elearnr » blogs

Podcasting: a 3-step guide

admin — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 11:26:44 +0000

Some members staff were unable to make some or all of the E-Learning sessions I put on regarding podcasting. I’m therefore re-running them this half-term over the next three weeks.

Creating a homework blog in 3 simple steps using email

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:12:54 +0000

Posterous has been mentioned a couple of times before on this blog. First, Phil Rowland set up a blog using the service for his BTEC Sport students (although he’s now extended it to include all his PE groups). Next, our librarian, Angie Dickson, set one up. Both have been impressed by how easy Posterous is to use.

Here’s how to get started (taken directly from Posterous‘ official guide):

Yep, that’s it! It really is very easy. No signups, and pretty much everything can be done via email. You can, of course, create a blog post via logging into the site itself, but most of the people I’ve spoken to about it like the ability to create them by email.

Anything that you attach to an email to Posterous will be dealt with ‘intelligently’ and added to the blog post. For example, here’s an email I sent to my Posterous blog:

(click to enlarge)

and here’s how it turned out:

(click to enlarge)

It really couldn’t be any easier to set up a blog! The only things I would recommend you take care over are:

Set the name of your blog, it’s address, and decide who can comment: login to your Posterous account and then click on ‘Manage’ at the top right-hand corner of your blog. Clicking on ‘Edit my posterous’ allows you to change the site name, where it is on the Internet (e.g. mrbelshaw.posterous.com and choose who is allowed to comment on your blog posts.
Set an avatar: an avatar is a small icon representing you on the Internet. I always use my little South Park character. There are many sites you can use to create something similar, including faceyourmanga.com, a South Park character generator (unfortunately blocked on our school network), and the Simpsons character generator on the SimpsonsMovie.com site!
Add some information about yourself: it doesn’t need to be much, but students and interested visitors need to know they’ve found the right blog and not someone else with the same name as you…

Here’s the Posterous-powered blogs so far at our school. I hope to add many more in the near future!

Mr Belshaw (History – also links to GCSE History student blogs)
Mr Rowland (PE)
Mrs Dickson (library)

Librarian blogs and social networks

admin — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:03:27 +0000

Angie Dickson, our new librarian, is an fan of the PE blog Phil Rowland set up for this academic year and wants to set up her own. Not only can she use this blog to communicate with students at our school, but with librarians and heads of information services worldwide!

Here’s some examples of some great (newbie-friendly) blogs in the field:

Steven Cohen (USA)
Camilla Elliott (Australia)
Carolyn Foote (USA)
Kathryn Greenhill (Australia)
Christopher Harris (USA)
Anne Johnston (Scotland)
Jenny Luca (Australia)
Ian McLean (Australia)
Cathy Nelson (USA)
Judy O’Connell (Australia)
Joyce Valenza (USA)

There are also some social networks powered by Ning related to libraries and information services:

Finally, there’s a great website called LibWorm that’s a search engine just for librarians!

(image from The Read/Write Web: Social Software and Libraries)