Bringing technology to the hands of educators ... to be put in the hands of students.
About the Tech Eduk8tor
I'm a technology and English educator in the high Canadian North. I am passionate about technology in the classroom and enjoy learning how to use new programs that can help me in my teaching and my students in their learning.
Mars Edit 2 is a powerful desktop blogging editing and publishing tool that allows you to connect to your blog without having to go through an Internet browser.
Mars Edit 2 is compatible with many of todays blogging systems (WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Drupal, Vox, Edublogs.....). It is easy to set up. All you have to do is input your blog title, blog URL and Mars Edit 2 pulls down the configuration information from your blog provider. All that is left to do is log into your blog and voila! You are connected to your blog via your desktop.
Mars Edit 2 also allows you to create and save post offline to be published at a later time - so you don't even have to be connected to the Internet at the time of your post creation. [The only draw back to this is that you have to have an active Internet connection if you want to add pictures, video and sound]
Mars Edit 2 also allows you to preview your post live as you are typing it in the preview pane:
and also allows supports html tags and other embedable content.
Mars Edit 2 has a great built in help system that will guide you step by step on how to set up a blog and how to use the program.
This is a great program for anyone to use that normally logs into a browser based blogging system.
You can try out Mars Edit 2 for 30 days or purchase a license for 29.95$.
A blog, according to Wikipedia is "a website usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video."
A blog is a site that typically contains :
brief informational posts, arranged in reverse chronological order
Frequently links to additional content
Time stamps are present on each post
Archives of previously posted content
A blog, is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating and maintaining a blog is blogging and someone who keeps a blog is a blogger.
Still confused? Maybe this informational video on Blogs will help you out:
What content can I put on a blog?
You can post a variety of content / media on a blog. The most popular (or common) is text, however, many now post videos, photographs, music, files and links to other blogs / websites.
What do I / my classroom Need to Start Blogging?
First you will need a blog site / account. There are many options here.
The most popular option are free web-based blog hosts like Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress or Edublogs. With these blog systems, your blog is hosted on their servers so you don't have to worry about having server space for the blogs to 'live' on.
If you have the technical expertise and support, you can also host your own blogs using your own server and domain with the help of a variety of blog platforms such as Wordpress, MoveableType, Typepad and Drupal.
Both of these 'platforms' have their pro's and con's. So research a head of time to determine what will best suit your needs.
Second, if you are planning to do classroom blogging, come up with a set of rules that everyone can agree on (what content can and can't be published, who can and can't access the blog ....).
Third, have a plan. What do you want the blog to be about? What do you want to get out of the experience? What about your learning goals for you and your students?
Why would I want to use a Blog in the Classroom?
What Can I Use Blogs for in My Classroom?
You can use blogs in your classroom for virtually anything. Blogs are a great way for students to develop literacy skills (reading and writing) as well as digital literacy skills (technology and computers). Blogs are also a handy tool for students to publish and share their own work and research and network with the world.
Installing Blogo was a breeze; just download the file from Blogo, double click to open up the .dmg file and drag the Blogo application to your application folder - and presto - you are ready to go!
Blogo uses the drag-and-drop technique that is familiar across Apple software, so learning how to add pictures in Blogo is quite simple as well.
Blogo gives you the option of posting directly online or saving your posts as off-line drafts to be posted at a later time to your blog account.
For those that don't like to play with software to learn how to use it (I prefer this method), Blogo does come with a very well written help file that will guide you through the usage of the software.
Blogo contains support for HTML Snippets, so it is easy to add content from YouTube, Flickr, Google Maps and more.
You have the options of two views while working with Blogo; the standard view
or the expanded (full-screen) view.
Blogo also has a preview screen available for you to preview how your post is going to look in your blog before you publish it (this part requires an active internet connection).
In all, I found Blogo and easy to use desktop blogging client. There were some quirks and quarks with the posting process, but nothing that wasn't sorted out (needed to log into Picassa for Blogo to upload the pictures to my account)
If you would like to try Blogo out, they have a 21-day free trial (no limitations) or purchase a license for 25$.
This is a little side project I will be working on over the next several months ... and possibly longer, as we all know how quickly the world of technology changes.
As an educator (and well rounded geek) I know how hard it is sometimes to find easy to use software for teaching /learning. How many of us educators really have oodles of time on their hands to search the internet and test out software? Not many. Hopefully this site will give you some ideas on what is available out there on the intertubes.
I will be looking at all sorts of software packages (web design, animation, blogging, podcasting, graphics, office applications, desktop publishing ....) that are either low-cost (under 100$) or open-source. Any tested software will run on either a Mac OS or Linux ... sadly, I do not have a Windows machine, so I won't be able to test any windows software, but I will be able to recomend some that I have used in the past.
