A blog is a way for you to communicate with other people via the internet. You could be embedding cartoons you create,  videos you have made or found, photos you have taken or posters you have made. We will be using blogs for the rest of the year and it will be up to you to add posts that are of interest to you.

You might also like to take part in the global student blogging challenge which begins mid September. 

 While Miss W. is away she will be writing a blog according to a Tasmanian Devil named Mr Davo Devil. His blog is also linked on the side under challenges.

There is also the Blogger’s Cafe where you could leave some comments.

In week 1 you:

• created an email signature
• learnt how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looked at student about pages and created yours on Word
• attached your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sent it to your ICT teacher
• looked at class about pages and recommended in a comment what we should include on our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

In week 2 you:

• learned to log into your dashboard
• changed your settings
• copy and pasted your about page from word onto your blog
• wrote your first post – 8 random facts about me
• left a comment telling me what you think a good comment will look like
• looked at the page ‘Students check here’ to see what you have already had marked off

In week 3 you:

• created an avatar
• learned how to use printscreen, Paint and Microsoft Office or Snipit
• uploaded a comment user avatar and a blog avatar
• wrote a post describing your avatar
• if blogging for the second year, registered for student blogging challenge
• started visiting other student blogs from around the world

In week 4 you:

• added categories to your blogroll
• added links to blogs and websites to your blogroll
• learnt about using tags
• created post categories

Images certainly make posts more interesting to read especially when the image relates to the information in the post.

Can you use any images that are on the internet? The answer is definitely NO!!

But can’t I just go to Google search and use images from there? The answer is definitely NO!!

Not all images on the internet are free for everyone to use. Some newspapers have paid a lot of money for a photographer to take images for their newspaper articles and if you want to use these images, you might have to pay money to either the newspaper or photographer. These photos are usually called COPYRIGHT.

But there are some photographers who take photos that are free for others to re-use or mix or use for public display. These images have a CREATIVE COMMONS license. Check out this website for information about Creative Commons. Each country has slightly different licenses.

If you get images from Flickr, then here are what the different licenses mean (Thanks Sue Waters from Edublogs for this image)

Notice, whatever license you use, you HAVE to attribute the original author. This means you have to acknowledge the person who created the original image. At the end your blog post, or linked within the post,  you must attribute the image and you must link the photo back to it’s original photo page.

Well, how can I safely find images to use in my posts?

So here are nine (9) activities relating to images. You must do activity 1 as this will help for the other choices.

Activity 1 – Visit these blogs

• Kathleen Morris who expects her Grade 2 students to know about and use creative commons and giving attribution when using images in their blogs. She uses FlickrCC which is not blocked at her school and gives instructions for using with Edublogs blogs. Check out her slideshow in the box.
• Ronnie Burt from the Edublogs team who gives ideas for using images other than FlickrCC.
• Miss Wyatt has also written a post giving lots of other places to find images.
• Sue Waters from The Edublogger who also gives out some easy instructions on inserting images. Notice at the end of her post, she has six more posts you could read about using images in your blogs.
• Allanah King, New Zealand. Lots of hints for students using blogspot.

Activity 2 – Using tags to find images and adding them to posts

Last week we looked at using tags in our blogs, now we are going to use tags to find images.  Below are some great websites to use that have images with creative commons licenses.

Wylio – will need to join for free – (attribution included in the embed code)

Comp fight – See below (attribution)

Flickrcc – edit in house (attribution)

Morguefile, Pics4Learning, using Google search with creative commons,

This next section of the post has been written by Sue Waters from Edublogs as part of the teacher challenge held earlier this year. She has also mentioned about the attribution and where to find it in the site.

1.  Go to Compfight

2.  Change to Creative Commons only, choose whether to search tags or text, add your search term and click Search.

3.  Scan through the search results and click on the Photo you like so that you can view it on its photo page on Flickr.

4.  Scroll down right hand side of photo page to view License.

5.  Hold your Ctrl key and left mouse click on “Some Rights Reserved” to open up the license on a new browser tab to read terms of its license on Creative Commons.

