organize your images.  You should probably start off by creating a new web album and labeling it "Digital Story."  If you need some help just check out the help guide.  You will also want to create a Google doc and label it "Citations for Digital Story."  Be sure to use the "Tips and Tricks" for searching in Google. You want to find "Creative Commons" images to use in your story.  You have your storyboard to use as a "shopping list" to help you find your images, "ingredients."  Have fun shopping!

Digital Storytelling

What is a digital story?  This week you will find out and begin creating one of your own.  Edutopia has a great post called, “Digital Storytelling:  Helping Students Find Their Voice.”   There are some great links at the end of this post.  One of the links will take you to an interview with Marco Torres.  I had the pleasure of meeting March and some of his students at a conference in Boston.  He and his students have formed a company called, Alas Media.  They are doing some amazing things with storytelling.  You should check them out.

During class we will be taking a look at this great digtial story.  It won an award in 2009.  We will also talk about the importance of music. I hope you enjoy the story!!  I am sure you will enjoy creating a digital story of your own. Before getting started with our digital stories, let's take a moment to review copyright and fair use. What's Copyright? is a fun animated music video reviewing these concepts.

Getting the Ingredients

You will take your story outline and create a story board for this project. Your story board is like a “recipe”. Before starting to bake a cake, you need a recipe to follow. So let’s think of this project in the following way:

Storyboard is the recipe.
Images, text, and music are the ingredients.
Windows Movie Maker is the oven.
Digital story is the cake.

It is important to have a place to organize and save your “ingredients.” You will have the option of using a folder in your pdrive, your diigo account, or creating an album in Picasa. If you want to be able to access your images from home the last two options are the way for you to go. You will have both classes this week to find your images. Next week we will move on to music. Please be sure to use advanced search techniques and filters in Google. You also may want to use Flickr Creative Commons, Nettrekker, or Sweet Search to try and find your images.
Mrs. Knittle just shared another great site for finding images. It is called Compfight. We also had a discussion about why we need to filter our image searches. You are publishers and reusing images and music. Because we are publishers, we can only use images and music which have been licensed for this purpose. I know it is hard, but it is so important to keep your digital footprint and reputation "clean."
You will also need to create a Google Doc, or some other method of recording the citations for all of your images as you will need these for the credits of your digital story.