Blogger Settings for Student Blogs

The EdTech team at Korea International School has been helping teachers in the elementary and secondary school set up student blogs. We feel it is important for students to have an authentic audience for their writing, but we also want to help them be safe on the Internet. With that in mind, we have some suggested settings for student blogs on Blogger. The screen shots on this post will help you find the settings and change them to something more fitting for students. 

Enjoy and happy blogging!

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the EdTech team: Ben Summerton (@bensummerton), Art Schultz (@art_schultz), Steve Katz (@stevekatz), Chris Bernhardi, or me (@tsbray).

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iPad Camera Tip

When you are using the iPad (or iPhone) and you want to get the best possible photo, you can use this quick, simple tip to improve your photo quality. Put your finger on the screen and put pressure on the camera button. This will engage the camera, but not take a picture. Line up the shot the way you want it, and then release the button; the shutter will snap and the photo quality will be much clearer, because you won't be pushing the button at the same time as aligning the photo. I have a couple of photos to demonstrate.

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Schoology.com

Several of the Korea International School teachers have started using Schoology as a learning management system (LMS). It is pretty slick, so I dove in and started poking around. I have added screen shots with walk-through descriptions of some of the features. The integration of the grading and attendance into the social media options is certainly interesting and provides great opportunities for richer engagement. Schoology offers online testing and quizzing with automated grading, but you will still need to read the written wrote -- sorry. Of course, no program can make a lame teacher or course interesting, but this tool offers multiple options for teachers to design more engaging instruction. I did have a discussion with a teacher about Schoology and after talking through what he is currently doing and wants to do, he felt that continuing with a wiki and adding a Facebook Page for his courses was a better solution. I'm working on an Edmodo post next and then I will compare the two options in a third post -- so stay tuned!

Cheers and happy learning!

Schoology Create.pdf Download this file

Schoology Creation 2.pdf Download this file

Schoology Notifications.pdf Download this file

Schoology Updates.pdf Download this file

Post-It Notes Solutions

One thing that continually amazes me about living in Asia is the wonderful things that can be done with simple items. In the photos, you will find the IT office's solution to a projector not quite positioned the right way -- a stack of Post-It notes. Yes, the Post-Its were used to weigh the right side of the projector down and make it align with the screen correctly. Awesome! For the record, this was considered the final solution, not a quick fix to be properly adjusted later.

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Adding a RSS in Blogger

Teachers often use Blogger as a way to communicate with their students and parents; one feature that comes in handy is an RSS feed. This allows students and parents to sign up to receive new posts directly in their email account. The first step is to log in to Blogger and go to the Layout section. You can then Add a Gadget to your blog. When the list of possible gadgets shows up, choose Follow by Email from the list. Now you have a button on your blog that will allow anyone to subscribe to your blog. The screen shots of this process are available on this post. Happy blogging!

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