• Only use if license is applicable for your situation.

6.  Now select View All Sizes from the drop down Action list and select the size of the photo you want to use.

7.  Right click on Image and select Copy Image Location or Copy Image URL (depends on what web browser you are using).

8.  Now go to the post you are writing inside your dashboard and click on Add an Image icon

9   In the Add an Image window click on the From URL tab
10.  Add the image URL, image title, select the image alignment, add the URL of its Flickr photo page to the Link Image URL field and then click Insert Into Post

• In this example the URL of its Flickr photo page is http://www.flickr.com/photos/53611153@N00/309709280/
• You link to its Flickr photo page as it is a requirement of Flickr’s conditions of use and so that if any one clicks on the photo they can view the original source of the image.

11.  Add the photo attribution either below the photo or at the end of your blog post.

• It’s a requirement of all Creative Commons Licenses that you attribute the original author.
• This means you can’t just use a creative commons image without acknowledging the person who originally created it.
• The text below this photo is are examples of how you can attribute an image — look closely at what websites the attributions links to!

Example 1:

Photo by Darwin Bell licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Example 2:

Original image: ‘a piggy in the middle‘

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License

Please note:

• Some School Districts block Flickr
• In these types of  situations you’ll need to download the photo onto your computer and then upload it to your blog post. Even if you have downloaded to your computer, you will still need to give correct attribution.

Activity 3 – Colour a post

Write a post about your favourite colour and include at least three images. Remember to resize them to small or no bigger than about 400 pixels in width. Remember to explain why you chose those particular images and include the attribution correctly.

Activity 4 – Create your own images and add to a post of your choice

Other options for creating your own images include:

1. Image Generators such as ImageGenerator.org
2. Comic Generators like MakeBeliefsComix.com,  kerpoof, ToonDoo
3. Photo Editors like Befunky, fd’s Flickr Tools
4. Tag Cloud Creators such as Wordle
5. Graph Creators including GraphJam and Crappy Graphs

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts!

Activity 5 – Zoom out from an image

We tried this activity in the lastudent blogging challenge. Choose a picture, and have your readers zoom out, so to speak, by leaving comments. So maybe something simple, like a pillow, and the first commenter describes something bigger around the pillow (like a couch) and the next commenter would write about the room it was in, and the next could zoom out the window and do the house, etc.  If doing this activity, include the word ‘zoom’ in your title so I can find it easily. Remember to give attribution. Most important here is to read previous comments, so you can add to the story.

Check out these zoom pictures: Becky, Jacqueline, Abbey, Teegan,

Huzzah finished their story.

Activity 6 – Pictures tell the story – no words

Here is a post on how to create a gallery in your blog.  Create a visual post using no more than eight images – where the images tell a story. Remember to give attribution for the images you used. No writing in this post other than the title and attribution.

Activity 7 – Tell the story of the picture

From Bill Ferreirae – I sometime find a picture and tell students to use that picture to come up with a story. It can be about the picture, what happened before, what will happen next, etc. So, at the top of this post is the image I have chosen for you to start with. Copy the image to your post, then write the story. Remember to give attribution. If you don’t have your own blog, tell your story in a comment here.

Activity 8 – Create an animated photo show

Think of a theme, try adding images to animoto, slide or other online image animators. Add music, transitions, text etc. Grab the resultant code and add to your blog post.

Activity 9 – Write a sentence using images – no writing

Write a sentence about yourself using just images. For example – I love to read comic books. Remember to give attribution for each image and in the title use the word ’sentence’ to make it easier for me to find.

