Group items tagged

"Blogging is an important part of who I am as a professional. I can use this space to share resources with you, reflect on my own practice and try to figure out how to be a better educator. It is my public reflection on technology, leadership and learning. Think about when you were in school. You write an essay. Who read it? Most likely the teacher and that is where it ended. You pour hours and hours into reflections on Shakespear, the economic and political effects of wars on society or how plants have evolved over time, yet the only person who read your thoughts are the teacher. Maybe you shared with a close friend or even the class. But generally the world was unaware of your thoughts and feelings. Blogging changes that for kids. Now the audience is global and anyone can read, and in some cases respond and comment. Kids can post their writing, projects, thoughts and reflections. Teachers can provide prompts or starters and kids can pick up and run with it. More and more teachers and classrooms are embracing blogging in the classroom. You're thinking about it, but are unsure where to even start or how to get started. Lets take a look at some classroom blogging resources to get started with. There are lots of platforms to use. And the one you pick will depend on your district (blocked or not, policies, etc.) and how you want to manage them. Two very popular platforms are Edublogs and Kidblog. Both are very teacher friendly and ofter lots of features that make management easy. Edublogs has a great Getting Started section that will walk you through creation of your blogs and how to use them in the classroom. "

A key point to remember for any teacher interested in integrating blogging into the curriculum is that blogs don't motivate students; wrestling with interesting ideas and interacting with others motivates students. The Our World, Our Stories project -- a six-week effort designed to pair elementary students in six different countries together through a shared blog -- is a great example of that principle in action. Each week, one class of students would create new posts around a different theme that were designed to introduce their country to their digital peers. Then, students in all six classes would leave comments for one another -- finding similarities and asking questions about the differences between their cultures. One lesson worth learning from the Our World, Our Stories project is that blogs don't HAVE to go on forever. Sometimes blogs focused on a single topic with a clearly defined starting and ending point are easier to tackle for both teachers and students. Another lesson worth learning is that shared blogs matter. Not only do shared blogs automatically give your students an audience, they make generating new content on a regular basis less intimidating.

"Accepting email contributions to your Posterous Spaces blog means that don't have to spend time walking students through creating log-in credentials for another service. Simply have students send an email to "yourblog'sname" @posterous.com and their posts can appear on the blog. It's the quickest way that I have found to get a classroom full of students contributing to one blog."

Several teachers at my new school are taking the leap of creating a classroom blog as their central hub for classroom communication. There are using blogger (integrated with our Google Apps for Education account) as the platform.

Their blogs are becoming a space to give students the opportunity to create the "perfect notes"to share with the classroom, parent and global community. How can we support students in documenting learning and to add value by adding extra research, resources or experiences that contribute to deepening of the topics discussed in class?

Justin Prophet, our school's 7th Grade Science teacher has developed the following

"These are ten of the many things I've learned from blogging since I started: As the school year starts, I thought I would share the ten most important things I have learned about blogging since I started 2 years ago:"

"Once a week, a new to-do pops up on my productivity software client that alerts me that it's time to do a blog entry. Most of the time I admire the line and proceed to complete a dozen other tasks that, if not completed, will affect my job performance. Yet, I am fully aware that I am a part-time Web 2.0 evangelist like many of you. Here are a few reasons why educators should blog:"

"In an information-hungry world, there will always be a need for expert content. And there will always be more readers and "retweeters" than there will be creators. If you want to have an impact, you might as well be the one setting the agenda by blogging your ideas. "

A nice example of how blogging -- particularly using the #comments4kids hashtag to elicit comments for student reflection -- can change traditional writing experiences for the better.

"This is a true story. Three years ago, an eleven-year-old blogger here on Edublogs wrote a post about his favorite lunch food - salami. As part of his post, he used Google Images to find a quick photo of salami that he then uploaded to his blog. Fast forward to now. Our Edublogs support team just received a lengthy cease and desist letter from a large law firm that represents the photographer of the salami photo. The formal letter describes all sorts of legal problems for Edublogs and the author of the blog should we not immediately remove the photo in question."

