Entries Tagged 'Blogging' ↓

I am in the 406 lab at Paris High School. We are having a class in blogging and wikis as I write this. This is a practice post to show the class the process.

There are a lot of ways to subscribe to blogs and news. I’m going to talk about the three web-based readers that I am most familiar with. If you have a different preference I would like to hear about it.

The first one is Pageflakes. Signing up for an account is free. Pageflakes allows you to create multiple pages with tabs across the top for moving between pages. You also have the option to make pages private or shared. There are multiple “flakes” you can add to your pages like local weather, message boards, and calendars. You can add feeds to blogs you read and any other site that generates an RSS feed.

Another site that lets you do many of things is NetVibes. NetVibes is a free web-based news aggregator and also lets you do a lot of customization. Both NetVibes and Pageflakes are very visual. Both will let you drag the pieces around the page to rearrange them any way you want. For me this usually means that the ones I read the most migrate to the top of the page.

A free newsreader that is not so visual but lets you sort your reading into folders is Bloglines. Here is a tutorial for using bloglines but there is also a lot of information on their website. I have used all three of these and find them all to work great - it just comes down to a matter of personal preference.

The best way to find blogs that interest you is to check out the blogroll on the sidebar of the blogs you have seen. Another way is to do a search by category on Technorati or Google Blogs.

You can see an example of a PageFlakes page here.

Blogs and wikis are simply webpages. They can be created easily without any knowledge of code.

Wiki’s are webpages that can be edited by a group of people. They can be public and have little control other than the monitoring and constant updating by an interested group of people (like Wikipedia) or they can be utilized by a smaller group with more control over who can edit and who can simply view.

Blogs are a series of written posts that are displayed in order of last written, first displayed. They are given “tags” which allow them to be found by others who are searching on a subject that matches the tags. Blogs can also be very public with as little or as much control over who takes part in the conversation as the blog owner wishes.

Where collaboration in a wiki takes place by people adding their pieces or sections and creating a “whole” out of those pieces; collaboration on a blog happens through the continuing conversations and the addition of links to other blogs that make up our own online “sphere of influence”.

These web tools allow us to easily create web content and become online learning communities. Combining these with feed readers so that we can build a subscription base to the changing content that interests us, we can create content, keep up with content created by others, take part in a continuing dialogue with multiple authors, track changes on a wiki page and more.

There are resources and handouts to help use the blogs and wikis that are on the server here at school but you can also use Blogger and free wikis such as PBwiki.

You will find document and presentation resources here and videos here.

To sign up for a an account on the wiki go here. Click create an account in the upper right corner and then click create an account on the login page. Follow the instructions.

We will cover this material in class but you can come back here at anytime and look back over material or check for updates.

The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has set up a blog called Learning 2.0. This blog contains a list of links containing 23 learning 2.0 things. The list is spread over a nine week period and contains links and tutorials to help you learn about blogging, Flickr, rss feeds and feedreaders, online image generators, library blogs, tagging and del.icio.us, technorati, wikis, online productivity sites, YouTube, and some sites for finding podcasts. The blog targets librarians but anyone who would like to get a “big picture” kind of tour, would find this a great starting place. If you follow the list of 23 things the way it is presented you will start your own blog and as you go through the rest of the list you will post on what you are learning.

If you go to their site make sure you check out the 7 and 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners presentation - it’s a wonderful presentation and the mission statement of the website is “Expanding Minds, Empowering Individuals, and Enriching the Community. You don’t have to take nine weeks to go through the list, but it is a great way to break down the pieces and give yourself a little time to reflect and play with what you learn. I love the way it is broken down and plan to learn from their example when I take some of these tools to my own campus. Thanks to them for doing such a great job! Thanks to Off the Shelf blog for pointing me to this great resource!

If you are confused about all this talk about web 2.0 or just want to let out your “inner geek” click over to this website and join in the fun.

The first one is an English class - Amerifun Literature Blog. The description says:

This is where my third hour class explores various ideas, topics, issues, and responses to text from American Literature, and delves into real world application and questions.

If you visit spend some time in the comments section.

Next is an honors World Civilizations class. In response to the post:

Here is an attempt to deal with an idea we only briefly discussed in class. How might our society in the US today be different if it were influenced heavily by either Hinduism or Buddhism? As we are talking about religion here, please try to keep your comments diplomatic - I have faith in all of you!

a student had this comment “I particularly appreciate comments from the people that realize that a religion is only as good as those who practice it. A theocracy under Buddhism or Hinduism is no better or worse than one under Christianity or Islam. All theocracies are extremely capable of oppression even though they go about it in different ways.”

Here’s one on Medicine class - they even got to observe in a cadaver lab!

Here s an elementary class wiki on the students’ favorite foods. They cast their votes and graphed the results. Then they opened things up for other students to add their favorite foods and to put where they were from so students could see how vistors from all over looked at their site.

The last ones for today are the verity math blog and the future of math which actually has some great information on blogging in the classroom including a pdf file of blog writing prompts.

I hope these examples give you a taste of what you can do. If you think you might be interested in trying something like these let me know and I will be glad to help you get set up.

A friend shared a link with me and I wanted to share it with you. The site is called Progressive U and their opening paragraph on their about page says the following:

Do you want to regenerate brain cells killed by countless hours on MySpace?*Do you need rehab to cure your Facebook addiction?

Are you exhausted from wading through piles of nonsense on Xanga and LiveJournal?

Stop banging your head against a wall of pictures, and put your brain to good use!

Progressive U is a blogging site for teens with a vision:

The mission of Progressive U is to provide young people with opportunities to discover, analyze, and discuss the values and democratic principles that promote a healthy, just society.

Youth can also earn scholarship money here. A $1000 and two $500 scholarships are available. The rules are available on the site.
This is a great use of blogging and as they say on their site ” Friends don’t let friends waste all their time on Myspace”

This is a place where students are sharing their views and you may not agree with them and the content may not always be “ready for prime time”.

What if your students wrote about what it’s like to be their shoes for a day? What if you as the teacher wrote from that point of view and then had your students comment as if they were their shoes?

__________

What would a scatter graph of earthquake activity worldwide look like? What if your students took the raw data from the internet, used it to create a spreadsheet, and created the graph from it? (Idea unashamedly stolen from David Warlick’s presentation at TCEA ) What if your geography class was doing this web project and the math or BCIS classes decided to particpate?

__________
What if you blogged about how advertisers use different techniques to get us to buy their products and then assigned groups of students to find examples of commercials that use those techniques and have them report on their findings in the comment section of you blog.

A good video commercial example can be found here.

What if you checked your blog and found that students were reading and submitting comments at 8:30 at night or 7:10 in the morning - outside of school hours?

__________
What if your class was having blog discussions about an assigned book and the author submits a comment and becomes part of the discussion? That’s what happened to a class that was reading and blogging on “The Secret Life Of Bees”.

__________

What if you could record your class lecture, edit it, and upload the audio file to your blog where students could access it if they missed your class or just wanted to review? What if you could then have that lesson to use next year? What if a parent wanted to know what their child was doing in class and could access the podcast from home? What if a community member who happened to be in a job related to your lesson read the blog and contacted you about become involved with your project?

__________

These are just a few of the possibilities - there are many more. You may already have some ideas of your own. You can share them. You can create the content on the web that your students can access. You can help them to learn appropriate ways to create web content. You can have ongoing conversations with your students that extend beyond the regular school hours and beyond the school walls. I hope you will add your voice, I hope you will give your students a voice.