Friday, January 1, 2010

My Learning

I was recently asked about the last thing I learned and how I learned it. I had a presentation to finalize earlier that morning. I wanted to do something "new" but ended up doing a presentation using PowerPoint2007. I was pretty sure we would not be able to view it in that "newer" version, but I really liked some of the things I was able to do using it (backgrounds, colors, fonts). I decided that I needed to figure out a way to put it on my blog. I tried using slideshare, but some of the fonts and hyperlinks did not work. I had some luck using powerpoints in voicethread in the past, so I tried that too. Again some fonts and colors and no hyperlinks worked. I remembered hearing something about SlideRocket last year from a Discovery Education Shining Stars Webinar. I recommended that a friend try it out, and she liked it, so I decided to try it too. I was pleased that my colors, backgrounds, and fonts stayed the same. After "playing around" a little with the options that are available in that program, I figured out how to add hyperlinks. I did not really want to change the presentation that much, so I hyperlinked the little yellow stars I added.

I thought about that question about learning again this morning as I was "playing around" with the way my blog looks. I have really enjoyed and seen the benefits of using blogs with students and teachers in the last couple of years. I have been working on "fixing up" the way my blog(s) look in the last little bit. After seeing an interesting background on another blog, I looked to see where it came from and went there too. I have now started using shabbyblogs.com for my blog backgrounds. There are also all kinds of neat extra things to add to the blog that can be found there. I learned about how to add those certain things by following instructions on thecutestblogontheblock.com (where I used to get blog backgrounds from).

Well, I decided this morning that I wanted to figure out a new way to display the labels on my blog. I like the way Sam Walker displays the labels on the Kimmel Farm Elementary Blog, so I went and looked at it. Sam is my friend and would help if I sent him a message (email, twitter, or facebook) but since it is New Year's Day, I did not want to bother him. I decided to see what I could find out myself, so after reading back through his tweets on twitter and finding nothing, I searched the internet for "blogger label cloud". I found directions on how to create an animated bloggger label cloud using Blogumus on the Blogger Buster site. I didn't like the way the animated label cloud looked on this blog (so it is still plain for now), but I like the way it turned out on my Technology Blog.

So again, I had an idea of what I wanted to do, saw that it was possible, and "played around" until I figured it out. :)

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2 comments:

swalker said...

If you want to know how I altered the blogumus tag cloud I can help - but it was a little labor intensive. I learn like you - "by tinkering." Happy New Year!

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