New look for our mobile blog

It's taken me a while to work out that there are quite a few new looks available for our Tumblr mobile blog. In the end I went for this fetching wooden desk and polaroid frames option. If you haven't had a go at Tumbling yet, here's a reminder of the email address:

cikrist290@tumblr.com

Using this address you can post quotes, pictures or regular blog entries direct from your mobile phone. There's even an option to post audio but, unless you have the iPhone app, you may need to go to the website for this.

The Island

When I first joined the school, nearly 20 years ago, and began teaching in the English Faculty, there were a number of resources created by The English Centre which were designed to encourage students to produce a variety of texts for particular purposes and audiences. The trend then was to teach writing in the context of extended projects, often with a multi-disciplinary element thrown in. Then, of course, came the National Curriculum.

One of the resources that proved popular with teachers (and some students) was "The Island". This small booklet (accompanied by another with a similar theme called "School Under Siege") provided a range of writing tasks linked to a dramatic scenario. In the case of "The Island", the class was meant to imagine that they had been marooned on an island, cut off from civilisation and were responsible for their survival. 20 years later and "The Island" is making a strong recovery at Thomas Tallis School as a stimulus for thematic study at KS3. This may have something to do with the disappearance of KS3 tests but it may also be because all good resources are eventually taken up by a new generation of teachers.

However, this being the 21st century, there are things we can attempt today that were impossible back in the early 1990s. One of my colleagues asked me this afternoon if I could help him set up a blog for his English class so that they could use it to post their experiences of being desert islanders. This was really easy to do and here is the link. Whilst I was at it, it seemed like a good idea to create a website where more resources could be located. We are hoping that this site will become a resource that other teachers may want to refer to when they get stuck into "The Island".


We are also hoping that students will blog in and outside school and get their parents involved. The opportunities for peer and teacher assessment online are really exciting and it will be cool to see thye story of their island adventure taking shape online and shared instantly. I think we should keep a close eye on this experiment and lend it our support by getting involved in commenting on the posts.

Our new mobile phone blog

Working on the principle that one can't have enough blogs I've set up a new mobile phone blog (moblog) using the excellent Tumblr. Now there's no need to sit in front of your computer to blog about creativity at Tallis. Make a note of the following email address, add it to your contacts and use it to text or picture message content to the mobile blog. The application cleverly recognises the type of message you have sent - pictures, text, quotations, even chat - and formats the entry accordingly. You can also integrate the service with other social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook:

Creative Tallis Tumblr mobile blog

cikrist290@tumblr.com

If you're new to blogging and want to try something simple and flexible I strongly recommend Tumblr.

Dipity Timelines

Dipity is a cool online service that allows you to create a timeline. This can be automated using a variety of feeds (e.g. blogs, Twitter, Flickr etc) or you can add information manually. I've set up a Creative Tallis Dipity account. Here are the details:

Username: creativetallis
Password: kidbrooke

At the moment the information is popultade via feeds from this blog, our Twitter page and our new Flickr site. If you'd like to post to the Flickr site, the login details are as above. I've only had a quick play with Dipity but I can see lots of useful applications. Each manual post can have several sources of information associated with it - video links, pictures, text and, crucially, a date or period of time. I am currently attempting to create a blog so that students who wish to study for an A level in History of Art can do so via the internet without having to attend any formal lessons. I will be using Dipity to keep track of the learning and post useful resources.

What uses can you think of for this tool?

New Look

I was getting a bit bored with the standard Blogger template we were using so I've taken the liberty of opting for a bit of a re-design. There are a dizzying variety of styles to choose from. I did a simple web search and discovered hundreds of free downloadable templates. Once the zip file has been downloaded and expanded to reveal the xml file, it's simply a matter of uploading it to your blog on the Layout page. You lose your widgets in the process, but it hasn't taken me too long to move things around a bit and re-establish what was there before (almost). I chose a template that suggested ideas scribbled on the back of an envelope (thanks for the prompt Mr Hawes). I also like the suggestion of something handmade. The heading area does take up rather a lot of screen space and you may find yourself scrolling more than you used to in order to access the posts and links, but I hope you like the new look.