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
- Jeanette Hinerangi Eruera Murphy (View all users posts) 04 Sep 2012 9:07pm ()
Kia Ora Koutou. When I 'first' started thinking about blogging and creating a webspace I completed what was then known in 2008 as the 31 Day Challenge (Karen has mentioned in her second post here).
It was absolutely brilliant as I learnt so much in such a short space of time about things like RSS feeds, page traffic, blog stats, creating a sneeze page etc. I was able to collaborate with other participants and had to complete a challenge a day (over the Dec-Jan holidays mind you). It was so very worthwhile therefore I encourage any 'newbies' to find a wero or similar challenge and J.D.I...just do it
PS: I'm mentoring a couple of teachers who are using Weebly and thinking of setting up a wero or challenge that will keep them enthused and up with the 'blogging play'
- 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'.
- 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.
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