In week 1 you:

• created an email signature
• learnt how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looked at student about pages and created yours on Word
• attached your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sent it to your ICT teacher
• looked at class about pages and recommended in a comment what we should include on our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

In week 2 you:

• learned to log into your dashboard
• changed your settings
• copy and pasted your about page from word onto your blog
• wrote your first post – 8 random facts about me
• left a comment telling me what you think a good comment will look like
• looked at the page ‘Students check here’ to see what you have already had marked off

In week 3 you:

• created an avatar
• learned how to use printscreen, Paint and Microsoft Office or Snipit
• uploaded a comment user avatar and a blog avatar
• wrote a post describing your avatar
• if blogging for the second year, registered for student blogging challenge
• started visiting other student blogs from around the world

Now let’s head into week 4 of our 15 weeks worth of activities.

It is great to see so many students with their own blogs participating in the March 2011 student blogging challenge.  Remember though, there are also some students on class blogrolls. Visit them to read their posts and leave comments as well.

Activity 1 – Create your blogroll categories

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other student blogs, you might start finding some blogs that you really like.  You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL?  This is where a blogroll comes in handy.

If you look  on the left sidebar of this blog, you will notice I have certain subheadings such as:

• Blogs in Tasmania
• challenges
• check these passions
• get help
• Grade 6
• Grade 7

These are part of my blogroll.  Notice the subheadings or link categories are alphabetical beginning with numbers.  So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories.

To create the link category headings, go to your dashboard>  links > link category You must include  friends, overseas (if taking part in the blogging challenge), class blogs, get help and websites.

Activity 2 – Add some links to your blogroll

To add some links such as this blog and your friends’  blogs, go to your dashboard> links> add new.  Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL.

You must include at least 10 friends, Kids in the Mid, Beyond the Shores of Tasmania, Student Challenge, Bloggers Cafe, The Edublogger, Help from Edublogs, Our school intranet and three websites you often visit.

Remember, to copy and paste the URL accurately, right click on name of blog in my blogroll> copy link or URL, then go to the blogroll area and paste.  Here is a post by Sue Waters about creating a blogroll. Follow the instructions for Step 2 in her post.

Activity 3 – Creating at least 4 post categories

Just to confuse you, there is also another heading called ‘categories’. This though, relates to the posts you write about.  These categories appear in the header area or at the footer section of your post. My post categories for this blog are under the clustrmap on the right sidebar.

What are your posts mainly about?

• family and friends
• my interests
• BTN reports
• book reviews
• literacy
• checklist activities    ** must be one on your blog
• game reviews
• skills for life
• challenge 2011  ** must be one if taking part in the student blogging challenge

You might use these as post categories.  To  set them up from your dashboard>  posts> categories. Why are categories and tags important when writing your posts?  Categories are like the chapter headings in books while tags are like the index words at the back of a book.

You will notice the categories I have used for this blog include:

• Information
• beginning blogging
• leave an answer
• visit these
• checklist activities
• creating online
• playing online

Activity 4 – watch video about commenting and write post

Make sure you have watched the video about commenting linked here before you leave any comments on other student or class blogs.

What are you going to accept as a comment on your blog? Write a post about expectations on your blog with regard to commenting.

Activity 5 – visit other blogs and add to your blogroll

Visit the March 2011 student blogging challenge student and class lists.  Leave some comments on at least ten posts from five different countries  and perhaps you will also find some other links for your blogroll.

Activity 6 – recommended blogs for a blogroll

Write a post recommending at least 5 blogs you think students and classes should add to their blogroll.  Remember to give reasons why that blog should be added. Use some of those you visited for activity 5.

Next week we start adding widgets to your blogs. If you still have ads on the top of your posts, then some widgets won’t work. To get the ads taken off, you need to have written at least 7 decent posts and sent an email to Miss W. asking for the ads to be taken off your blog.

In week 1 you:

• created an email signature
• learnt how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looked at student about pages and created yours on Word
• attached your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sent it to your ICT teacher
• looked at class about pages and recommended in a comment what we should include on our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

In week 2 you:

• learned to log into your dashboard
• changed your settings
• copy and pasted your about page from word onto your blog
• wrote your first post – 8 random facts about me
• left a comment telling me what you think a good comment will look like
• looked at the page ‘Students check here’ to see what you have already had marked off

Now let’s head into week 3 of our 15 weeks worth of activities.

