Vimeo: Video Hosting Site

As you may have read in an earlier post, I have been piloting Kidblog.org with an 8th grade English class. The teacher wanted the students to interview each other as a historical literary character and post the videos to their blogs in Kidblog. However, we were finding that we were quickly tapping out our 100M of space allotted by Kidblog. Even if the site manager increased our space, we still would not be able to host all of the videos on the kidblog platform. At the suggestion of the Kidblog site manager, we decided to try hosting our videos on Vimeo.com so that we do not take up our blogging space and we can then embed our videos directly into the post. We were pleasantly surprised to find Vimeo very easy to use. In addition, they grant you 500M of space a week! If you decide to upgrade to a paid account, you can get as much as 5G of space a week. One of the features that appealed to us the most was that the teacher could choose to make the videos private so that only select Vimeo members can view them. Another option was to make the video password protected so a user would have to enter the password in order to view the video. This feature works well with Kidblog since the students have to login to Kidblog to view the student posts anyway, and then they can enter a password to view the embedded video. This helps with keeping the video secure. If you choose to make your video password protected, the embedded video player will no longer have the "share" button enabled so others cannot embed the video into other sites. Very nice!

Safe Student Blogging at Kidblog.org

Check this out! I ran across this site through my Twitter account yesterday. Kidblog is a site that looks to be a solution to classroom teachers who want their students to have their own individual blog, but don't want to have to deal with the student email addresses tied to the accounts, especially in elementary and middle schools. It's FREE and it allows teachers to create an account (with an email address), add classes and students. When a student is added, the child has access to their own private blog that is accessible though a username and password assigned by the teacher. No email addresses or private information is needed! The student blogs can be completely locked down so that class members can login and view the posts and comments on them, but the posts will remain hidden to the public. Teachers have the option to approve comments AND posts before they are added to the student blogs. Also, teachers can comment on student blog posts and make it private so that only the author of the post can read it. This is perfect for teachers who want to leave feedback on the writing process directly on the blog! There are more things that this site can do, but these are my favorite features!

SnagFilms Film Widget

SnagFilms allows you to place documentary widgets on your blog or social networking site. The one I have embedded into my blog is about Great White Sharks. The movies are shorter than the original ones that aired on National Geographic, but they are still high quality.

Pros:
You can link to documentaries using widgets on your blog.

Cons:
The widget links directly to the site itself and does not play within your blog.
The video will play 1-2 short commercials before the documentary that you cannot skip.

Are You a Lurker? Join the Conversation!

Photo courtesy of Photocatcher via Flickr

Are you a lurker? Do you read blogs, gather information, and quietly slip away? Join the conversation! Feel free to comment on blog posts that interest you. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see your comment posted immediately. I moderate comments before posting them to help cut down on spam from automated sites, but comments appear within 24 hours of submitting them. So join the conversation! Let us learn from you! Tell us your thoughts, opinions, perspectives, ideas…

The power of blogs lies in its community and the exchange of ideas from within. There is a community here on my blog, which is evident from the Cluster Map. So…

Peek-a-boo! I see you!

Tag. You’re it.

Technology on my mind… Tags are a beautiful thing!

I was looking at a new website I found called Wordle, which will allow you to enter your del.icio.us username to create an artistic rendering of your tags. The result is shown below:

What a great way for people to see the subjects that are important to you and/or your company! I like it. Very artistic.

Sploggers Beware!

I have noticed over the months that several blogs have copied an entire post from my blog and posted as their own. Whatever happened to blogging courtesy?

1. Don’t copy other people’s posts - including mine!
2. You may link to my post if you find that I have something interesting to say.
3. You may paraphrase a key idea or two, but refer the readers to my blog for the rest of the story.

One blog that I have found to be incredibly helpful on this subject is Jonathan Bailey’s blog entitled Plagiarism Today. He has very detailed entries about sploggers and all of the horrible methods they use to steal your posts. Not only does Jonathan post regularly (sadly, this is a big topic to cover in the digital age), but he also answered a question I sent to him asking his advice. THUMBS UP for this blogger! I highly recommend his site.

Another interesting site is Wordpress Philippines. They have a great post on protecting your blog from sploggers.

Mystudiyo.com: create a quiz for your blog or website

I came across the site Mystudio.com after reading The First Day of Kindergarten blog. This site allows you to create quizzes enhanced with pictures, audio, or video and post them to your blog or website. Think of the educational possibilities! You could also use this as a great way to grab the attention of parents when they visit your classroom website.

Kwout: Quote from the Internet Easier and Faster

Kwout.com is a great new way to quote from the Internet. What does it do exactly? According to Kwout’s homepage, “kwout” is a way you quote a part of a web page as an image with an image map.” The website allows you to:

1. Grab a screenshot
2. Cut out an area
3. Post it anywhere

Kwout has features that will allow you to post your “quote” directly to Tumblr, Flickr, or your website. COOL! I tried it out below by quoting my own blog. Kwout gives your quote a textbox with drop shadow (if you prefer) and gives credit to the original website directly below the quote. Quick and easy!! (see example below)

Technology for Teachers K-12

RSS - What is it?

If YouTube links are blocked, click here to see the video in TeacherTube.

Are you baffled by what RSS is? Here is a very simple 3 minute video from Common Craft that explains the process. If you subscribe to an RSS feed from a blog, podcast, or website, you can see updates of those sites automatically through an aggregator, or RSS reader. It’s like having a newspaper subscription come directly to your computer so you do not have to check all of your sites individually. You check your aggregator site (such as Google Reader, Bloglines, or Pageflakes), and the updates come TO YOU! I use Google Reader to subscribe to my blogs (over 20 of them) and find that it saves me time and energy because I only need to go to one site to read all the updated posts and not 20 of them! I love it.