Blogging 101 | An Enabling e-Learning event
Perhaps you have seen other teachers doing it. Maybe you just do it for yourself. You've heard people talking about it but not sure how to get started, or how to take the next step.
Blogs offer a highly flexible technology that can be used across the curriculum to provide a window on the classroom, connect learning to family, create authentic audiences for writing, offer a space for reflection...and a myriad of other purposes related to pedagogy and learning areas.
This thread aims to provide stories, examples, tips and advice on how to harness the power of blogging and integrate it with effective learning.
Guest teachers and champion bloggers - Allanah King ('Life is not a race to be first finished blog), Kimberley Rivett (eLearning for Life blog), and Stephanie Thompson (Teaching the Teacher blog) - will be on hand to answer your questions and share their expertise.
Meanwhile, here's a wee video from Enabling e-Learning: Teaching to whet your appetite. Nic Mason, teacher at Russell Street School, says, "teaching the kids something and letting them experiment in their own way" has enabled his students technological capability to develop. He and his students describe the process, some of the tools, and the learning they gain and reflect on, through creating blog posts:
Replies
- Nathaniel Louwrens (View all users posts) 17 Feb 2016 7:53am ()
This blog post by Kelly Christopherson gives some great pointers about getting started with blogging (or continuing with it: Blogging as a professional.
In it, Kelly discusses the need to be consistent with blogging. Find a time that works for you (while he definitely knows that life, especially work, creeps in), and make it a routine.
He also says it's important to follow your own path. Make sure you know why you're blogging and blog about yourself - what you've created and/or accomplished. He comments that often we get focused on others and what they're doing instead of looking at our own strengths.
Blogging shouldn’t be a chore. If it is, then maybe you need to reconsider your “why”. Or maybe you haven’t found something that you can run with yet.
If you're interested in getting started with professional blogging or need some pointers to get back into it, then this blog post is worth a read.
- Barbara Reid (View all users posts) 26 Jun 2015 10:03pm ()
I was wondering why you couldn't see it. It was so clear on my laptop. Never occurred to me you were on a tablet. #usingmylaptop
- Monika Kern (View all users posts) 26 Jun 2015 4:32pm ()
Thanks heaps, Barbara, the perils of using a tablet late at night! On my laptop I can clearly see where to embed, but the option does not come up when I use my Nexus tablet (Android) - interesting!
Cheers, Monika
- Barbara Reid (View all users posts) 26 Jun 2015 11:21am ()
Hi Tamara and Monika
At the bottom of the edtalks video, it says Embed / Download from Vimeo. Click on that and it takes you to the video on Vimeo. On the top right there are three symbols. the bottom one is Share. This gives you access to the embed code which you can then add to your blog post when in html editor. Danielle on edtalks Hope this helps.
Cheers
Barbara
- Monika Kern (View all users posts) 26 Jun 2015 12:02am ()
Hi Tamara,
your question intrigued me so I had a little play. I can't see where you would find the embed code I must be looking in the wrong place, but I noted you can download TED Talks as mp4 and thenin Blogger you can select the video icon and upload it. It seems to work on my Android tablet using the Chrome browser, give it a try on your device.
Cheers, Monika
- Barbara Reid (View all users posts) 25 Jun 2015 9:09pm ()
Hi Tamara,
If you get the embed code from the video and go to the blog, switch the editor to html code then you can paste the code in. Worked for me.
- Tamara Bell (View all users posts) 25 Jun 2015 2:17pm ()
Hi quick question VLN whānau...can you embed EdTalks into a Blogger blog? From what I can figure out, you can only embed YouTube videos and EdTalks are not on YouTube. I know I could put in a link to the EdTalk but that just doesn't look good to me, would much prefer the actual clip embedded into the blogpost. Any advice much appreciate, ngā mihi!
- Jeanette Hinerangi Eruera Murphy (View all users posts) 09 Sep 2012 8:16pm ()
A little more to add...
For three years I worked alongside a number of Y6-Y8 students as e-Learners in a digital classroom. They managed their own webspaces and all work was completed online. We found web2tools that would accomodate and any Word documents were converted to pdf files. So... for them it became what was considered 'a norm' to check, recheck and assess work before posting live.
Now that I'm back in the classroom fulltime with Y5-Y6 students (and another school), 'the expectations' have not changed.
- Cheryl (View all users posts) 09 Sep 2012 8:05pm ()
We installed predictive text software and it helps with accuracy of spelling. One we used is "Word Que" and works with MS Word.
- Jeanette Hinerangi Eruera Murphy (View all users posts) 09 Sep 2012 8:02pm ()
@Jennie...Congrats on posting your blog live.
We had our receptionist travel overseas with the school mascot-buddy last term and so I created a page within our class weebly just to document her travels. She would e-mail me info and images that I would place up (as she did not feel confident doing it herself and all classes in our school just loved following her journey).
In answer to your patai....I would agree that surfaces features are equally as important as the content of the blog post. Students I work alongside will type up in MS Word, check, peer assess then copy and paste. They are often reflecting on what is written and have learnt very quickly to... 'do it once, do it right'.
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