Miss W. and her Smartboard

Earlier this year, a fellow teacher convinced me to put forward a proposal for a paper to be presented at the ALEA conference in Hobart in July at Wrest Point.  This conference involves literacy and English teachers from all levels of schooling.  I have just been advised that the proposal was accepted, so I will have a one hour workshop to run on the topic:

Blogging safely in the big wide world

What do you think should be the main points I put forward in this workshop?

I would like it to be a practical workshop but am not sure if there is wifi capability at the venue (will check it out this weekend), so will firstly use an off line powerpoint presentation, and hopefully bring some students from my class last year to also participate.

I would like to include other ways of communicating online with examples such as skype, flatclassroom and 1001tales.  Do you know any links to other great examples of collaboration across the world?

Yesterday I sent out a tweet about this and received some links from Anne Mirtschin and John Pearce.

As blogging often is seen as negative, I would like the conference participants to actually get in there and start writing comments on blogs belonging to students to find out how easy it can be to get started.  Do you have any resources for how to make blogging more positive for ‘unsure about technology’ teachers? 

If you have any links for AUP policies regarding blogging, nings and wikis, that might also be handy to use at this workshop.

The reason my fellow teacher convinced me to write the proposal was that I am currently running a student blogging challenge with about 800 students and classes from 13 countries of the world participating.  I ran a similar event in third term last year and had a similar response.  From the first challenge, students asked for a blog to be created and run by their classes and teachers.  Thus was born ‘Bringing us together’.

Original image: ‘How to Design a School Website That People Will Actually Use‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83955435@N00/299768611
by: Judy Baxter

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Are you interested in learning about blogging

in the Australian situation?

Well join us at the EDNA Blogging Corner and have a go at the fortnightly challenges.

Or perhaps you have written a great post last year and want to share that with other teachers.  If so submit it to the new Blogging Corner Carnival.  If selected, it will then be published in an issue on this new website.

Some of the international readers of my blog might wonder what is EDNA?

EDNA is a free online education network for Australian educators. You can search and browse online resources from all around the world, join groups or email discussion lists.  It is available for both government and non government schools as well as vocational and adult education.  There is RSS feed from the site to make it easier to know what is happening and you can register to have your own blog and other resources to use.

From September to December 2008, with the help of Sue Waters, I ran an international student blogging competition. This included about 500 students and classes from 9 countries of the world.  If you are thinking of doing something similar, then please remember to check out the following:

Advertising – How will the students know the competition is on?

I used my PLN and mentioned to teachers I was in contact with, my idea of a competition.  In my class blog, I put in a google form for students to fill in with details needed about them.  Sue Waters wrote a post in the Edublogger.  We started advertising in early August with the competition to start mid September when I went back to school.

Organization – How will the students know what to do?

On my class blog, there were separate pages for information, links to each participant and class blog, recent post feed from all participating blogs and weekly activities.  Most teachers also wrote a post in their class blogs reminding students how to get the activities to participate.

Comments – How will we connect with the students?

Over the ten week period, I tried to comment on each students’ blog at least three times – firstly to welcome them to the competition and give them the URL for the activities, then if they wrote a post about Blog Action Day and finally when the competition finished. It was easy to keep in touch using the RSS feed that Sue Waters had set up.  We also asked members of our PLNs to visit blogs and often tweeted about some very interesting posts written by the students.

Translating – How will the students comment using different languages?

We had three classes from Portugal taking part and they were mainly writing in Portuguese.  My class blog had google translator widget included and I wrote a post about how to communicate with the Portuguese students. The teacher in Portugal Stora Ines, translated all posts from either Sue Waters or my class blog that related to the competition or would be of help to her new bloggers.

Activities – What will the students write and comment about?

I had taken part in the comment challenge and felt that a challenge every week would be more suitable for students who might only get one chance a week to use a computer at school. As many of the students had been blogging less than thee months, I thought some activities about setting up their blog would be useful as well as writing and researching posts about certain topics that would be global in nature. Some of the activities included creating an avatar, setting up a blogroll and how to make new connections.

Winners – How will we choose the winners?

