Friday, 18 August 2006

Put a slideshow on your blog

Today on a blogging forum (American) I discovered a FREE, EASY website that will help you to create a fantastic and flash slideshow to add to your blog.

Rock You is great to use... you upload your photos from your computer, add captions, add a layover effect (like butterflies etc) and it will generate the code to copy and paste onto your blog.


Check out the first simple slideshow I did for our class blog here.

or a more advanced slideshow I made for our class blog here!

Saturday, 12 August 2006

A Clustr Map for your blog

A great way to track visitors to your blog is to use a Clustr Map like the one I have on my class blog.

It's free to use for people who get less than 2,500 hits per day - wouldn't we all want a hit average like that! :)

I believe these are better than "Guestmaps" because it will automatically add the location of the visitor to your map by placing a dot. Guestmaps usually require the visitor to physically add their location.

You're students will really feel like they are "world famous on the web" when they see lots of new dots appearing on their map. My class also enjoys finding the name of the countries where the new dots have appeared.

To get your own Clustr Map click here and register. You will then be given a code to copy and paste into your blog by going to Layout>Page Elements>Add Page Element (on sidebar)>HTML/Javascript in Blogger. Then paste in the code. You might want to title it "Who's been visiting our blog" or something similar.

Click here to download a step-by-step PDF document that I have made detailing how to add a clustr map to your Blogger Blog.

Further information about inserting a ClustrMap into Blogger is available here or email me if you get stuck.

Friday, 11 August 2006

About Me!

A self confessed geek, mac lover, avid blogger and teacher from Nelson, New Zealand.

This is my fifth year teaching and I currently teach year 2/3 students (6 & 7 year olds). I'm absolutely addicted to blogging and sold on its many benefits.

I've been enjoying increasing my students' use of I.C.Ts over the past few years and working with other teachers in my role as an I.C.T. lead teacher this year.

Please feel free to leave me a comment and visit my sites that my students are working on.

Thanks for visiting!

Thursday, 10 August 2006

WELCOME!

Hi there and welcome to my blog!

Here I'll post all the neat things that I come across in my endeavour this year to create an awesome class blog and to infuse more I.C.T. into my year 2/3 class.

Feel free to post comments to each post!

Kind regards,
Rachel Boyd