Once you are starting to create online, you often need to have a special identity. This is usually in the form of an avatar. You created them for World Maths Day, you have them in Facebook and, of course, you have them when leaving comments on blogs. So, this week’s activities relate to avatars and online identities including creating a positive digital footprint.

Activity 1 – make an avatar

Step 1. Create an avatar for your blog and for you to use when leaving comments.

Avatars are a representation of yourself. Check out this post about avatars.  Create your avatar using one of the websites below. Sue Waters from ‘The Edublogger‘ has written a great post about avatars, including giving instructions on how to save them and then upload to an ‘Edublogs’ blog. Many of the sites mentioned below are included in her post.

Most important is remember to save as a jpeg file if using Edublogs.

Any age can use these avatar sites:

• Build your wild self – middle left
• DoppelMe
• Mini-mizer – middle right
• The Hero Factory – far left
• Adventurer Maker – girls only
• Wimp yourself - relates to ‘Diary of a Wimpy Kid’
• Mess Dudes
• Hogwarts student – girls only
• Mii character
• Harry Potter and others saves as GIF
• Caracature
• Block head – like Lego

From abi-station:

• Iconmaker
• Illustrationmaker
• Avatarmaker
• Moeruavatar -  far right

But over 13, need parental or guardian permission for these.

• Meez
• Tizme
• Wee World
• Voki
• Bless this chick
• Hero Machine
• Marvel Hero
• Doll Maker
• Grabba Beast
• Sega Sonic
• Manga face maker
• Make your avatar

14 or older with parental permission

• Face your Manga

Step 2. Using printscreen to save your avatar

So you decided to create an avatar like “Hero Factory” or “Build your wildself” or “Mini Mizer” where you can’t save it easily. You need to take a picture of the screen first. Most computers have a printscreen button on the keyboard or if using Windows 7 you have an icon called “snipping tool”.

When you press printscreen an image of your screen is now copied to your clipboard. You will still need to crop and resize to get an avatar that fits well on your blog.

Open MS Paint and click control V to paste your image from the clipboard. To save, you need to go to File>Save As> change the name of the file to yourname with ava eg  sueava then underneath change the file type to JPEG. Make sure you save your avatar to your drive.

Go to your drive, right click on the icon for your avatar image and choose “Open with” choose MS Picture Manager.

In the icons at the top, go to View> task pane.  On the right go to edit pictures > crop.  Now move the black bars on the side of your image in, to crop your picture to what you want in your avatar.

Click OK, then back to edit pictures. Now click on resize. In the box “custom width and height” put  97 in both boxes. These numbers might be slightly different but one has to be 97 and the other smaller than 97. Click OK.

Back up to file>save as> call it sueava2 or similar> make sure it is still JPEG. Make sure you have saved it to your drive again.

Step 3. Upload avatar to your Edublogs blog

Now to upload to your blog.  Go to your dashboard> users>your avatar> browse to find your image on your school H drive>alternate upload.  This is your comment avatar.

Now for your blog avatar. Dashboard>appearance>widget> blog avatar drag to your sidebar.  To upload the avatar, dashboard>settings>blog avatar> browse to find your image on your school H drive>alternate upload. Go to your blog page and refresh. Your blog avatar should appear on your blog now.

If it now looks like a black coloured square then you haven’t cropped the image to the correct size in step 2 using printscreen. Or maybe you didn’t save the image as a JPEG in step 2 using printscreen.

Activity 2 – Write a post describing your avatar.

How much does it look like you? What sort of personality does your avatar have? What makes it typically you? Remember to include your avatar as an image in your post.

Activity 3 – Register for the student blogging challenge

The first set of activities have already been published for the blogging challenge. There are over 1000 students from 16 countries taking part, most of them your age. Make sure you have completed the first activities.

