tumblr

Yo! The word on the virtual street is that tumblr.com is the new Blogger, Twitter Wiki and Facebook all in one. Just opened a personal account to check it out and it seems very user-friendly. It's like a blog but with multiple pages like a wiki but you follow and are followed like Twitter and see your friends' updates like FB and can retweet them like the aforementioned. Not sure if it would be used collaboratively like a wiki/blog or get students to open one each...

ActivInspire - using a personal profile to save your settings on IWBs

Did you know that you create a personal profile with your favourite settings? This means that when you open up ActivInspire it will always show the same set of tools, the background colour of pages etc that you have decided on.

• With ActivInspire open (in the staffroom or classroom, it doesn't matter which), select Edit from the top menu and select Profiles...

 

•  Now you can set your flipchart page colour

 

• Choose what tools appear on the toolbar

 

• And decide how many colours appear in your palette

• You can also make sure that ActivInspires shared resources - images, sounds, backgrounds etc - load and are available for you to use (on some computers in the staffroom they haven't been loading)

• To do this, click on settings and uncheck Use default 'Shared Resources' path
• Click on .... next to Shared resources file

• And this window will open. On My Computer find the T:drive > Materials > ActivInspire Resources

• Now click on the little disk with the pencil (top right-hand corner) to save your profile

 

• Save it wherever you want to on your computer (perhaps the T.drive is best then it will be accessable from both staffroom and classroom)

 

• Now when you click on Shared Resources in the Resource Browser (if you can't see this on the right of your flipchart, select View > Browsers), all the resources should be available for you to use.

 

• If you need to load your profile in a classroom. Again, select Edit from the top menu and select Profiles and click on the folder symbol (top right-hand corner) and find it on your computer where you saved it.