Category: Ako | Learn

Embedding a photo

There are many ways to insert a photo into your blog post. If you are looking for a high quality image, like we wanted for the artist statement blog posts that we were working on this week at Cpastal Taranaki School, then embedding the photo is a good way to go. This will give you a higher quality image (less fizzy) than other options, such as uploading a screenshot into the media folder.

Here’s how:

  • Click on the photo you would like to embed to open it.
  • Click on the three vertacle dots (skinny snowman) in the top right corner.
  • If the option to ’embed item’ shows up, go ahead and click it. If not your may need to  select ‘open in another window’ and then repeat the process so that the embed option shows up.
  • Select and copy the embed code.
  • On a new tab, open your new post on Edublogs. Click the ‘text’ tab, and paste in the code.

And you’re done! When you click back onto the visual tab, you should see your embedded photo in all it’s high quality glory.

Here’s an example of an embedded photo:

And here is the same photo inserted as a screenshot instead:

Do you notice any difference in the quality between these two pictures?

Reflecting on Student Reading Preferences: Insights from RPI Reading Survey

As part of the Manaiakalani Reading Intensive Programme, I recently conducted a reading survey with a class of Year 4 and 5 students. The aim of the survey was to investigate the reading habits of students, offering valuable insights into their preferences and behaviours when it comes to reading.

Administering the survey with the class posed a few challenges. Many students found it tricky to read the questions independently and required one-on-one support to navigate through the survey. Reflecting on past experiences, I think that using more visual continuums, such as smiley faces, might have been a more accessible approach for these students. Additionally, some students encountered difficulties with the questions about their favourite books. Many couldn’t recall specific titles or simply chose whichever books were readily available from the class library. Despite these challenges, the survey served as a valuable tool for gaining insights into how students perceive themselves as readers. 

The survey results revealed some interesting information about how students see themselves as readers, with some trends standing out. Firstly, it’s encouraging to note that the majority of students appear to have a genuine enjoyment for reading within the school environment. The survey also highlights that a significant portion of students engage in reading for pleasure. Picture books, scary stories, and mystery novels seem to be the most commonly favoured genres among this group of students. These findings reinforce the importance of providing a rich and varied reading diet for students in the classroom reading programme.

Alongside these positive findings, there were also some areas of concern: approximately 34% of students currently do not partake in reading for enjoyment, and while the majority of the class do appear to enjoy reading, there are a handful that indicated that this was not the case for them. These are areas that I would delve into further as a classroom teacher. I loved the idea of getting the class involved to come up with possible solutions to try, and I would definitely be giving this a go in my classroom. 

The survey results provide valuable insights into the reading habits of students, which arms teachers with information that can be used to tailor the classroom teaching program to better meet the needs of the students.

Creative writing competition – how to embed a doc

To embed the doc: File – Share – publish to the web – Embed and click publish. Copy the code and paste it into the text tab on your post.

Write a reflection: Write a short summary of your story, tell us why you have written it and what you have learnt. Add a question at the end to encourage feedback (comments) from your readers.

To change the embed code so that your doc takes up the whole screen:

Add sizing into the HTML

Original HTML: <iframe src=”https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRV8nj8HA-RzgZ0_SdWznaJjEn24j1QO4MBcf1XDS6w6mVdZB260LGmfZGIuMYx-nxjCbzjF4kL_ZKq/pub?embedded=true”></iframe>

Remove the end of the HTML </iframe>

Add width=”840″ height=”880″>

Your new embed code will look something like this:

<iframe src=”https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRV8nj8HA-RzgZ0_SdWznaJjEn24j1QO4MBcf1XDS6w6mVdZB260LGmfZGIuMYx-nxjCbzjF4kL_ZKq/pub?embedded=true”width=”840″ height=”880″>

 

Taranaki Orientation 2022

Yesterday we had a very successful orientation day at Coastal Taranaki School! This first section of our session, where we tried to ‘DO’ Manaiakalani in 10 slides or less was a bit of a challenge – but I think we pulled it off (by cramming the speaker notes instead).

Hello world!

Welcome to your brand new blog at Edublogs!

To get started, simply visit your blog’s dashboard, edit or delete this post and check out all the other options available to you.

Like more help?

We can walk you through step-by-step in our guide to getting started with your blog.

Happy blogging!

Online Digital Fluency Intensive: Day One

I really enjoyed hearing the Manaiakalani origin story. I now have a clearer understanding of the motivations behind the project. I love the Learn, create, share philosophy. It was so evident in the way the whole DFI ran. A super simple principle and easy to replicate the format in classrooms. It was great to experience it first hand!

I found the Marie Kondo session really helpful. It was great to get some tips about how to organise my Drive effectively. Getting systems set up properly right from the beginning will help me work more efficiently and save me so much time in future!

It was great to find out about some of the extra google doc functions. I was especially excited about being introduced to Explore as a way of sourcing copyright free images. This is something that I think will be very useful with students. I also loved the use of the remove.bg website to help remove backgrounds from images and videos! This would be a really user friendly alternative to green screens.

I’ve already put my new learning into practice to create a manual for our nanny to help share information about the kid’s routines and timetables so that my transition to work goes as smoothly as possible!