Activity 4 – Visit 10 student blogs in the challenge where you have the same interests.

Write a post telling me who you visited and what post you commented on in their blog. Why did you comment on that post?

Extra activity – Create 9 different avatars and save them to your H drive.

Now create an animoto with your images to embed in your blog – remember to get a special code from Miss W. if you create lots of avatars.

If you don’t want to create an animoto, then add the avatars in a gallery to your blog post.

Next week we look at great commenting and creating a positive digital footprint.

One way to create a slideshow is to use the program Animoto.

1. Have the images you want to use on your computer in a folder.
2. Go to Animoto.
3. Log in or sign up by using the referral code Miss W. can give you.
4. Upload your images.
5. Add any text frames needed.
6. Add music.
7. Finalize the video.
8. Once you get the email to say your video is done, copy the embed code and put your Animoto in your blog.

Here is an Animoto Miss W. created with art from her class.

Leave a comment mentioning some ideas for using a slideshow. This will count for part of your checklist activities.

In week 1 you:

• created an email signature
• learnt how to create folders and documents on your school computer hard drive
• looked at student about pages and created yours on Word
• attached your Word document to an email asking for a blog to be created for you to use and sent it to your ICT teacher
• looked at class about pages and recommended in a comment what we should include on our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

Now let’s head into week 2 of our 15 weeks worth of activities.

Activity 1: Learning to log in to my dashboard

Miss W. created a blog for me. I received an email at school from edublogs which gave me my username and a funny looking password.  So what do I do now?

• As you are at our middle school blog, just right click on your name on the left sidebar and open in a new tab.
• Find the Meta widget and click on ‘Log in’
• If you have a blog from last year and do not have a Meta widget, then after your URL type  /wp-admin
• This will now open to a log in area, where you put in your username and the password that is in your email.  I suggest you copy and paste the password exactly. Untick the remember me box as lots of other students use your school computer.
• If you have forgotten your password from last year, then put in your school email address or your blog username  and ask for a new password. Check your email then go back to step 1.
• If this worked, you will now be in to the dashboard of your blog.

Activity 2: Change some of the settings.

The dashboard is where you do all your blogging work.  But so you can login very easily without having to copy that password each time, you need to do the following things using the left-hand sidebar:

Change password: Click on users> your profile

Put in your first name, nickname ( be sensible and internet safe with choice of nickname), password (something you can remember easily – maybe same as school password), same password a second time, then finally update profile button. When that has updated go back in and choose from drop down link for display name publicly as. Update profile button again.

Change name of your blog: Settings > general

Change your blog title and tagline – again be internet safe in what you choose. Make sure timezone is Tasmania and choose how you want dates and times to show on your blog. Finally save changes button.

Notification of comments: Settings > discussion

Tick the following boxes: all default article settings; other comments – boxes 1, 4 and 5;  before a comment appears – box 1.  If you are going to visit your blog dashboard regularly then you might not need an email sent otherwise click the email me when comment held for moderation.

Further down the page under avatars – show avatars, G rating, then choose what avatar will appear if a reader has not created their own. Finally save changes button.

Changing the theme of your blog: Appearance > themes

Only click on preview if you want to see what it will look like, activate when you have decided definitely on that theme. You can change your theme as often as you like as you are a moderator of your blog. Do you want 1 or 2 sidebars on your blog?

Widgets you must have: Appearance > widgets

You must have the following widgets: Blog avatar, pages, recent comments, recent posts, links, categories, Meta

Activity 3: Editing my ‘About’ page in the blog

Go to your blog dashboard. Click on the arrow next to pages. Click on edit. Hover under ‘About’ and click on edit. Delete what is already in the white body of your page.

Open your word document with your about page in it. Highlight the information in your document, copy it, then paste it in the body area. Click on the kitchen sink icon, to allow more options like changing colour of your fonts.

