Sunday, September 22, 2013

Chasing Grades Redux

I've just finished a complete overhaul of the blog template.  I really loathe using default templates.  The bg is two textures I've made tweaked a bit and made tiling, then added a bit off CSS to fine tune the theme.  I love coding.  Had been meaning to do this for a while but hadn't really decided what direction I wanted to go.  I wanted to reflect my style and aesthetics a bit.  I'm not into all those hot pink and chevron teacher blogs.

Chase's favorite color is red, so I wanted to add that.  I'm working on a blog design for him as well and a new website to host the 'Class' blog.  I didn't really like KidBlog, though it served its purpose.  They've now updated their plans to actually reduce the things that were free before.  And there is now a premium option for custom blogs.  But we weren't able to post some of the embeds I wanted Chase to learn how to do.  Blogger is way more flexible and offers the same level of privacy.

I'm still tweaking Chase's blog preferences and privacy levels, so I'm not linking to that just yet.  Comments there will be moderated, and he will  be getting another discussion on internet safety, etc.  I want him to be able to use social media fluently, but he won't be allowed a Facebook until he's 13, as Facebook rules allow.

I'm trying to interest him in writing and blogging in different styles, such as audio and video and adding images.  Also, I'll be giving him assignments that teach him how to use the internet as a research tool whilst accrediting sources.  We watched a great video on Brain Pop about copyrights and attribution instead of copy and pasting.  It taught him about paraphrasing, and had a quiz at the end to remind him what everything meant.

Wednesday, I'm planning to do School Pictures.  We need to do something for Grandparents Day as well.  My Mom has been waiting for us to visit for too long.  And she is very sad right now, as her little dog of 13 years just passed away recently.  Borrowing the truck is never an easy feat.  We'll have to come up with something.  Her birthday is coming up soon.

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