From week 3 I have been struggling with sound, for a week and a half I have been having nightmares with voice and video, specially with YouTube.
Here it goes. My parent's only grandson whose Baptism is next Saturday in San Luis Potosí.
It did!!! It worked!!! Clap, clap, clap... No emoticons here, snif!
Well, this was cheating because the video was sent by my brother. Let's see how I do transforming my pictures into videos.
Yesterday I could not play the video, it said that it was disabled. Veronica and Yessica could not watch it either. I thought that it was because I selected it as private but it seems that something was done to the platform. Ronaldo also found problems with his SplashCast posted at blogger. It seems that this site is not reliable, Jose Antonio mentions that the owners sometimes change settings to the platform and as a result our pages don't work or look messy. Strange!
I will try to find out why sometimes YouTube works at Blogger while sometimes it doesn't. I have not tested their support system yet.
To help me getting started on Podomatic I will place a voice tutorial I found and then I will follow from there.
I already have a podomatic account but I have not been able to find out why I cannot record or make my first recording, I hope this will tell me what I am doing wrong.
I uploaded my photos and made a slideshow, I love Mexico and in here are displayed some of the Mexican Handcrafts I enjoy the most. The painted clay Sun shown on the badge picture was made and painted by my mother. She came for two months to Metepec, Toluca, where the most famous clay artists are found. My friends from the Scouts helped me to give her a Serenade this year to celebrate her 75th birthday!
What does it mean “burn my post feed”? How can I burn it? It sounds like trouble! I need to find out how to avoid getting into it.
Well, I did get into trouble. To have the widget I spent 4 hours clicking here and there. I finally got it!!
I placed a link at the sidebar with a tutorial to learn how to burn a feed using FeedBurner, it is called FeedBurner demo. It will be useful to remember how to do it and it may be useful to somebody else who wants to burn feeds.
I spent the whole morning and early afternoon at Blogger, to try to improve the image of my first blogg. I think I just solved the language issue! I took screen photos to make the visual aids for BaeL Course.
I came across with new names, computer jargon, that I do not understand. I need to find out about Enclosure Links,Post Template and Backlinks
I would also like to know what blogg feeds are more convenient or pleasant for the viewer. Full feed that displays the whole post vs Short feed which syndicates the first paragraph. Syndicate is a new word for me.
If you have burned your post feed with FeedBurner, or used another service to process your feed, enter the full feed URL here. Blogger will redirect all post feed traffic to this address.
What does it mean “burn my post feed”? How can I burn it? It sounds like trouble! I need to find out how to avoid getting into it.
Wow! I have blogger email address to post text and images up to 10MB in size! Images are posted directly to my blog? Where can I get them back to use? I need to find out how to use this feature, I think I am going to like it!
Well, it seems that I can have more than one author authorized to post into my blogg, that’s nice! It allows collaborative work. I see now, my mind just opened to new ideas!
The Edit HTML feature seems too advanced for me right now. It is reassuring to see that you can save a copy of it! I had better not change a thing today!!! I am tired.
Ups! The Choose template feature did not help, all those templates look boring. I will visit Hala’s blog –if I find it among the mess I made with my Delicious account last year! I saw an attractive template yesterday, it was pink, I have to dive into my notes to find who is the owner and ask permission to use it and find out how can I import a template, if such thing can be done!!
I have clicked all the tabs I found and took screen shots. I hope I can make sense off all those pictures! I feel so tired that more that once I tried to click and I was inside the picture I had just taken!! Good grief!
I enjoyed Blogger, lets see how it goes with that template and the task of uploading pictures and tools. I miss the colors I added to my first posts, I will have to revisit them and remember how to put more color here.
He,he... I could not leave this colourless. The HTML code for red is: (<)span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;"> place the word here (<)/span> Was I so nuts as to be placing HTLM code just to have color!? I remember there was a color pallet last year, It took me an hour to add color here! I recognize that I am a color fan put not to this lenghts. Bye color pallet, it is a pity because color really helps me to sort things out but I am not willing to spend anothe hour to place more colors. :-( snif, snif
Thanks for your invitation! I would love to join your group. Certainly my future students will benefit, I need to find out which is their English level first. I am planning to start the course in June; if I learn faster then I could start sooner. Would that be alright for you? How long does your course last?
I may be getting myself into something too big to handle but I really want to learn how to teach with e-tools, being in touch with you will allow me to see an e-teacher at work, thanks for the opportunity, I feel honored. It will have to be mainly an online course, to get the local bunch together is not easy; on working days our gatherings are at 9:00 PM which leads to complaints from their parents because they do not want to leave my house at 10:00 PM and the neighborhood is not safe for them to walk home. The other available day is Sunday afternoons, if their parents do not get them away to visit relatives.
I am thinking about several names for the course, the first that came up was Aunt Comet's Course, my nephews and nieces call me Comet because they seldom see me and when I go to San Luis I get them in a swirl of temporary activities with us. Then came Becoming an e-Learner (BaeL) which sounds great but scary to me.
