Helen

Having never heard of Quad - blogging before Kate mentioned it, I decided to jump on the band-wagon and join up. I have made contact with my fellow quad-bloggers in Australia and Oxford, UK and another NZ school and look forward to them visiting our blog. I will update you on my findings and feelings.
 * Quad blogging **

I have also joined a Facebook-like page called ** Edmodo **, but have not had much of a chance to introduce the children to it as yet. They are too busy practising their maths to win the Sumdog challenge that I set each week. ** Photobucket ** David taught me how to use Photobucket. I wanted a photo app that would allow me to display a group of photos on my blog without people having to click on anything. I had previously registered a Photobucket account, but could not figure out how to make it appear on my blog. He showed me that I needed to make a slideshow in Photobucket and then it was as easy as adding the HTML code as a widget on my blog. It offers a huge range of display options and is perfect for what I wanted - YAY thanks David!!

This is a fabulous way to display photos about what is happening at school for parents to share in their child's life at school!!

He also showed me a fab new way of adding a world map to indicate where your Blog visitors are from and we tried to add the Twitter widget, but we couldn't get this to work.

Frustratingly, half of my time with him was spent out on the deck outside Johanna's room trying to pick up the wireless signal to do all these things!! Must investigate getting a cord to plug the laptop in!!!!!

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** PHOTOBABBLE **

David taught me how to use Photobabble.

I have found this to be a fabulous tool, but only because I can use my iPhone to take the photos and record the message that the children want to share.

I think that if I (or the children) had to take a photo with the digital camera, download it onto a computer, transfer it to Photobabble, record the message, save it and then transfer it onto our Blog - I would find it all too hard.

With my iPhone I can take a photo while in Photobabble, record the message straight away and then transfer on the blog - very quick and easy! This is exactly what I need to be successful in the classroom without ICT being the sole focus in the classroom.

The children love sharing their work with their parents and relations in such an easy way (without having to laboriously type it up) and parents can enjoy their children's writing, as well as listen to their oral reading - expression, fluency etc. I have found that it has a very positive impact on the children's writing as they are trying to get their story on our blog and only a few are chosen each time.

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**SHARED WRITING ON THE BLOG** This is something I have done before, but it is a great way to draw the children into the excitement of writing. They all contribute ideas and ways of expressing ideas. They experience descriptive language that they may not have used themselves before. We include speech and this helps them practise with different punctuation than they may have used before. It is fun and educational - what more could you want. Not only do the children enjoy it, the parents get to share the stories and many children have adopted ideas or styles for their own writing the next week (or even written a similar story off their own bat at home during the weekend and then emailed it to me to include on our blog!!!).

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