As neither myself or the other teachers could offer a large prize for an overall winner, the competition was run within each school.  The teacher who had registered was to organize a small prize (up to each teacher) to give to the most improved blogger and the keenest blogger over the ten week period. The winners are now on the blogroll of our new blog (see below).

After the competition – How do students keep in touch now?

Many students wanted to carry on the conversations and friendships, so after many discussion , we now have a new blog run by the teachers and students who took part in the 2008 blogging competition. If you and your class want to join us please visit the new blog and comment under the join us page.

Do your students enjoying blogging?  Do they write fantastic comments on other students’ blogs? Would they be interested in taking part in a blogging competition just for students?  It would involve 10 weeks worth of activities, one challenge each week with some bonuses for those who want to go overboard.

Please visit my class blog to register and watch out for a page there called the Student blogging competition 2008 during the month of September.  Each challenge will be added ready for the students to do.

One question the students have to answer is “Have you told your teacher you are participating?”  This is so each school can award a small prize to the best blogger or most improved blogger in their school.  I don’t have the facilities to organize a world wide prize but hopefully each school could find a little bit of spare cash for a small prize.

So far we have students from Australia and New Zealand registered and a couple of teachers from the USA thinking about it for new students after their holidays.  If you have any good ideas for challenges for beginners or experienced student bloggers, please comment here and I will add them to the challenge.

The teacher from each school can tell me the winner of the prize and I will mention them in our class blog.

Any students who are taking part will be included in the blogroll on my class blog so it will be easy for students to visit each other’s blogs.

Late again!  Maybe too many kitkats last week, but time now for a hot chocolate.

Day 26 Other ways to comment – I am still learning how to use wikis and blogs properly and have only just started with photostory.  But I did enjoy watching those people with audio and video skills comment on various blogs.

Day 27 My personal brand – I think my brand would be as a teacher because I tend to comment very directly, say things in the least possible number of words and rarely waffle on.  Maybe 140 characters in Twitter is helping me be more succinct in my commenting.

Day 28 Blog commenting strategy – When I began blogging, I was commenting everywhere, because I had so many questions to ask those more experienced members of the edublogosphere.  Now working with students, I am praising their efforts and giving clues as to how to improve their own commenting.  I try to comment regularly on my students’ blogs and reply to comments in either my class or personal blog.

Day 29 A commenting guide for students – I’ve decided I will actually do that with my students next term.  To begin their thinking I have written a survey for them to fill out about what makes a good comment.

Day 30 Change my teaching practices – I know that I am going to be using posts and comments as practical examples for improving students’ communication skills.  Also I am going to create a page with the students called “Reflections on my learning” that will be password protected so only they can write on it.  I feel students need to be able to reflect on what they have learnt and be prepared to give reasons for their thinking.  But I don’t think this is easy to do, so instead of it being in the posts of their blogs, they can do it like a comment on their own page.

Day 31 Top five lessons

• Most students just like commenting but not necessarily thinking about improving their comments.
• You meet a lot of new people when taking part in a challenge.
• Commenting daily is easy, but writing up about the challenge in posts takes time.
• I am not a wordy person, rather I write exactly what I mean and don’t do a lot of extra explanation – maybe why some kids also find it hard.
• I am loving blogging and the enthusiasm has gradually won over some teachers at my school.

Wow about time for a total day of rest, feet up in front of the fire (cold here in Tasmania today) and let’s have a Kit Kat.  But no you say, you haven’t written about the challenges yet since day 19. Well I suppose I had better earn my Kit Kat (in fact it is a Cadbury’s Old Gold Peppermint chocolate I am eating)  Better for me than a Kit Kat.

Day 19 Respond to a commenter on your own blog This is easy.  I do it all the time especially if I have asked a question and they have come back with some great suggestions.  Being a newbie to blogging, every comment is useful in some way or another.

Day 20 Three links out  This was interesting; thought I would start with a link on my blogroll that I rarely go to, Mister Park, a soldier in Afghanistan who as a teacher of English is keeping in touch with schools in a blog. 

 I then jumped to his blogroll Are we doing anything today? and read about the disdain in which teachers are held in USA but how the reverse happens in France where parents are often looked down upon by teachers. 