When you have finished creating the ‘About’ page, click on blue button on the right ‘Update page’

Activity 4: Writing my first post

So that your readers get to know something interesting about you, Mr Clark and I want you to write a post titled’ 8 random facts about me’.  Check out these posts by students in other schools – Amber, Mrs Daugherty’s grade 5 students, another Amber

You might want to leave a great comment on one of those blogs or add a comment to Miss W’s post about random facts.

To write your post, go to your dashboard, click on arrow next to post, add new, type in a title for your post and write the body of your post. Make sure your work is in sentences, paragraphs, if words need capital letters you have used them such as I or a person’s name. When finished click the Publish button.

Activity 5: Leaving a comment

Visit this blog and watch this video created by some grade 3 students with their teacher. What do they expect if you leave a comment on their blog? What are you going to accept as a comment on your blog?

On this post, leave a comment telling me what you think a good comment will look like.

Activity 6: What have I completed

Remember to check the pages in the header ‘Welcome to 2011′ to see if your parent has left a comment yet. Then look at the page ‘Students check here’ to see what Mr Clark and I have already marked off that you have finished.

Extra activities to do

1. Go to the student blogging challenge and register your blog for the challenge. You must have your own blog to register as a student. You can register next week as well once your blog has been created.
2. Leave a comment on our previous post about what you did during your holidays.
3. Think about some topics you can write about for your early posts in your blog. If you are a student in your second year of ICT with Miss W, then what type of passion blog will you create? Check some of them out on the left sidebar of this blog. Remember you can create a passion blog with some friends in other classes as well – check out the cricket blog run by Daniel, Braydon, David and Liam.
4. Go to the list of students taking part in the blogging challenge. Visit some of their blogs and leave some comments.
5. Visit the blogs of some of our students and leave some great comments.

Next lesson will be creating your avatar.

For the first lesson in ICT this year, Mr Clark and Miss Wyatt would like all students, even if you have a blog already, to complete the following things:

Activity 1: Change your email signature.

Log onto your computer. Then from the school intranet page, right click,open email in a new tab. Change your signature by click on options> edit your signature> make it look like this

 John Doe – your name

6/7H Mrs Stag – your class and home group teacher’s name

2011 

then save and close twice.

Activity 2: Create an ICT folder on your home drive.

Click on start icon on bottom left corner> click on computer> double click on own network drive> right click then open ‘New’> Folder>name folder as ICT2011

Activity 3: How to open a new document

From inside your ICT2011 folder> right click on new>choose now which type of document you will be using eg Word, PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel

To rename actually open the document, now go to top left Office button>save as whatever you will call your document.

Activity 4: Create an ‘about page’ that will be put in your blog later.

Check out these student about pages. Notice they have been aware of  internet safety – not mentioned surname, school, town they live in, email address 

• Teegan from New Zealand age 10
• Katy from USA age 12
• Anna from Australia age 11
• Daniel from Australia age 11
• Alanna from Australia age 11
• Georgia from Australia age 11

Open a Word document, rename as an “About Page” for you to use in your blog when you have one. Remember every three or so minutes to save your work. When you have completely finished your ‘About’ page activity, save your document.

Write your own ‘About’ page or if you already have one, update your ‘About’ page in your blog.

Activity 5: Email your document to your ICT teacher

• Open a new email.
• In To box, put in your ICT teacher’s email address. Students in 6/7A or 6/7B, please add Miss Wyatt’s email address too.
•  In Subject box, put my about page.
• In the body of the email, mention what you are sending your teacher.Also include a sentence asking for a blog to be created or telling your ICT teacher that you already have a blog. eg
  • Hi Miss W, I am sending you my about page. Could you please create me a blog to start using next week? Thank you.
• In icons, find the paperclip and click, choose your file to attach by clicking on browse, (go to folder and find your document), click attach, then close.
• On your email, you should now see an attachment underlined, click send.

