Nice poster, couldn’t we have put it on a blog?

Nice poster, couldn’t we have put it on a blog?

The kids in IH Barcelona have been producing travel posters, which as you can see we then display on noticeboards around the school (and not just in individual classrooms).

I like having people create posters in the classroom: it’s the making of things together that I particularly like, the collaborative, creative writing involved.

If you don't have the technology, or ease of access to it (and it’s not that easy here), it's a big step up from writing it (on your own), handing it in and forgetting about it, which is what writing was apparently about when I was a kid at school.

Couldn’t we put it on a blog?
The same sort of project could, of course, easily go on a blog. Among the obvious advantages:

• The kids can post drafts
• You (the teacher) can write comments, make suggestions, etc. on drafts
• Other kids can, likewise, comment, ask questions, add things…
• Other people (including parents…) can see it
  

A blog is also longer-lasting than a poster, and they are again "making things together" but, with a blog, something bigger, which they can be even more proud of.

Taking pride in your work, that’s one of the things I like about blogs. Who's ever going to be proud of a scrappy piece of paper a teacher has scrawled all over in red ink?

However…
When your kids post it on the Internet, what are they going to illustrate it with? They could of course just go steal the images off of Google. Google stole them anyway, so why shouldn’t they...?

I’ve got my moral qualms about doing that, myself. If you must, then I’d say if you made your blog entirely private, you might just about dismiss the qualms. But what kid wants an entirely private blog? What’s the point…?

You could get round the problem either (1) by having the kids create their own artwork, scan it and upload it or (2) by having them steal their images but by significantly digitally altering them (with a proper image editing program), to create "new" images, possibly in the form of collages.

•If you don't have an image editing program, you can download Gimp for free...

Be my Valentine!

1 paperclip, 2 pieces of paper, 1 small blob blutack... Er, maybe not that cheap...?

Lifehacker (again!), this time pointing me to "how to date on the cheap, without seeming cheap". I bookmarked that one -- well, Valentine's Day is coming up, isn't it?

Valentine's Day is one of those days of the year on which you can have a spot of fun in class, not to mention some writing or speaking practice.

You could, for example, discuss precisely that topic -- how to date when you're skint. Or get them to write a love story... Or discuss what makes a good love story?

Or discuss how to date a hopelessly unromantic person...

A school I know gets some of their youngest kids to make Valentine's cards which they put in random envelopes and give to each other (so everyone gets one!), to provide you with another example.

More ideas here on developingteachers.com.

How to digitalise your cassettes

There's hope for my Dylan bootlegs yet... Not to mention an impressive collection of First Certificate tapes!

Another one that came to me from Lifehacker: how to digitalise your cassettes.

Do you work in the kind of school with the listening materials still on cassettes, in those ever so slightly greasy cassette boxes...?

Guess I could still recover my Dylan bootlegs...!

NiceNet: Your own virtual classroom

NiceNet... Certainly nice and easy to set up.

Several teachers have recommended me NiceNet recently. It allows you to set up a "virtual classroom" within seconds, and then "conference", share documents and links and so on.

I've not used it myself other than setting up my own classroom (see image above) to try it out. As a great fan of Yahoo Groups I think personally I'd stick with them... Or possibly a wiki, but it certainly looks a good alternative to those.

More about NiceNet.

How to download movies from YouTube (etc)

This one came to me from Lifehacker, one of my favourite RSS feeds. You want to download a movie from YouTube (etc) in order to be able to play it back later...

(Before you do that for class, I'd -- as always -- ask, is that a good investment of your time...? Are your learners going to learn more, as a result...?)

Lifehacker explains how, and what you need (a Firefox extension, basically...)

Dealing with spam comments on your blog

Spam comment! Alarm, alarm! Shown, message in my email box. I have all comments e-mailed to me, so that I can then go and eliminate spam immediately

One of the problems keeping a blog entails is that other people will come along and deface you blog with irrelevant comments, the only "value" of which is to create a link to their own sites, and thus persuade the search engines to rank their sites more highly. Spam comments (like email spam) generally, though not always, relate to sex or drugs.

To avoid spam comments you can do various things. From most to least drastic, in terms of how easy you want to make it for genuine comments:

• Not allow comments of any kind. Assuming you are using Blogger, go to Comments >> Settings and under "Comment defaults for posts", choose no comments. No one can comment then, not even your Mum!
• Select who can comment. Go to Comments >> Settings and under "Who can comment" select "Anyone" (including all spammers); "Only registered users" (in effect, all spammers with a Blogger account -- that's what registered users means); or "Only members of this blog". You maybe want the latter if you are using it with a class of students
  
• Not make your blog a public one. With Blogger, go to Settings >> Basic and under "Add your blog to our listing", pick "no". I can't remember ever having seen a spam comment on any of my "private" blogs. Highly recommended if it's one intended only for you and your students
• Turn on "comment moderation". Which means you will be alerted to new comments, and have to approve them or otherwise
  
• Turn on the "comment notification" feature . Go to Setttings >> Comments, and add an email address at the foot of that page. New comments will then get emailed to you, with a handy link to go delete them, if necessary (see also image, top of this post)

Note that clever spammers never comment on recent posts, they always go for the ones they think you won't look back at.

Spammers please note: I remove all spam comments almost immediately from this blog and would thank you not to waste my time or your own.