Your own Youtube account

Dear student,

this is the last task you will be asked to do in this second term.
You are probably used to searching and watching videos at the famous Youtube, I know you can do that. So what you will have to do is create your own Youtube account and upload a video.
How are you going to do it? Follow the instructions in the following video.
Remember to copy and save your username and password!




Task 1: Publish a new post for this week
Task 2: Create your Youtube account, upload a video and post it in your blog





I'll be watching

Music at Wordpress>> Box.net

Good news for those of you who have been struggling to have your music at wordpress!

After frustratingly trying to make the ivoon embed codes work with a text widget, and many other pirouettes... we finally realised that Wordpress has a specific widget for music:





So forget about ivoon and follow the 3 steps given at this widget.











Upload your music here and give your e-mail account information.











Copy the embed code to the widget and update.
See sample at http://wildhicock.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!!

Music in your Blog

Did you solve your problems with Flickr?
If you didn't you should first have a look at the Problems topic in the forum and read the post about it. Hope you'll find it useful.

If you solved the Flickr affair, you can go on with today's post.

Would you like to listen to some music while you are posting or editing your blog?
There many and varied sites that offer you the possibility of having a music player gadget in your blog: finetune, dizzler, opus player,...

All of them have the same modus operandi: 1st register ,2nd customize, 3rd copy embed code and 4th paste it to your blog .

We will use ivoon to publish our media player.
Click on the link and register your username and password

Once you sign in you can do the following things:

• Music Gallery: You look for the songs you like and add them to your playlist
• Upload: To upload your own music you have to register in one of these sites first and follow instructions

As it is explained you will have to upload your songs into one of these hosting websites. Once they are uploaded you will use their url to link them in your playlist

• Playlist: you can customize and organize your player. Copy the embed code and paste it into your blog either in a specific gadget or in a text widget if you don't find any.

DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 11TH
Task 1: Publish a new post for this week
Task 2: Use ivoon media player in your blog

Good luck with this new task!
I'll be watching

Sharing Pictures at Flickr

Some of the free platforms that host our blogs have a limited amount of space. This means that we have an upload limit of videos, music, pictures etc...

In order to have all these items in our blog we publish them in other sites and link or embed them to our blog afterwards. In this session we will learn to use one of these sites that allows us to share images.

Flickr is a tool hosted by Yahoo. We can share pictures with our friends and have them displayed in our blogs.

The first thing to do is signing up at the following address http://www.flickr.com

To create your account you must first have an e-mail address at Yahoo. If you already have a yahoo account you can use the username and password to sign in.



If you don't have a yahoo account you have to create one


Now you can make your Flickr account using your yahoo username and password.

Deadline for the following tasks: Wednesday 28
Task 0: Update your blog with a new post

Task 1: Upload 5 pictures and organize them in a new set called ''yourname''_blogworkshop
Send an invitation to your teacher to see the pictures. Contacts> Invite your friends
Task2: Publish your pictures in your blog.
If you use Blogger, find a gadget to display a slideshow. Then set Flickr as the source and publish it. If you use Wordpress, you should look for the ''embed code'' copy and paste it in a new widget. Then save changes to have it published.

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

2nd Term Objectives:

• Continuous updating of your blog: minimum one post per week.

• Use of gadgets, widgets and other complements for the blog (videos, pictures, music, presentations...)

The first thing to do today is to think about the information you need in order to update your blog. From now on you will have to write and publish, using correct English, at least one post per week.
Before writing: organize the content, use different paragraphs for different ideas and try to make it attractive.

Task: Write at least one post in one of the sections in your blog. Watch out for mistakes!
Deadline: Wednesday, 21st January

If you have already written a new post and you have no problems publishing them then you can start having a look at the available gadgets or widgets in your blog platform.

Task: Choose the gadgets you like or better fit your blog and publish them
Deadline: Wednesday, 21st January

MERRY CHRISTMAS and MR Bean

1ST TERM DATES

Hello,
here you have the dates and evaluation activities for the first term.

WEDNESDAY NOV 19th

Deadline for the term report: nov 21st
The report must have the following structure:

• Cover: Title: Blogworkshop - 1st term report. Name and surname, Teacher's name, Month and year, School, city
• Introduction (short explanation about the report)
• Steps o, 1, 2, 3 (reflections and decisions taken in the steps)
• Conclusion (personal opinion about the organization of the workshop, the tasks you've been carrying out and the first draft of your blog. Think about pros and cons.

