Friday, July 24, 2009

Blogs I Read

I thought I'd start with some of the Blogs that I read and introduce others to them, as well as explain how I keep up with them.

Teachers Love Smartboards--http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/--This blog is about Smartboards as you may well have guessed. It is written by a content developer for SmartTechnologies and he posts different resources, information about online trainings, as well as cool websites for use with Smartboards.

SMDTeacher--http://smdteacher.blogspot.com/--This blog is posted by a teacher of students with significant cognitive disabilities. The posts are about her classroom, technology, and projects she does. She also has a nice sidebar that lets you jump to posts based on topics listed.

Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs--http://teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.com/--This blog is posted by another classroom teacher of students with significant cognitive and other disabilities. Her posts are amazing and also can be listened to rather than read.

Yuichi's Games--http://yuichisgames.blogspot.com/--This blog is written by a content developer at Mayer Johnson for BoardMaker. Lots of good BoardMaker tips as well as information about places to find materials adapted with BoardMaker products

5 Minutes for Special Needs--http://www.5minutesforspecialneeds.com/--I am new to this blog but it seems to be a mismosh of posts relating to content about special needs children. Each day seems to have its own theme and writer.

Autisable--http://www.autisable.com/--This blog is a part of the network for my personal blog. This features mostly personal stories of individuals with autism or parents of children with autism. This blog seems to focus a lot on the Asperger's side of autism.

Now, as a teacher, I don't have lots and lots of time to go surfing over to each site to see if it has updated or not. I read all my blogs in one place--my google homepage. If you don't have one, you should get one--go to www.google.com/ig . My google homepage shows the three most recent posts and I simply click a button to read it right there in my google homepage. You can also add a plethora of other fun gadgets, like horoscopes, weather, driving directions, etc to your google homepage. You do not have to have a Gmail account to have a google homepage.
It's pretty easy to add gadgets to your webpage but adding websites is a teeny bit trickier. Here's how you do it.
1. At the top of your Google homepage, in the right hand corner, you should see a link that says "Add Stuff >>" Click on that.









2. That should take you to a page that shows many gadgets you can add. But we want to add a webpage. Mid page on the left side you should see a link that says "Add feed or gadget". Click on that.

3. You should see a box with the "http://" in it. Simply copy and paste the address of the blog you want to follow and click add.




4. You should then see a message verifying that Google has added this link to your homepage. If you have an error, check that you have the correct web address in the box.



5.Click the X in the box and head back to your Google homepage.

6. You should now see a box with the title of the website you are following on your Google homepage. You can drag that box to a different location on your homepage by putting your cursor on the title bar and clicking on the multidirectional area and dragging the box around your homepage.



7. To read a post, simply click on the plus sign and the text of the post will display in the window. If you click on the post, a separate window will pop up and you can read the post on the actual website itself!




Why don't you go ahead and try adding me to your Google homepage? :) Do you have any blogs to recommend? Go ahead and share in the comments section!

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