how to add link

dear sir,
u show us how to add tag box, video... but how do we add link?
what is the web-page to go for creating link?
as we can only post and view blog under Designing Learning Experiences, i can't cut and paste the html from here... my own church blogpage has no link.. so thinking of adding it in...
ac//

Cute Virus...I mean dog

No, I don't think that participating in a blog will enable you to catch viruses. And it is definitely not a "Mac is safer than PC situation." The majority of bloggers are not Mac users. In fact, it is more of a pain blogging using Mac on Blogger site than on PC.

Where's everybody?

I called, but nobody came.
I invited, but there were none to be found.

So what does it take to get people into a community blog?

What are reasons why people want to use blogs? What are reasons why people don't want to use blogs?

My information on phobias

Hi All

A few of you have started your blogs already. I want to invite you to click on our designinglearningexperiences site which is the other blog you will have access to.

On the topic of phobias, you probably have done searches on the internet and discovered the sites I got my information from. Actually, there are a few sites you will come across when you do a Google search. I used the search term "Common Phobias" and the first site listed was this one. Notice how I created a link to the site, which is what good blogging does. A good blog site remains sticky because it invites people elsewhere (that is kind of ironic isn't it?). Here's another site which gives good information about 10 common phobias. I did'nt know that arachnophobia and sociophobia were top two. Any thoughts? Scared of spiders?


O, here is a funny video about Triskaidekaphobia - the fear of 13!

Community Blogging

Hi All

Last night I introduced to the class the idea of community blogging. What you need to do is to respond to the email invitations I sent you to join our blog.

To do that, you need to create an account (which means you need to set up your blog). That means creating a user id and a password (which is like setting up a yahoo, hotmail or gmail account). Actually, sometimes it helps to keep the same user id as your email account so that you don't have to remember another set of id/password.

The name of your blog ie the "xxxxxxxxxx" part in http://xxxxxxxxxx.blogspot.com should reflect what your blog is all about. Don't forget to put in a post and publish.

But the idea of the community blog is for you to write in our common blog http://designinglearningexperiences.blogspot.com. I set for us a topic yesterday, which is "Phobias."

If you don't know much about phobias, do a Google search and you will be surprised what you can find there. After you have done some of this, we will try to talk about the idea of phobias in our community blog. The questions below are just a guide for your discussion.

1. What are some phobias faced by people?

2. In our blog, identify a few phobias and discuss how they impact our everyday lives. Illustrate with examples you know of.

Just some guidelines about discussion in this virtual space. I know you may discover interesting things about phobias that you want to talk about. If there is a link to a great site, link us up and briefly describe what it is all about. Don't copy the entire website information and paste in your entry.

Also, try to interact with each other. Pick up a thread from someone else's post and comment/build on that. Otherwise, we will get parallel developments with little intersections at all.

Enjoy your blogging experience and try to be as active as possible.

Wow, how did he get the text to move like that? (ask the question next lesson)

Lesson about Blogging

Hello All

Today's lesson is about how to blog. One of the reasons why I am so interested in what's happening in the blogsphere is because of its influence on the 4/14 window. I hope the lesson was helpful and can add an additional layer of insight into your ministry of Christian education.

Happy Easter

Dear Class

Sorry about not being able to be with you last class. I wish you the Lord's warm blessings this Easter.

Mr Chong

Quiz Question

Which prophet said this and where?



a) Obadiah
b) Jonah
c) Habakkuk
d) Isaiah

Ans: Click Here

Session Two: Animated Gif Projects

Sorry for the rather brain taxing activity put at the end of your day yesterday. I should have let you do some exercises in production, rather in the research. But the idea was to give you an experience which involved research ---> production.

Anyways, below is a link to the map site: Bible.org site

Notice I have embedded a picture of Jesus walking on the water in the Lake of Galilee!

Two other sites you will like include Bible Resource Center and Anova.org

Fire? Click here for fire images

Stick figures? Click here for some animated stick figures. Better still, there is a free program call Pivot Stickfigure Animator which helps you to make stick figures. Here is a write up:

Pivot Stickfigure Animator is a unique software, that allows you to create stick figure animations easily and without any artistic skills. You can move the sections of the sick figure and easily create a chain of animation frames that can be previewed as you go. You can use more than one stick-figure in the animation, and even create your own stick figures using an easy to use visual editor that lets you assemble objects out of lines and circles. In addition, you can optionally set animation size, speed and more. The result can be saved as animated GIF file. Fun and easy to use, surprisingly well featured.

Finally, you can create some nice words using fancy fonts at http://www.3dtextmaker.com/

Here is a sample:

Josephine and Co's product

Here is the animated gif which Josephine and her group did.

Session One: Intro and Creating visual content using UnFREEz

The focus of this session was to use an animated gif maker software called UnFREEz to make visual content. If you look carefully at how the name is spelt, you will notice that the emphasis in the name is on the word "FREE". That's right, the software can be downloaded for free.

But what are animated gifs? Here is a definition of what animated gifs are which is provided by PCMagazine.com.

Two things I would like you to remember when creating animated gifs.
1) The image files you use must be in .gif format. JPG, TIFF, PNG, PSD, etc. formats will not work.

2) All images need to be of the same size. It is for this reason that I would recommend that when your images are of unequal size, embed them in Powerpoint, save the slides in .gif format, and then upload your identical sized images into UnFREEz.

Click here to see a sample of very simple content created by me. Remember if an old guy like me can do it, so can you!

Welcome to hours of creative fun.

Syllabus for Part 2

OK. Here's what we will be working on in this course:

Session One (23 March)
a) Restating our vision and our goals in Christian Education
b) From theory into practice; using UnFREEz and Powerpoint to create visual content

Session Two (30 March)
Using UnFREEz and Powerpoint for designing learning experiences

Session Three (6 April)
Introduction to Web Generators and other online resources

Maundy Thursday (13 April)
No class. Click here for substitute.

Session Four (20 April)
Introduction to online learning spaces: Blogger.com, multiply.com, tapped-in.org, Nicenet.org, as well as online sites which can host the visual and audio content created.

Session Five (27 April)
Designing and enabling community learning in online learning spaces; community blogging, instant messaging, Voice over IP, video conferencing, etc.

Session Six(4 May)
Introduction to Webquest learning experiences

Session Seven (11 May)
Designing webquest for learning in the church using the Introduction-Task_Resource_process-Evaluation-Conclusion template.

Welcome to the course!

Welcome to the Designing Learning Experiences for the Church in the 21st C (Pt 2) course. This second part will see alot more use of educational technology and whole host of Internet resources out there.

We live in a world in which the Internet has pervasive presence. That being so, a lot of the teaching learning functions can be extended beyond the traditional learning spaces. What is more, computers and the Internet offers what is called unique "affordances," the enabling as well as limiting properties that are perceived and experiences in the online learning environment.

Some of these enabling abilities, and connections to a host of resources will be explored in this class, with the goal of being familiar enough with them to design learning experiences using tools and resources in the virtual world to shape the minds and hearts of the church.

I trust that our time will be fruitful.

Mr Chong

He is no fool who loses what he cannot gain, in order to gain what he cannot lose! - Jim Elliot