FAQ: How did you do that?
"There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions"-Charles Steinmetz
Since launching my webpage, I have had a few questions that continuously pop up from teachers looking to create their own pages. This page was designed to answer some of the questions that occur frequently about the content and technology in the page.
A: I created this page as a "one-stop-shop" for parents and students to stay up to date with all of the things happening in our classroom. I wanted to create a page where students could explore, and show off their hard work, and where parents could get answers to the who, what, when, where and why or their child's day in my classroom.
A: I was really excited to have a student-accessible blog! I use the blogging site
Edublogs.org to create the Baker Blog. I created my own Edublog account, created a generic account with a username and password to assign for my student's use, and then embedded the blog into my page using an HTML module. This was complicated and not intuitive, so I have provided the code I used below to hopefully make it easy for you.
After creating your own Edublogs account, you can embed your blog on a new page of your website by inserting an HTML module, and using the following code:
<iframe src="http://yourblogname.edublogs.org" frameborder=0 width="100%" height=500 scrolling=auto>
</iframe>
You should insert the name of your own blog after the http://, and you can change the height to anything that suits your own page style. You can pay to become an Edublog supporter, and this will eliminate the advertising on your blog, or, use the free version and tolerate the ads :)
A: I use the website
Librarything.com to display my class library. After creating an account on Librarything.com, I added my entire library on one rainy summer afternoon, using the cuecat (worth the $15!) After adding all of my books, I created a
library thing widget using the links provided by the site. After creating the widget, things get a little complicated.
First, you need to create a custom footer module. To do this, you need to enable the advanced design features from your Page Manager page. Click on Site Actions, and then "Activate advanced design features. Insert the custom footer module into your page. You will also need to copy the text given to you in "embed this widget" on the librarything page, and paste it into the new module.
Once you have created a custom footer module, you can copy and paste this code into the module, replacing the "insert the..." line with the code you copied from the librarything.com widget.
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="text" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<![CDATA[
<insert the "embed this widget" code you copied from librarything. here
]]>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
A: I like
Slide.com because I found it to be very user-friendly with lots of fun options, and it's free!
A: Mortimer is a Ty Beanie rat (Ratzo) that travels the world with my students when they visit special places on vacation. He has seen some amazing sites, including London Bridge, the Vatican, and the Roman Colosseum. When students visit exciting places, they can request to take Mortimer with them, and then they need to take his picture in front of something unique wherever they visit.
I include Mortimer's travels on the web page using Google Maps. By using My Maps on Google Maps, you can mark where your own geography project has visited, upload pictures (or video). The
tutorial for how to do this, provided by Google, is outstanding.
After uploading the picture to my image gallery, I went to my Google account, and logged into My Maps. I chose my map (Mortimer's World Travels) from the list of maps I created. After clicking Edit, I inserted a placemarker in Mortimer's location on the map, gave it a title, and then clicked Rich HTML. I went to the image and right clicked and selected "copy image location". Then, when the http:// box pops up, copy the image location. Then, I clicked SAVE, and double checked the map to ensure the link worked!
A: I spend about an hour on the basics of the website a week, managing the Brain Booster (daily), This week in class (weekly) the Calendar (monthly) and the Refrigerator Door/Say Cheese sections every few weeks. I enjoy working on the page, so it is constantly in progress, and I spend about 3-4 hours a week playing around with new ideas for the page, and responding to questions and comments.