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Open Badges: Want to Make Your Own Badges by Hand? Here’s How. « Billy Meinke's Blog. After doing quite a bit of research into Mozilla’s Open Badge Project, I took it upon myself to try to make a badge by hand. What about using the Issuer API? Wouldn’t that be simpler? Well, not really. I’ll be the first to admit that my programming skills are, um…being developed. And by developed, I mean that I plan to learn some JavaScript, Python, and the new capabilities of HTML5 and CSS3 in the next few months. That said, I took a quite “non-technical” approach to making my first badge.

Here’s a list of what’s included in this post: Why Badges? Why Badges? Here’s a 5-minute video put together by HASTAC that describes motivation behind badges for learning: Badge Design Though I didn’t think on it much until watching a recorded webcast from the DML Badge Competition, the visual design of badges is an essential part of a badging system. Anatomy of a Badge When it comes down to “what” a badge really is…it’s just a picture. Just a .PNG file? Assertions – Proof of Earnership Make a Badge Now! 1. Blog » Sharing Professional Content on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Quad Blogging - lessons learned. A couple of weeks ago we had our final Skype call this year with our quad blogging action research team to pull together the lessons learned from having 4 classes of students from schools around the world interact with each other using blogging. As teachers we were inquiring into the impact of using blogging as a tool to improve writing. The gut feeling from us all seems to be that quad blogging has led to a dramatic improvement in some students' writing - students have stepped up and put a lot more effort into their writing as a result of producing authentic blog posts for a specific audience.

Does quad blogging take more time? For teachers who have been following along with our journey, who are perhaps thinking of getting involved in quad blogging themselves, one of the most common questions we've been asked has been about finding the time to fit the blogging in. The reality for us was that time was no problem at all. How did we assess the quality of writing? NeverSeconds blogger Martha Payne 'banned' from taking school dinner photos. 15 June 2012Last updated at 13:46 ET Martha gave this cheeseburger meal a health rating of 2/10 A controversial ban preventing a nine-year-old girl from photographing her school meals has been lifted following a storm of protest on the internet. Martha Payne, from Argyll, has now recorded more than three million hits on her NeverSeconds blog.

Argyll and Bute Council said press coverage of the blog had led catering staff to fear for their jobs. But council leader Roddy McCuish later told the BBC he had instructed senior officials to lift the ban immediately. The schoolgirl's father, David Payne, who helped her set up the blog, welcomed the decision. Martha began publishing photographs of her Lochgilphead Primary School lunches on 30 April. Martha Payne's father, David: ''It (the ban) was disappointing'' She gave each meal a 'food-o-meter' and health rating, and counted the number of mouthfuls it took her to eat it. She had been using the blog to raise money for the Mary's Meals charity. Job fears. Fern's Big Idea. What is 100WC? | 100 WORD CHALLENGE. ‘The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.’

Ursula K. Le Guin We ask children to write in school but often there is no apparent purpose that they can see other than pleasing their teacher! It is a weekly creative writing challenge for children under 16 years of age. By setting a limited word count with a focused theme and a guaranteed audience beyond the class teacher, children have far greater motivation for writing. One of the special things about 100WC is that those entering a piece are encouraged to visit other blogs and leave a constructive comment. The 100 Word Challenge has been used for homework tasks and up leveling practice as well as a regular writing activity. Above all – it is fun! Let's Fly: Embeddable Tweets. Tweets have become one of the most important — and simplest — ways for people to share news, humor, inspiration, and knowledge online. And they are even richer when they include pictures, videos, locations, or links to other sites on the web.

With the new version of Twitter, anyone can embed Tweets simply by copying and pasting one line of code into their website. Embedded Tweets automatically open to show images, conversations and videos. Whenever you see a Tweet embedded in a web page, you can follow that user with a single click and reply, retweet or favorite the Tweet right from the page. Click on the author’s @! Username to see their Twitter profile page, or click the date in the lower left corner of the Tweet to see Replies, Retweets and Favorites on the Details page. People are already embedding Tweets across the web in order to continue the conversations that matter to them.

Anthologize plugin to create the analogue of the digital! January 4, 2012 Anthologize plugin to create the analogue of the digital! A few people who were present at the Silverstone Blogging Masterclass at the back end of 2011 saw the look in my eyes as Peter Ford was showcasing Anthologize. Now this little plugin has AWESOME potential.

My eyes were dripping with ideas as Peter showed how simple it was to produce a pdf booklet of various posts from a blog. In my first attempt after installing the plugin, I wanted to create a pdf of all the post Binyameen made last year as a ‘Year of Blogging’ by Binyameen. It took all of 3 minutes and here is the document below: Present this bound document with a QR Code of his ‘tag’ on the front and you have the perfect leaver’s gift for a Year 6 pupils who is leaving Heathfield. QuadBlogging – From birth to first steps… -Mr. Mitchell's Blog – asksir.co.uk. QuadBlogging as a concept was born only to help a school in Blackpool which was engaging in blogging but not pulling in the audience that my school (Heathfield Primary School, Bolton) was achieving.

Less than a year ago, I returned home from Blackpool, sat down at my desk once my little girl had gone to sleep and began to think about how schools that had an established blogging culture could help schools that were making the very first steps into blogging. For those that blog, the beginning few weeks/months can be a lonely place! It takes time to build an audience and during this time, I have seen many schools, pupils and teachers lose interest resulting in the blog failing.

Within 24 hours of returning back from Blackpool, I had contacted two other keen bloggers to see if they were up for helping this Blackpool school out and enter an informal agreement to visit their blog on a cycle basis. The difference this time was for each Quad, there would be a Quad Co-ordinator. Why Students Should Blog - My Top 10. ICT Development | Nottingham High School. Chrissie Turkington: "Fascinating radio show on.

Bolton School goes to Tanzania. Stafford College - Posterous - TwitVid. Learning About Blogs FOR your Students: Part VII – Quality  This is Part VII in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students” Reading, responding, assessing and monitoring our students’ progress on their blog requires pedagogical commitment. It is a commitment to student learning and quality work, not a commitment to using a specific technology platform. My guiding questions for QUALITY blogging are: How do teachers recognize different levels of quality? How can assessment for student blogging look like? The blogging rubric, developed by Kim Cofino, mentioned in Part IIB-Student Writing becomes an invaluable tool to recognize quality, assess your students and plan to support each one at their own level.

Part of blogging is commenting, which deserves its own rubric to address individual components that contribute to the overall quality of a comment. Andrew Churches divides his Commenting Rubric (pdf) into two parts: See a commenting rubric below that you can use to help you recognize and support quality commenting. Please share: Xerte Online. Xerte Online for WordPress is a server-based suite of tools for content authors. Elearning materials can be authored quickly and easily using browser-based tools, with no programming required. Xerte Online Toolkits is aimed at content authors, who will assemble content using simple wizards. Content authors can easily collaborate on projects. Xerte Online Toolktis can be extended by developers using Xerte. This plugin for WordPress is a subset of the main Xerte Online Toolkits functionality, but offers a simple to install and host solution within WordPress.

More information on Xerte Online Toolkits Xerte was developed by the University of Nottingham, and for more information please visit Xerte home page. This plugin is very much in development.