Blogvolution

I've been blogging for the past 4 or 5 years as a teacher, with 3w, and Sycamore Class, This blog as well as a few others.  I've found it invaluable to share what we are doing in class with parents and children, to cope with emergencies like foot and mouth outbreaks and Asian Flu and to publish children's work to a wider audience.

I have taken part in blogging exchanges with other classes and have done all of this through blogger.  Most of this I did when working at a leading international school.  Internet was carefully monitored and filtered and I was able to use blogger very successfully.

Since working at my current school I have been protected by a more prohibitive regional security layer.  This has meant that children are safe from the big bad world of the internet when they are in school.  However it has meant that my default blogging platform has been unavailable.  After adding an exception to the filtering, I was then able to access most of the features of blogger, but children were unable to comment from within school and I was unable to post from inside school...the whole platform became much less reliable...and much less interactive.  From then on I have been on a quest for a different platform.  One which was more accessible and interactive.

Enter kidblog.
Kidblog, has

• let me open blogs for each child in my class
• not required children's emails or information
• enabled me to create a safe blogging environment in which I moderate all posts and comments
• inspired my class to read and write for a purpose
• given me the option to give access to guest visitors...the head teacher and the literacy coordinator, for instance
• allowed me to open the blog up to all visitors, should I choose to do so.

Children in my class have taken to it like ducks to water and are finding features, adding hyperlinks, inserting pictures and above all reading and writing for a purpose.

Long may it last!

Blogging

I thought it was time to think more about how I blog in class and how children should learn to use guidelines to write blogs posts and comment academically rather than socially.  We have talked about being careful when posting comments and e-safety but I have only just started to formalise these into written rules.

The langwitches blog was a great starting point, having this document which is aimed directly at elementary school.

Here are the blogging guidelines from that document, which I have now incorporated into my classroom blog:
• Never publish online the following information:
o Address
o Last Name
o Password
o Phone Number
o E-mail address
o Detailed physical description
o Detailed location where you can be found on a given day and time
o Photos of yourself
• Never share your user name or password with anyone besides your teachers and parents.
Never log in as someone else.
• Think before you post: Make sure what you write is appropriate to put online.
• Always tell the truth on your posts and comments.
• Be cautious about email messages from anyone, asking you for detailed personal
information or attempting to arrange secret meetings. Talk with your teacher and parents
immediately if this kind of situation arises.
• Online work is NOT private. Never say anything via email, chat, blogs, or on wikis that
you wouldn’t mind seeing on the school bulletin board, or in the local newspaper. Make
sure you can be proud of your online work and it would not embarrass you if your
grandmother or teachers read it.
• Capital letters are regarded as “SHOUTING.” Don’t be offensive, and don’t ever use bad
language.
• Never use a computer to harm other people. Never snoop around in other people’s files.
Never use a computer to steal.

Here is Silvia's slideshare of a Blogging in the Classroom from 2010:

Blogging in the classroom

View more presentations from Silvia Tolisano.

I wonder when these skills will explicity be taught in ICT in my school?
I wonder when children in my school will start to make their own blogs during school time? (I know 8 and 9 year olds who are doing this at home)

Blogging as a tool for the 21st Century

I have just joined a ning...called curriculum 21

This was minutes after I learned what a ning is!

I think it's a bit like a wiki, a collaborative website with other added extras.

Anyway, I joined the ning and then made a group for teachers with children aged 5-11.

I was thrilled only one day later when 2 new members joined. Silvia Tolisano was one of the new members, author of langwitches blog.

Here's a very comprehensice slideshow about how to blog in the classroom. It's taken from her Langwitches wiki




http://curriculum21.ning.com/group/kids511?commentId=5190976%3AComment%3A1138&xg_source=msg_com_group

Blogging in the classroom

View more presentations from Silvia Tolisano.

Editing the size of video in your blog

Freetechnology for teachers brings you a step by step guide to resize video so that it fits your blog.

Go here to find out how

Other class blogs...look here for some links

Thanks to edublogger for providing this growing list of class blogs.

I looked for some classes which were about the same age and quickly came up with a NZ school with a really interesting site.  I commented on a couple of their posts and hopefully they will look at our blog.

This is the simple way I am starting to link up learning.  I tried twitter earlier this year, but found that it was too unwieldy.  Selecting the right people to follow was tricky and I didn't feel I could monitor the tweets unless I spent an unmanageable amount of time online.

I still need to get a manageable way to encourage children to post more on the blog...

web 2.0 for teachers

This slideshow is basically an advert for blogging for teachers. Why should teachers blog? See the slideshow below.

A Teacher's Guide To Web 2.0 at School

View more documents from Sacha Chua.

Diigo, Blogger, Link and Learn and Twitter

Jackie, Colin and Ben were reviewing diigo bookmarks and talked about how it compared with the BPS link and learn system:

• easier to use - single button press
• more powerful - tagged and so allows greater search capability

Ben showed this blog and was excited to see the feeds from the diigo site had come through...set up last week.

Ben also mentioned his month long experience of twitter. Following the right people definitely saves time.

Jackie will talk to John about the possibility of monitoring usage of link and learn.

Could we use social bookmarking better at BPS?