Layout:
- Times New Roman or Arial Font, size 12
- 1,5 spaced
- 2 pages max.

BLOG PRESENTATIONS LIST

WEDNESDAY NOV 26th

1. Acín, Gerard
2. Adan, Alba
3. Alvarez, Carlos
4. Arteche, Alvaro
5. Asin, Mariona
6. Ballester, Meritxell

WEDNESDAY DEC 3rd

1. Bordas, Pau
2. Delgado, Pedro
3. Esparó, Gal.la
4. Franquesa, Carlota
5. Garcia, Paula
6. Guillen, Cristina
   

WEDNESDAY DEC 10th

1. Juan, Anna
2. Lopez, Elena
3. Marrero, Denise
4. Martí, Laia
5. Mena, Marina
6. Vila, Berta
   

STEP 3: THE FIRST DRAFT

Once you have chosen your topic, you have to prepare an oral presentation in which you will talk about the following points:

1. The steps you have followed
2. What platform hosts your blog and why you chose it
3. What is your topic and why you chose it
4. Contents and structure

STEP 2: CHOOSING A BLOG PLATFORM

As you can see in this video, getting your own blog is something really easy!

But not all the blog platforms offer the same possibilities. Some of them are free while others will charge you some money. Some are more attractive than others or have better tools, and some are easier than others to edit and customise.

Visit the following popular blog platforms and choose the one that suits you better or you like the most.

• http://wordpress.com/
• http://www.movabletype.org/
• https://www.blogger.com/start
• http://www.deadjournal.com/
• http://www.livejournal.com/
• http://www.blogeasy.com/
• http://www.mybloglog.com/

Here you have an interesting list with further detail:

• http://www.pimpmyblog.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8

1. Now think about the pros and cons and choose the platform that suits you better or the one you like the most.

STEP 1: CHOOSING A TOPIC FOR YOUR BLOG

What is your blog about?


To answer this question perhaps it will be useful to read first the following quotation taken from probblogger :

“Probably the best place to start thinking about what your blog should be about is to consider what YOU are about.”

At this point you can start thinking about what your interests, hobbies, passions or energy levels for topics are.

* MUSIC
* VIDEO GAMES
* CARS
* X-TREME SPORTS
* .......ANY IDEA????

Here you have some questions which will help you to pick the right topic.

1. Answer these questions in your Blog Book:

* Are you interested in the topic? Give some reasons
* Is the topic popular?
* Is the topic one that is growing or shrinking?
* Will you have enough content?
* Will the content be useful?

2. Look for some blogs which are related to the topic/s you like and that you find useful.
Then list them in your Blog Book. Use the following searching engines:

* http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/?hl=en&tab=wb

* http://www.bloghints.com/

GETTING STARTED

Hello everybody and welcome to this Blog Workshop!




http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=CKTwKLA_cyQ

The aim of this workshop is that you create your own blog, so you should have at least a basic knowldege of how to surf the Internet and also basic computer skills, like the girl in the video.

I hope we will all learn new things and enjoy the process!!

The first thing to do is a bit of a webquest-like questionnaire in order to get to know much better the terminology we’ll be using in this course.

1. Go through some definitions of the term BLOG visiting the following sites:

• http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/b/blog.html
• http://codex.wordpress.org/Introduction_to_Blogging

Answer these questions in your Blog Book

Were these definitions useful?
Can you add other sites with better ones?

2. Now that we have a better idea of what a blog is, let’s read about blogging history, posts and other related things.

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/history_of_blogging.asp

• Explain the meaning of the term Blog
• What is blogging?
• Generally speaking, what things do blogs have in common?
• What is a post?
• Can you add some more interesting information? Post it in your Blog Book together with the address
• Here you have some words which have in common the root BLOG. blogger, blogging, blogosphere, blogroll, blogsnob, b-log, klog, vlog What do you know about them?

"I've Been Dooced!"Did You Know... The term dooce means "To lose ones job (fired) because of something you have posted in a blog." Dooce was coined ion 2002 by Heather Armstrong, a Los Angeles Web designer who lost her job after writing about work colleagues in her personal blog, dooce.com.