One of my favourite places to browse on blogs is the sidebar - it's prime real estate and there are literally thousands of widgets out there that you could use to dress it up and maximise it's potential! So if you have a self-hosted Wordpress theme, here are a selection of my favourite sidebar widgets! SOCIAL MEDIA ICONS 1. Simple Social Icons is by far my favourite social media icons widget. It's easy to use and looks great. 2. Web Font Social Icons Widget & Shortcode is another good one, but it is also a paid option - at $8.00 though, you can't go wrong! INSTAGRAM WIDGET 3. Enjoy Instagram is a neat and tidy Instagram solution. 4. SnapWidget is my personal favourite - you generate a code and use a text widget box to display it. 5. Instagram Feed is another really great plugin that you can use on your sidebar. PINTEREST WIDGET 6. Pinterest Pinboard Widget is my favourite Pinterest widget if you choose not to use the widget builder on the Pinterest website. 7. Pinterest Master is a neat tool that you can use to display your favourite Pinterest board. 8. Pretty Pinterest Pins lets you pick which boards and pins to display. TWITTER WIDGET 9. Easy Twitter Feed Widget will add your Twitter Feed to your sidebar. 10. AccessPress Twitter Feed allows you to display a real time Twitter Feed on your website, could be really useful if you are hosting a Twitter Chat! 11. Twitter Timeline Widget by Jetpack is another great way to display your latests Tweets on your sidebar. DISPLAY SPECIAL TEXT WIDGETS 12. WP Easy News Scroller is a paid app that allows you to display announcements and news on your blog sidebar. It's a one of $16 fee. 13. Quotes Collection is a great way to display testimonials on your sidebar. 14. Black Studio TinyMCE Widget adds a little visual editor to your text widget, meaning you really don't need to know any HTML or CSS! MAILING LIST WIDGETS 15. MailChimp for Wordpress is a godsend if you use MailChimp (which I recommend) for your email subscriptions! 16. Genesis eNews Extended is perfect for sign up forms on your sidebar if you are using one of the Brand IT Girl premade Genesis themes. POST, PAGE AND TAG WIDGETS 17. Advanced Tag List Widget displays your tags in a neat list rather than the default Wordpress cloud that can often be too messy! 18. jQuery Archive List makes it easy to display archived posts, breaking them down into year and month. MISC WIDGETS 19. Remove Widget Titles does just that, making it easier for you! 20. Simple Image Widget makes it easier to display images on your sidebar, giving you options like opening in a new tab! 21. Display Widgets allows you to choose what widgets you want displayed on what page, making your sidebar a really flexible space. That's just a few of the amazing range of widgets out there that you can use to dress up your sidebar. Which are your favourites? (Photo Credit: Alex Lv)
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I am always looking for ways to streamline data collection. In the past, I was only tracking the behavior of students if it was related to an IEP goal, or if we were beginning to notice a spike in behavior. And while this worked, it isn't always enough. This year I found a way to track all of my students' behavior in less than one minute a day... AND I don't even need to pick up a pen! To make this happen, I use two things: Google Forms (check below for the FREEBIE!) and an Amazon Fire tablet. While you don't need the tablet to use Google Forms, it does make it more convenient for staff to document behavior without having to access the computer. Google Forms is free and easy to use. It is basically a survey that gathers and analyzes any type of information. I will be honest, I have always been a bit resistant to using a tablet for data collection for a couple of reasons. 1. I give all of my tech to my students. 2. TECH IS EXPENSIVE! (or so I thought...) The Amazon Fire tablet is actually pretty inexpensive. You can typically find them for less than $50, which is a killer deal. Now that I have the tablet I find that I use it for far more than just data collection, but that's a topic for another post! Now that you know what I use, here is how you can make it for yourself! First, download a copy of the Google Forms Digital Classroom Behavior Log. Open the file and click on the link. You will be prompted to save a copy of the Google Forms template. Next, type all of your students' names in the left column. You can also change titles for each behavior rating to meet the needs of your classroom. And... that's it! Your form is all set up! Pretty easy, right!?! Now it is time to give it a test run and view your responses. Don't worry, you can delete your responses later. Click on the preview icon in the upper right corner. This will bring you to the actual form that you will fill out to track behavior. Select one of the behavior options for each student and add a note at the bottom to detail any incidents that happened during the day. Then hit the submit button to record your information. Click "submit another response" to head back to the form. Are you ready to take a look at your responses? Click on the orange pencil in the upper right corner to get into editing mode. Next, click on the responses tab. This will give you a your data in a bar graph. Hover over each bar to get more detailed information. You can also download the responses in a Google Sheets file. This is a great option if you need to find information from a specific date or time period. Now that you have had a chance to play around with the form, you may want to delete the information that you submitted so that you can start fresh with your students. Just click on the 3 dots in the upper right corner and select "delete all responses." This Google Form is easy to access from anywhere with an internet connection. All you need to do is access the URL. This can be done by creating a bookmark, or saving the link to your desktop. Would you like to see a video of these steps in action? Click on the video below and I will walk you through of the entire process. Are you ready to give it a try? I would love to hear how it goes for you! (This post contains Amazon affiliate links. I only link to products that I personally use and find beneficial. Please click HERE for more information.)
