Day 4 of 20 Days to BlogTastic - Linking it Together

Phew!  Last challenge for this week... 
Thanks to all of you who've stopped by this week and tried out the challenges, there have been some great blogs showcased in the comments.  Remember you can get the list of all the blogs that have been shared over the last few days here on Day 2's challenge

Today is Day 4 of 20 Days to BlogTastic if you'd like more information about this training please click here

We're going to look making your blog a landing page for your class today - linking it to all of your digital content that you currently use and hope to use this term. 

This is one of the best ways to ensure your blog becomes an integral part of your classroom and not just another add on that starts off great and then dies away.

Creating Pages
We're going to create a page for reading, writing and maths as those tend to be the big three areas teachers have digital content in.  I'd also recommend you look at creating a page for your term topic/theme/inquiry once you're a bit further down the track.

I use these pages to link to websites, games, and activities we use on a regular basis.  Here are a few examples of pages I've created on the training blog.

This video explains how to create new pages for your blog

You can treat a page just like a post and add text, images and video to them the same way as I talked about in Day 3's challenge. 

For a bit more flexibility you might like to try adding Google Drawings to your pages.  This next section explains how to do that.

Adding Google Drawings to Pages
This video explains how to create the images similar to those that are in the training blog using Google Drawing.

If you're after something a little different Chris Betcher created this video that explains how to create image maps through google drawings

This video explains how to add images and image maps created in google drawing to your blog page.

Here's the code I was talking about in the video above, the blue highlighted text shows where you paste the link from the drawing you've created, the pink highlighted text shows where you can change the height and width of the drawing:

<iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="800" id="281101257" mozallowfullscreen="true" src="https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1BxPOwThWAs32MOmYqsGwz3tatYYb8U5S0oC5HYUdc6k/preview?authuser=0&amp;h=800&amp;hl=en&amp;w=500" webkitallowfullscreen="true" width="500"></iframe>



What do you put in pages?
Whatever works for you and your students.  Things like links to activities, login pages, challenges etc. that you're currently using.  If you don't currently use any digital content in your classroom here are a few starting points for you:

Maths

• A Kids Heart
• Decimal Squares
• Skoolbo (Note there is a desktop and tablet app for this - Chromebooks use the website)
• Mathopolis
• Math Playground
• Piory Woods

Literacy

• Starfall
• Candle Light Stories
• British Council - learning English
• PBS Kids - Between the Lions

All Areas

• ABCya
• CrickWeb

There are thousands of online activities for students these are just a few pre-made ones you might like to start with.  Google your topic or search on Pinterest and see what else you can find. 

You could also try making your own activities ... that's probably a whole different training.

Adding a navigation bar for pages
You'll need to give your blog readers and easy way to get to your blog pages. There are a few different ways you can do this, I find the easiest way is to create a navigation bar that sits just after your blog header and description.  You can also add it as a links gadget to your sidebar.

Here's a video that explains how to add a navigation bar or a pages gadget

Other Ways of Adding links to your Blog
There are lots of different ways to add links to useful digital content to your blog.  Here are a few you might like to try... 
Symbaloo
Google Site
Wikispace
Pinterest (Students older than 13+ as account required to view)
Learni.st 
You can add a link to an external site to your navigation bar.  I've done this on the Training blog for our school site.  The navigation bar video above includes instructions on how to add links to an external site to your blog.

Today you need to create at least one page for your blog and add links to other digital content you currently use or you're going to use.  Once you've created your page add a link to your class blog in the comments of this post so we can take a peek.

Have you completed the challenge?

Remember to update your challenge spreadsheet!  

If you'd like to join the challenge please click here for more information

See you tomorrow!