Virtual Learning Network

I wrote this blog post on my blog 

http://allanahk.edublogs.org/2012/02/01/how-i-made-the-google-slide-show/

People have wondered how I made the Google Presentation

http://allanahk.edublogs.org/2012/01/28/what-i-want-my-teachers-to-know-about-me/

for my class. So I thought I would share how I did it here.

I just made a Google presentation under my own account- then I made a slide for each student.

I made sure it was open for everyone to edit without a log in.

Then put a link to that presentation on the blog so the children would know where to find it.

Children then went to the blog, clicked on the link, found their slide and filled it in. I believe that twenty people can edit a Google presentation at one time so as many children as there are computers can work on editing.

When everyone has done editing I then close it off by making it so no one can edit it so no cherub could wreck it and write stuff in the holidays that I didn't know of.

I then put the html embed code on the blog so it would play there.

If all that seems a bit tricky then I have made a three minute tutorial on how to do it.

At Learning at School Kevin Honeycutt suggested that we make learning rewindable- here I have done just that.

If you get stuck you can rewind, pause or stop the video while you practice.

Make it full screen by clicking on the bottom right hand corner of the video if you want a better view.

As the video is not playing here it would be best if you view the whole thing on my blog any way.

http://allanahk.edublogs.org/

There are a lot of great reasons why teachers need to have a blog or wikispace but it was brought home to me this week of the most basic reason of why even the least internet savy needs to have a blog or wikispace.

Children need a generic place from which go to web spaces for learning without typing an impossibly long web address.

Imagine trying to have people to go to this web address without it being hyperlinked somewhere

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kPbcdRYAoIBiiLbetoRWNu3eHDdfm6Ebeto2zPArwZw/edit?hl=en_US&authkey=CITYyqkK

I would defy anyone to type that and get it right. You could use a URL shortner like http://goo.gl/ or http://tinyurl.com/ but even then typing http://goo.gl/S80J3 and getting it right first time will be problematic for kids.

So here is a scenario!

A teacher has been told about a great website that they want to direct their class to like Spelling List Five of Spell-Write. The teacher has entered the spelling words into the website and saved the list.

The web address (URL) for it is http://www.spellingcity.com/view-spelling-list.html?listId=1914671

How are the children going to get there? The teacher could shorten it with http://goo.gl/xXOyP but typing even that will be time consuming with possibilities of typing it incorrectly and ending up somewhere where you didn’t want to go or having to start all over again.

If the teacher has a web presence that is the Home Page on the computer in their classroom all the children have to do is open up their web browser and there is the named link on the blog or wikispace. Even if you are out and about you can still find your resource if it is linked to the blog or wikispace.

For a couple of examples look down the side bar of our class blog  http://moturoa.blogspot.com/ for reading and maths links.

If you want to know how to do this in Blogger here is a ‘how to’ on how to do it.

http://bling4yrblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/adding-links-to-your-blog.html

See how easy it was to get to when you don't have to type the whole thing in the web address bar.