Activity 6: Change our ‘Kids in the Mid’ about page

Look at these class blogs ‘About’ pages. What do you think would need to be included in our ‘About’ page for ‘Kids in the Mid’ to represent us in 2011?

• LMS Eagles – grade 6 social studies
• Mr Miller - grade 6 class
• Mr Carson – Canada
• Mr Carmichael - Canada
• Miss T  - New Zealand

Leave a comment at the end of this post telling us three things we should include in our ‘About’ page for Kids in the Mid.

WOW!! Did you get this all completed in your first 90 minute double lesson? If you didn’t you can still do some of the things from a computer at home – writing comments on blogs, visiting other blogs that are hyperlinked.

Remember you need to get your parents to leave a comment on the page in the header ‘Welcome to 2011′  Make sure mum and/or dad don’t use their surname instead they sign in as

• Mum of John in 6/7B
• Dad of Sally in 6/7D

Once Miss Wyatt receives your email asking for a blog to be created, you should get an email from Edublogs within a few days. Make sure you keep that email so you can follow instructions for next week’s lesson.

Extra activities to do

1. Go to the student blogging challenge and register your blog for the challenge. You must have your own blog to register as a student. You can register next week as well once your blog has been created.
2. Leave a comment on our previous post about what you did during your holidays.
3. Think about some topics you can write about for your first posts in your blog. If you are a student in your second year of ICT with Miss W, then what type of passion blog will you create? Check some of them out on the left sidebar of this blog. Remember you can create a passion blog with some friends in other classes as well – check out the cricket blog run by Daniel, Braydon, David and Liam.
4. Go to the list of students taking part in the blogging challenge. Visit some of their blogs and leave some comments.

School has now started back for the year 2011. Staff have been having lots of training in subject areas. Many classrooms now have Smartboards installed. More teachers are going to be involved with blogging this year.

What exciting things did you do during your holidays?

• Did you travel anywhere?
• Did you see any movies with friends?
• What fantastic Christmas present did you get?
• How did you occupy your time over the holidays?

Students who have their own blog, write a post about your holidays.

 New students in grade 6/7 who don’t yet have their own blog, leave a comment here on this post. Remember to be internet safe – use your first name only. I will be checking out the comments as part of proof that you deserve to have your own blog in the next few weeks.

Original image: ‘2010: A year plenty of Hopes… // 2010: Un año lleno de esperanzas‘

by: Jesus Solana

Released under an Attribution License

So you decided to create an avatar like “Hero Factory” or “Build your wildself” or “Mini Mizer” where you can’t save it easily. You need to take a picture of the screen first. Most computers have a printscreen button on the keyboard or if using Windows 7 you have an icon called “snipping tool”. 

When you press printscreen an image of your screen is now copied to your clipboard. You will still need to crop and resize to get an avatar that fits well on your blog.

Open MS Paint and click control V to paste your image from the clipboard. To save, you need to go to File>Save As> change the name of the file to yourname with ava eg  sueava then underneath change the file type to JPEG. Make sure you save your avatar to your drive.

Go to your drive, right click on the icon for your avatar image and choose “Open with” choose MS Picture Manager.

In the icons at the top, go to View> task pane.  On the right go to edit pictures > crop.  Now move the black bars on the side of your image in, to crop your picture to what you want in your avatar.

Click OK, then back to edit pictures. Now click on resize. In the box “custom width and height” put  97 in both boxes. These numbers might be slightl different but one has to be 97 and the other smaller than 97. Click OK.

Back up to file>save as> call it sueava2 or similar> make sure it is still JPEG. Make sure you have saved it to your drive again.

Now to upload to your blog.  Go to your dashboard> users>your avatar> browse to find your image>alternate upload.  This is your comment avatar.

Now for your blog avatar. Dashboard>appearance>widget> blog avatar drag to your sidebar.  To upload the avatar, dashboard>settings>blog avatar> browse to find your image>alternate upload. Go to your blog page and refresh. Your blog avatar should appear on your blog now.