Sunday, February 03, 2008

Surfing Blogger

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

Answer to Sharon's invitation

Dear Sharon:

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.

Love: Maru

First Invitation for BaeL Project


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

Educational Technology Coordinator