White balance is an often-overlooked aspect of photography. Many, many of us are guilty of simply adopting a "set it and forget it" approach to white balance, relying on auto white balance and our camera's ability to interpret a scene and choose an appropriate white balance. For many situations, your camera's auto white balance will do a decent job. But if you really want full creative control over your photograph, it is important to understand white balance and how to use it to truly capture the photograph that you are after. What is White Balance? We tend to think of light as white, even though we have all seen the science demonstration of a prism and how white light is actually the full rainbow of colors. Our eyes look at a white piece of paper, and we see it as white, whether we are standing outside in full sun, in dappled shade, or indoors under fluorescent tube lights. Our cameras, however, are less flexible. If you take a photograph of a white piece of paper, you may find that it looks white in daylight, blue in the shade, and yellow indoors. This difference is referred to the 'color temperature' of the light, and it is measured in K or Kelvins. If you want the whites in your photograph to look white, then you need to shoot with a white balance that matches the situation of the photograph. Canon has several different white balance options, other than Auto: Daylight (5200K), Cloudy (6000K), Shade (7000K), Tungsten (3200K), Fluorecent (4000K), Flash, and Custom. The photograph above demonstrates what each of these different white balance options look like for a single photograph. (Quick aside: if you shoot in JPEG, white balance is an unchangeable part of the final image file. If you shoot in RAW, however, the RAW file contains information that allows you to use software, like Photoshop, to change the white balance in post-processing, while still maintaining all the original information recorded for the photograph. The sunset photograph above is a composite of all the white balance options from a single RAW file.) Cloudy white balance works well for sunset shots. The cloudy and shade white balance settings are considered "warmer" than daylight or tungsten, which means that they tend to bring out more orange and yellow tones in a photograph. Cloudy and shade settings can work extremely well during the 'Golden Hour,' the approximately hour-long period before-and-after sunrise and sunset, when the sun rays lend a much more golden tone to the morning or evening light. The cloudy setting is also popular with landscape photographs, as it can add a golden tone to non-golden hour photographs. Read a few landscape photography books, and you will find that many well-known landscape photographers use cloudy as their default white balance setting. Indoor White Balance White balance can also make a huge difference with your indoor photographs. Common sources of indoor lighting (halogens, compact fluorescents, etc.) do not contain the full spectrum of white light, like sunlight, and often impart an awkward yellow tone to indoor photographs. Knowing the type of lighting you are using allows you to choose an appropriate white balance setting, like fluorescent, to compensate for this issue. Get the how to on this shot: Fizzy Photography Think about the lighting for the particular scene you are photographing, and consider changing your white balance to match the scene at hand. Shooting indoors? Consider fluorescent. Using your on-camera flash? Consider flash. Shooting a sunrise, sunset, or other scene with golden tones? Consider cloudy or shade. Better yet? Consider shooting in RAW and adjusting your white balance to your preference. Want to get your white balance exact? You can use a gray card to set the white balance manually. If there is enough interest, you can expect a future post on the topic of custom white balances. Want more great ideas? Follow Boost Your Photography on Pinterest: Boost Your Photography Boost Your Photography: Learn Your DSLR is now available from Amazon. Get the most out of your camera with practical advice about the technical and creative aspects of DSLR photography that will have you taking beautiful pictures right away.
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