Dearborn Public Schools
A series of in-depth looks at the latest uses of technology in the district. Take a look behind the curtain and see how Dearborn teachers are using district technology to enhance the learning process. Get ideas on how you can improve your use of iBlog, iLearn, and other tools.
Looking for tips? How about some tricks?
We have a variety of Help Sheets posted. The latest ones include Interactive Projector tips. Many of these fall into the “one minute” category (meaning they take about one minute to read and implement).
Here are a couple of examples:
https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/kwalsh/
In this guided tour we will look at how Mrs. Walsh at Woodworth Middle School designed her brand new classroom website using iBlog. Here is a run-down of what she has done so far.
What makes Mrs. Walsh’s website stand out is how she has maximized her communication workflow for both students and parents by utilizing both iBlog and Google Docs. The website sports a static homepage and all blog posts appear on a sub-page titled “Announcements”. Currently there are two additional links in the main menu which point to Google Presentations. These presentations are the same docs used during class for bellwork, agendas, and learning targets. There is no double work of posting daily homework. The Google Presentation does that! By using a presentation and linking it to the website, Mrs. Walsh is able to add new slides for each day and keep a monthly archive of everything they covered.
The first thing to do is to allow anyone with the link to view your Google Presentation. This is done through the sharing button inside Google Drive. Copy the shared link and go into your iBlog Dashboard > Appearance > Menus. Here you can create a custom menu. To add a link to your Google Presentation you simply paste the ling into the “Custom Link” area and add it to the menu.
The menu can be arranged however you like and can include links to pages, posts, post categories, and other websites. This give you the ultimate control over how your website navigation works.
In the next step you will be creating two new pages- Home and Announcements. You will most likely need to come back to the menus page to re-arrange and add in the new pages you create next. Be sure to click the checkboxes at the bottom of the page for Primary Menu and Automatically Add New Pages.
You can take a look at what here powerpoint looks like as a download in PDF here:
Language Arts Agendas October 5th – October 30th
Typically, websites on iBlog have all the posts appear on the homepage. You can move the posts off of the homepage and utilize a normal page as your homepage. To do this you must first go to Dashboard > Pages > Add New. Create a page and title it “Home”. Publish it. Create another page and title it “Announcements” and publish it. Now you can head over to the reading settings and let iBlog know you want to move your posts to the announcement page. Go to Dashboard > Settings > Reading and make the changes seen here.
If you have a cool website and want to share please send an email to kennibc@dearbornschools.org
In this guided tour we will look at how the wonderful staff in the ELL department designed their brand new department website using iBlog. Here is a run-down of what they have done so far.
What makes this site stand out is the clean design, custom menu, use of Google Drive, and static homepage. Read the rest of the tour to learn how you can implement some of these concepts in your classroom website.
Did you know that your iBlog website doesn’t have to show the posts on the homepage? Yep! You can have a nice clean homepage and have all your blog posts appear on a different page within your blog. That is exactly what the folks in the ELL department decided to do. To make this happen on your website do the following.
The custom menu allows you to organize links on the site. You can add links to pages, post categories, and other websites. The nice part of the custom menu is that it is all organized by drag and drop. You get to determine the order and can even create drop downs by simply moving a link to the right. Here is an image of what a custom menu looks like.
Notice the indented menu items? These are the drop downs that are generated when viewing the website. To build your custom menu you select items from the right column and add them to the menu. Once in the menu the item can be moved around simply by dragging it from place to place. Each theme is a little different so you have to tell your theme to use the custom menu. This is especially true when switching themes.
That’s it. iBlog allows you to have control over the user experience. You can customize your site as you want. Each department and teacher has the ability to create a fantastic experience for the viewer.
