Dr. Dellinger Blogs

Dr. Dellinger is going to China from April 8 to April 21.
He will keep in touch with us via his blog.
Here is the link:
http://dellingerblog.blogspot.com

Still trying to upload a video and have it play successfully in Blogger

I had a lot of trouble uploading videos to the blog. They would play in the preview mode when I was in the "dashboard" view of my blog, but there would be a blank area with a little white box with as red x in it.
I deleted the post (actually updating this on Sunday, April 20, 2008), and then I uploaded a small video I had created using PhotoStory3. This one uploaded and played in the blog itself.

I still want to have the blog by M. Wensch be able to play here instead.

The video won't play at home, either.

Well, since the video won't play on my home computer where there is no blocking, it must be some other problem. Back to the drawing board.

The Experiment Continues

Well, I uploaded the converted video from my desktop to my blog. The upload time was not too bad, but it took a long time to publish it to my blog.
Unfortunately, when I went to look at the new blog post at school, there was a red x in a little white box where the video should be playing.
I went back into Blogger to "edit" my post and clicked on preview. The video played fine there, so there wasn't a problem with uploading it. Even converted to a .mpg in Zamzar, it must keep some of the coding that lets the blocking software know the video originates from YouTube.
I will have to see if the video will play when I am on my home computer.
It's all a leaning experience.
We have to work out the bugs.

Using Zamzar to convert a YouTube video

I followed Warren's instructions and was able to copy the video that is blocked in my entry below. The video file that I saved to the the new server on Drive Y is over 46mb, and I'm concerned about uploading it to this blog as I'm not sure of limitations. Well, I'll give it a try. If it uploads properly, this will be a good way to deal with the blocking of YouTube at school.

March 18, 2008 - I just deleted the uploaded movie. When I used Zamzar, I converted the movie from YouTube (Flash format) into an .mpg. When I clicked on the filmstrip to see about uploading it again, I saw that Blogger will accept the following formats: AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media. There is a 100MB limit.
I am going to try and convert the file into one of the accepted formats and upload it again - another day.

YouTube Blocking at School

The video I embedded played at home, but when I opened my blog at school, there was only a shadow of the box where it would play. That is because YouTube is blocked. I fully understand why it is blocked and agree with the policy. It is unfortunate that some people mount such inappropriate content on YouTube which is a repository for some very good video selections.
I am going to try and follow Warren's directions on using the newly-created video server space and see if I can embed this video so it will be available.

By the way, the times on these posts are incorrect. I have to figure out how to adjust the settings in the blog to reflect the correct time. I was not up and working on the blog at 3:00 in the morning.

Trying to Embed a video from youtube

The Machine is Us/ing Us - Final Version by MWesch

I will be atttending the 6th Annual Northeast Media Literacy conference at UConn on April 11, 2008.
The author of this video is one of the keynote speakers.

The Library of Congress gets into the act with Flicker

There never seem to be enough hours in the day to get stuff done. I was out researching on the Library of Congress site, looking for resources for the Great Depression to be used in an English class prior to the students' reading of Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck. When I got to the home page, I saw that the Library of Congress is embracing Web 2.0 technology offered by Flicker. Here is the proposed project:

"Offering historical photograph collections through Flickr gives the Library of Congress a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images with a new visual community."

"We are offering two sets of digitized photos: the 1,600 color images from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and about 1,500 images from the George Grantham Bain News Service. Why these photos? They have long been popular with visitors to the Library; they have no known restrictions on publication or distribution, and they have high resolution scans. We look forward to learning what kinds of tags and comments these images inspire. "
We are truly moving into a collaborative culture where everyone's opinion can count and be heard.
How can we use this with our students?

This is the link to the Library of Congress page:

http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/flickr_pilot.html

Getting Started Again in a New Year

Week #3, Thingie #5 (Flicker)
Well, things got very busy at the end of 2007. That coupled with the fact that I got a chest cold that wouldn't let go for nearly four weeks slowed down my progress with my Classroom Learning 2.0 project.
Tonight, I finally got the energy to go back into the 23 things page, review what I'd done, and get ready to forge ahead.
I registered my blog on the Classroom Learning 2.0 site. I won't be able to receive moderation from the administrators there, but I hope to connect to other users through blog rolls - something else new for me.
I also went out to Flicker and started familiarizing myself with that site. I am already a member of Shutterfly and have posted many pictures there. On Shutterfly, most of my pictures are available by invitation only. I do have a number of nice nature pictures I am willing to share, so soon I will try uploading some of them to Flicker.
I also need to try and use Flicker's blogging tool to upload a picture from their site and comment on it.
It's getting late, and I must go to bed. It's been a busy two weeks with lots of active teaching. I've been working with the 7th grade science teachers. They did a lab with their students called "By Golly, By Gum" where the students weighed unchewed and chewed pieces of gum and then figured out the difference, the ratio, and the percentage of sugar. I transformed the math they had done with calculators into an introductory Excel exercise - a first introduction to using formulas in Excel for most of the kids. They also graphed their results. The student feedback was positive, so I feel really good about the lesson.

Updating My Avatar

I haven't been to the Yahoo avatar creation page in a while. As the old saying goes, it you don't use it, you lose it. I updated the background for my avatar from a coffee shop to a computer lab background. Then I searched around for how to update it on the blog. I did not find a way.
In fact, I cannot remember how I got it onto my blog in the first place. This is all the more reason for keeping a blog and Google Notebook. If you write procedures down in one of these online places, you have access to the notes from any computer, anywhere.
When I logged back onto my blog for the project, my avatar was there, and the background had automatically updated. It is all connected. This is a good thing, but it's also kind of scarey.