Tapped In

No teacher is an island--at least, you shouldn't be in this age of nings, listserves, wiki, etc. TappedIn is a real standout among professional learning communities. It's a free service with a helpful staff that can guide you around the different areas of the community. There are groups for librarians, world language teachers, art teachers, those interested in project-based learning, primary grades, middle school--you get the picture. As soon as I registered, I received a chat message from the information desk in the "lobby," with helpful suggestions. The "Enhanced Lessons" group has a wiki with a dozen tutorials for web 2.0 tools, like Delicious, VoiceThread and BubbleShare. In my wanderings among the groups, I found 17 links that I will use later in my classroom, adding them to my Delicious page. To imagine the possibilities of this community, read this amazing letter from a teacher in Illinois and one in Brazil who have brought their students together online for discussions. Here's a short tutorial created by one of the "Enhanced Lessons" group, or check this one from YouTube.

Change Blogmeister's Template

Ready for a new look? Watch this short video to find out how to change the look of your blog page on Blogmeister, a blogger designed for k12 students.

Add a Photo to Blogmeister with Picvault

There a few steps to adding a photo to Blogmeister. You need a host site for the photo, such as Picvault. I run through the steps here:

Let Your Computer do the Talking!

Let your computer talk back, using TextEdit. Find it in the Applications folder. Type your blog post and TextEdit will read it back to you to help you find errors.

Getting Started with Class Blogmeister

Here's a short tutorial I made for my students about logging in and writing a post for ClassBlogmeister.