Linda Yollis's resource wiki for teachers who are interested in integrating blogging into their classroom.

A nice John Spencer bit that articulates a few options for classroom blogging projects.

"As regular readers of middle grades teacher Bill Ferriter's much admired blog The Tempered Radical, we've been following some of the adventures of his #SUGARKILLS Gang - a group of sixth grade science students who got passionately interested in the way sugary foods impact the American diet and psyche. Through their use of a dedicated blog and the Twitter hashtag #sugarkills, the students have been pushing out information about the often shocking amounts of sugar found in a variety of popular food items. To further the cause of "real-world learning," we asked Mr. Ferriter if we could interview the gang. Here's what we found out."

"The main point of writing this is to encourage more teachers to have a go. Whatever your role in a school, there will be people interested in your thoughts about what you do all day and how you think you can be more effective. Here are my tips: Top 10 don'ts when starting your blog:"

Not without pride, we are happy to notice that most of the bloggers using Foter.com attribute CC photos properly, which is greatly facilitated by our "ready to paste" attribution info. Every time they intend to use a searched image, all they need to do is copy the image and the accompanying attribution details into their blogs.

Most is not enough, though. People often find CC photos on various sites and wonder how to attribute them. In order to help you, our team prepared a comprehensive infographic that reflects interesting research findings, gives details of Creative Commons licenses and illustrates how to properly attribute CC photos.

We do hope it will contribute to the overall quality of posted materials and promote respect for copyright owners.

" I have spent today and will spend the next few days talking leadership with folks from around the country. Leading from the box doesn't really get us anywhere. If we stay in our silo and live in our own world can we say we really lead? Being a teacher-leader, curriculum leader, technology leader, or just a leader is about being public. Its about sharing and learning and growing together. So it bothers me when I hear people, powerful people, people in positions that could really drive change, say educators need to be connected, but in the same breath discount the validity of Twitter or other social networking tools. Their idea of connectedness is the traditional. Let's travel 1000's of miles to have a conversation over dinner about assessment or the Common Core. I can have the same conversations with many more people any time of day. That isn't to say that the face-to-face time isn't valuable. On the contrary, I value greatly that time I get to spend with others. But if we are truly going to drive change and make waves as educational leaders we have to plug in and get connected. We have to reach out and read blogs, send tweets, participate in forums."

"Take a twenty minute period in my life as evidenced below. I read a blog post found in my Reader feed, which leads me to a link on YouTube, that leads me to a quote, which leads me to the person who stated the quote, to find a link on their Twitter profile, only to find another article on something that I would have never found myself. I could go on from there, and I eventually will, but it is just amazing how one item, leads to another, and another, and so on. That is how learning should be; continuous, connected, and meaningful. If I wasn't interested in what was under the first link, I would have found another"

"Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word "publishing" means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That's not a job anymore. That's a button. There's a button that says "publish," and when you press it, it's done."

This is a great source for Edu Blogs updated daily: "Announcing the Teach100!" http://t.co/zHaULcFf #Edchat

"Since this blog is called "Practical Theory," I think it is important sometimes to show the powerful, practical work that kids can do. This is a PSA made by SLA 11th graders for their English class. We need to always remember that kids care deeply about their world, and they are capable of sharing a vision of that world when we give them the tools and give them the chance. What if high school wasn't just preparation for real life? When we treat high school as real life, kids can do work like this:"

"As I continue to work with groups, I focus on the importance of reflection and how it is crucial to moving forward. The challenge I have received (as with many initiatives) is that there is no time. My response has been that reflection is part of your work. It is important that you make it part of your day, as it should be a part of your student's day. We cannot just continue to dump information into our (and our student's) brains without giving or making time to reflect. It is essential that there is creation and connection along with consumption."