How to Add Custom Favicon on Blogger Blogspot

You know you've "cyber made it" when a little caricature of you appears in the URL box of your blog. That's a sure sign of success. Check it out:

I will say, unapologetically, I am adorable in a URL box. Seriously.

How can you appear as a tiny, cute version of yourself in a URL box you ask, let me show you...

I started by searching, "Icon in url bar blogger" because I had no idea that what I was looking for had a name (of course it did) and that it was an easy fix. A "Favicon" or "Favorites Icon" is the little graphic located to the left of the URL in the browser box.

Step One: In your Blogger dashboard, click Layout:

Step Two: Click Edit on the Favicon gadget. If, at some point, you removed this gadget from your site, you'll need to go back in and Add a Gadget:

Step Three: A window will open, select Choose File and locate the image you'd like to use from your computer. Click Save and your Favicon should replace the Blogger logo. My logo did not appear immediately and I had to clear the cookies on my browser before it worked.

 One thing to keep in mind... Blogger will not accept images that are not perfectly square. I am not a graphic designer, so I simply adjusted the size of my image in Preview:

After clicking on Adjust Size, I unlocked the image (click on the padlock), and changed the dimensions. Play with it, I can take a bit of finessing to look right:

I am far from well-versed in all things techy, so I am constantly Googling (which is officially a word now. At least, according to spell check. If our ancestors could see us now, Googling fools) anything and everything about my blog. Here are a few sites that helped me in this process:

"How to Add or Change Favicon on Blogger Blogspot" by Helplogger
"Tutorial: How to Create a Custom Favicon for Your Blog" by Design Your Own Lovely Blog
"Custom Favicons" by Typepad Knowledge Base

---

Are you interested in having a too-cute-for-words caricature of you? Check out my post on getting Getting Melonheadz-ed and you, too can have a mini cartoon you.

New Toy!

Just found another new toy to play with and it's a good one! I'm talking, get sucked in for hours good. It's the Pulp-O-Mizer, a pulp magazine cover generator brought to us by Thrilling Tales of the Downright Unusual. Now, go play!

Top Discovery of the Week

I found the coolest thing ever! TeachingBooks.net has an audio Author Name Pronunciation Guide. Click on any one of 1,815+ audio recordings of authors and illustrators saying their names. Some even come complete with the story behind the name and funny anecdotes. Excellent discovery!

The I've-Been-Featured-Happy-Dance

That's right, I'm doing a little happy dance. Well, it's a rather big happy dance, actually. I've been featured! You might have noticed that I recently added to my blog, my Digital Age Teaching badge through Tamritz and was then featured in their newsletter! How exciting!

Tamritz is a digital badge learning network designed by Sarah Blattner, specifically geared towards Jewish day schools. I earned my Digital Age Teaching badge from Tamritz, which included the following badge courses: Learner 2.0, PLNs (Professional & Personal Learning Networks), Digital Citizenship, Create 2.0 and Learning Design. Course participants explore a variety of topics from social bookmarking to netiquette to copyright to game-based learning and beyond (way, way beyond).
 
Tamritz is currently accepting new students and courses for teachers start in June. Find the details here. It was a great experience and one I would highly recommend. Particularly to those that have a one-to-one or BYOD program or are currently exploring the idea of adopting such a program in the future.

Follow Tamritz on Twitter @TamritzLearning.

Perpetual student, that's me. Thank goodness there are always ample opportunities to learn cool stuff from cool people.

Teaching Minecraft. Sigh.

Actually, it's more like a double sigh. Or just two long days of sighing.

I am a fan of game-based learning and in my ambitious desire to meet students where they're at, I thought, "Ah, a Minecraft enrichment course. Perfect." Um... Not so perfect. The concept is perfect, but the process is far from it. I spent so many hours on the computer trying to get all of the students' MinecraftEdu accounts connected to one central server that, I'm quite certain, my eyeballs were spinning.

The idea that MinecraftEdu has taken a popular game and modified it to make it appropriate for classroom use is brilliant, if only I could get it to work. There are a multitude of videos, wikis, blogs and sites dedicated to helping people like me configure their account quickly and sans hair-pulling-out. Sadly, between firewalls, "unable to connect" messages and a loss of patience, I left the school with slumped shoulders and a frown. Fingers crossed that tomorrow will result in jumping for joy and celebratory high-fives. Wish me luck! And send advice if you have any!

P.S. - For any MinecraftEdu aficionados, I installed the MinecraftEdu Classroom and was able to successfully get on the server, but after installing the client on school iMacs, I just kept getting a message that it wasn't able to connect to the server. I was using the offline mode to avoid any firewall issues but it didn't seem to help.

P.P.S. - The IT guy was out sick today and I am hoping and hoping (and hoping some more) that 1) he'll be back tomorrow and 2) he'll snap his fingers and it will all work perfectly. It's generally the case that his mere proximity makes tech issues magically vanish. It's the whole the-car-works-perfect-when-you're-at-the-mechanic syndrome.

Animoto for Educators

I recently shared my introduction to Animoto, a video creation tool, and have been playing and creating ever since. In an effort to help teachers bring Animoto into their classrooms, I've put together a quick step-by-step tutorial.

Step One: Check out this tutorial video:

Step Two: Sign up for a general Animoto account here.

Step Three: Apply for the Animoto Educator benefits here. It can take a bit for education accounts to be approved, so I suggest starting with the basic account while you wait for approval. The educator account allows you access to more templates and offers more sharing options, while still being free. Yay, free!

Step Four: Time to start brainstorming! What would you like your video or digital story to be about? What would you like your students' videos to be about? Jot down ideas and then start to put them into a storyboard. Saskatoon Public Schools has posted some great storyboards, check out some examples here (lower school) and here (upper to middle school).

Step Five: Time to compile your images, Creative Commons is a great place to find tons of media that is copyright-friendly, start your search here. New to using Creative Commons or searching for images that are "copyright-friendly"? Talk to me about how to get started!

Step Six: Go to your Animoto account and click "Create."

Step Seven: Select a theme for your video. To preview the various themes, click and watch a short demonstration. Remember, until your educator account is approved or you pay to upgrade, many of the themes are unavailable to use.

Step Eight: Select your theme and click "Create Video."

Step Nine: Click the plus sign to add photos, videos or text. Remember to give credit when using the work of others.

Step Ten: Put your slides in the right order, add captions (if you'd like) and choose the song you like best.

Step Eleven: Preview your video and if you like it, PUBLISH!

Step Twelve: Share your video with others!

Check out another example I whipped up below or click here for some student examples.

Yet Another User-Friendly Tool

As I continue my journey of discovering exciting new-to-me tools, I was thrilled to get a crash course on Animoto, a web-based video creation program. In an attempt to harness my hope to prompt my students to explore topics they're interested in, I created my own little promotional video. I plan to use the video to open the unit and then move into a discussion about formulating research questions based on our own curiosities. Check out the video:

Podcast Practice

I've spent the last few weeks learning about fantastic digital tools to be used in the classroom through Tamritz Badge Learning and was recently introduced to the art of podcasting. Though I can't claim to be an artist, I do see a lot of library podcasting potential in our future! I think our kiddos would have a blast promoting the favorite books using PodOmatic, a easy-to-use podcast creation program. Check out my very first attempt at podcasting, using Gorgonzola: A Very STINKYsaurus by Margie Palatini:

P.S. - Just as a heads up, if you're recoding in the closet as an attempt to record without the interruption of spouses, children, pets or ... washing machines, your podcast will have a loud echo. And even after all that, they will still find you! :-)