Smilebox

This is some more software I have seen in centre blogs but not used on a Blog myself. I use the free version so it does come with Ads. The cost version is not too badly priced and might be better for a centre.

It easily allows you to upload to a blog, to burn to a DVD. Getting the photos is easy and I have now used this on both Mac and PC and both work fine.

I am not able to use this at work because of problems with the University firewall but using it on my Mac from my home connection was fine.

I have not tried adding text or anything fancy. This is pretty much how it comes as a template! So pretty good. There are hundreds of templates to choose from.

This could be a great way to collect childrens photos to burn to a DVD when they leave the centre, if you have your photos filed so they are easy to locate.

If you play with this and find problems let me know by leaving a comment. I dont want to be reccomending this to teachers without knowing the problems and I dont have enough time to play lots with it.

Maureen

trying out Smilebox - the free version

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Add a slideshow to your Blog

A teacher on the Montessori Cluster discussion forum just asked about inserting a slideshow of their selected photos into their blog.

I can see two easy ways to do this but there are probably more. If you know other tools and techniques please share them here in a comment and we will share them further.

1. A Slideshow Widget

The easiest way to do this seems to be to add a widget.The advantage is that it stays on your blog home page.

In order to do this you will need an account with Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums or Flikr. If you don't know how to do this, go to UTube for some videos that show you how or just follow the on screen instructions.

BUT FIRST!!! Have you considered the cyber safety issues. Do you have informed consent from families and from children? Go to your Cybersafety kit and/or to Netsafe for information.
go to the Layout button ( We are using Blogger), click on that and then click on "Add a gadget". Scroll down through the gadgets till you find 'Slideshow and add this. You will be offered a choice of using your own website, Flikr, Photobucket or Picasa Web Albums.

2. Add a slideshow as a post

You may have seen these on some other ece centre blogs.

These get uploaded as a post onto your blog and so will eventually be moved to the archive section. But perhaps you want to keep updated slidehows visible anyway.

Many centres are using either IMovie ( for Apple Macs and generally comes wit your Mac) Photo Story 3 (for PCs this is a free download) or Smilebox for which there is also a free download. Smilebox videos can be very slow to open but look great.


You make the video and then upload as a video post to your blog using the video button on the tool bar of the post box. its up there on the right at the end.

I hope this answers the questions for now.

I cannot say which is better out of all these applications as I havent used them all that much so please feel free to comment if you have.

regards

Maureen

Video cameras monitoring in ece centres

We heard today from a centre using Tiny Telly so that parents can have streaming video access to the centre at all times.

This raised interesting questions of privacy, professionalism,and parental expectations that we did not have time to address today.

I do have a number of concerns although I realise there are also some good points for this sort of surveillance - maybe.

What about the teachers. Although this may offer some protection,does it invade privacy?

Are parents fears allayed or increased?

If parents share their password with other friends or family members or if the information is hacked into - what about the privacy for children other than their own?

I have so many questions about this....

A real notebook computer

This is so cleverly done I just had to share it!

Noteboek from Evelien Lohbeck on Vimeo.

The famous twitter song!!