I do not know how Wikispaces work so I was thinking about PBwiki, I will explore Wikispaces to have a look. I need to place in a wiki a survey to see which are their abilities with the computer, the chat they use is hotmail because they like all the moving gadgets. I will have to start by introducing them to YH mail and chat, and to Skype; both programs run without graphic cards.
I was thinking about blogger to set a course blogg to show their progress. I still need to learn more about blogger myself to teach them in turn to open theirs. I want the blogg to have a clock, voice tool and chat tool set in a fixed way at the sides of the page, let me find out how to do that.
Some cybers around here have mics, I need to go to the ones they visit to assess them. Do you know which voice tool works without a graphic card? Yakpak comes with PBwiki but I have not tried it in a limited PC. Skype and Yahoo voice work fine.
Maru, Would it benefit your students to be in contact with English speaking teens that are learning Spanish? Perhaps just in a very basic wiki (http://wikispaces.com or http://pbwiki.com) to correspond in simple sentences and with a voice tool. Do you have the ability to use microphones?
You are welcome to join yourself and them in http://tlgplace.ning.com That may be overwhelming for them - but you could check.
You could also set them up with blogs (http://blogger.com or http://edublogs.org) - then, I could get some American students to reply to their posts. That may motivate them to continue.
If any of these ideas seem good and you would like some assistance, just let me know as I am happy to help. Sharon
• Start a blog called “Unquiet Mind” to see how Wordpress works.
• Place there a slideshow with the pictures of Wordpress I took when I registered and find out how to add my voice to give directions in Spanish. Or I could use it at WiZiQ and speak to them directly. Huuuu, scary...
• Place my findigs, thoughts, difficulties, questions, etc from the point of view of a Webhead.
• Start a second blog called “My Beloved Country”, this time in a Spanish template to take pictures of the screen in Spanish to convert them to a visual tutorial.
• Make a PPP presentation with pictures of art and crafts. Place the name of the craft in question before reducing the pictures.
• Place a voice chat, get a Vaestro account, take screen shots.
• Keep this blog to write down my thoughts and findings.
• Find out how to place the clock, text and chat voice at the sides so that they permanently show on screen. See if is possible to change the layout on this blog. I opened this one in Spanish and last year could not change it to English, lets try again.
• Visit Hala’s blog. She used the same template but somehow I remember that hers looked more attractive.
• Remember how to place e-tools here (clock, chat and voice)
• If I select blogger-which most of the Webheads suggest as best for beginers- Start another blog called “Aunt Cometa’s Computer Course” or "Becoming an e-Learner Course (BaeL Course) Should it be in Spanish? If the final target is to teach them English, maybe to make the visual tutorials in English is a good idea.
• Choose an atractive template for the group; be careful. It has to allow you to set fixed items at the sides,look very appealling to teenagers.
I am thinking about setting two Pbwiki sites similar to he ones used at BaW to ask them to suscribe and introduce themselves in Spanish. I have to ask Tere and Daf for permission to do so. I could place there a survey to assess their computer knowledge, an English Level Assessment Test, tutorials, etc. One page would have to be locked to avoid making a mess of the instructions and helpful materials while the participant’s wiki could be edited. I need to learn how to make them and link them! Piece of cake!? Peanut butter sandwich? Nonsense! I would like to start the course in June.
I would also like to set a blog to share their progress and they could open their own blogs. As they are familiar with uploading pictures and PPP presentations maybe wordpress will work best, though the advice is to start with blogger, I had better follow that advice. I need to see how to upload voice and chat tools at wordpress. Ufff! I need to learn how to use both blogs.
A year has gone by. In this post I will review why I let that happen. The main reason is that I do not have students to practice. There was a project to create a new High School in Toluca which did not come to be although the idea of the investors is still around. They called me again last December to asking me to have my original papers ready to go to the Board of Education to subscribe them to get all the permits. It was going to be an excellent opportunity to use e-tools, the position that they offer me is as Headmaster; I would have a say in almost every aspect, from the teachers recruited, approval of curricula and most importantly –from the e-learning point of view- to the set op of the Computer Lab. In second place comes the fact that my husband opened a new business, we started a video rental store, and at the same time we started the construction of three spaces to rent. It was a mess! In one site I had to deal with the purchase of construction materials, welders, masons, etc. because he was at work. At the video rental store I had to get the business going, select and train clerks, etc. Of course, I kept running my privet practice! In third place I was emotionally dried up due to legal and moral problems which led to a turmoil with my family in San Luis Potosí. There was a lot of traveling back and forth, it is only six hours away but that ate my weekends. In sum, it was lack of motivation. So this year I will have a blog to maintain through the year. I am thinking about my nephews , nieces and adopted ones. The latter live in the neighborhood or are my friend’s children. I think that I have to hook them into learning English though I will have to teach them to handle e-tools first, which means to set a computer course on first instance. I will be motivated to learn, prepare materials, set the blog, wiki, YH group,etc.