Another jump in the blogroll and I saw Ms Frizzle.  I have always loved the books about her and her bus and the fantastic trips she takes with her class – no money involved there – so decided I would stop my link journey here.

But found Ms Frizzle had also finished her blog journey in 2006 and was moving to India as an exchange teacher so she ended with some great reflections from her and her science students. 

Day 21 Make a recommendation I often do this but kept having to ask Sue Waters how to make hyperlinks within a comment.  She sent me off to visit Vicki Davis and her post about hyperlinking and using HTML within a comment.

Day 22 Highlight a favourite comment  I have lots of favourite comments mainly because they are so useful to me as a newbie blogger.  But I really like this one from Anne Mirtschin because it has virtually nothing to do with technology, just a bit of personal chit chat, which I rarely indulge in in my blog. It also includes commentary on some of my student bloggers.

I just laughed and laughed when I read your first paragraph as I can just see it all happening!!! I agree that Lisa has been a great little activist and she will go a long way in life. One of your boys has been good too. I had enrolled for the challenge but as cocomment kept crashing my internet I gave up. So, now I just enjoy reading what everyone else is doing. HOpe we can catch up next week. Hope you dont have to buy another pair of shoes before it is all over. My kids do their own moderation as I could not keep up with them at all.

Day 23 What makes a great comment?  I think I might do a survey with the students in my class on Monday to see what they think makes a great comment.  At this stage of my blogging, a great comment includes something useful I can use in class or something to make me think more carefully about what I am doing using Web 2.0 in class.

Day 24 Comment on a blog written in a foreign language  One of my very first comments was from Spain, written in Spanish asking for me to participate in a survey with the commenter.  I had to use a translater to find out what the questions were all about and then write back.  Must admit, I could get the general idea of the questions without translating, having learnt French, German, Japanese and some other basic phrases in other European languages while travelling.  Also knowing the roots of English words can help with working out a basic meaning of a phrase.  But I still think I will find a French or Japanese blog to write a comment on.

Now can I take a break and eat my chocolate?

I’m on my blog every day checking out the comments to moderate, doing the same for my class blog and the blogs of students in my class.  I thought I will keep up with the comment challenge fairly easily.  Should only take up half an hour or so every day and considering I am on the computer every night when I get home from school …………  but what happens??

Here it is day 19 and when did I last post about the challenge … Day 10

    Photo source 

So now I am having to change the Aussie thongs on my feet for some running shoes which I have just had to go and buy.

Day 11: Writing a blog comment policy – why should I need to do this?  As a teacher, I moderate all my blogs including the student ones, so nothing nasty gets through.  As long as there is no foul language used or spam, then most anything is acceptable especially if you can explain your point of view if disagreeing with something I have written.

Day 12: Comment friendly blog technology – I am sorry for those readers who comment more than once on my blogs but for the safety of students, I moderate everything.  Therefore nothing gets published until I have read it.  In the four months I have been blogging, I have received a couple of ‘doubtful’ trackbacks but no negative comments or spam, so fingers crossed, this will continue in the future. I could though, change my technology on my personal blog to let through second time commenters without moderation.

Day 13: Write a post based on comments – I think I accomplished this during my audit on day 10 when I virtually wrote a post about “Why is no-one commenting?”

Day 14: Turning blog over to readers – already finished.

   Day 15: This commenter badge goes to one of the students in my class who has her own blog.  She always visits blogs from other students in the room and also students included in our class blogroll.  I have had teachers write back to me about her and her comments.  Well done, Lisa!!  She is also a student who will come to teacher sessions on Monday after school to help teachers with their blogging skills.

Day 16: Catch up on something – I still haven’t completed days 5 and 8. I think these are two challenges that might be done during the last couple of days of the month once I am on holidays.

Day 17: Five in five – this can be fairly easy when doing it with my student blogs because I have already read the post before it was published. But I have come across a few students taking part in the challenge who have some very insightful posts about the environment and how they can make a change in the world – I certainly took more than five minutes to read and comment on these blogs. 

Day 18: Analyze the comments -

• Batting 1000+ (11)
• Creating a classroom blog (10)
• Why has no-one commented? (13)
• Newbie asking questions (10)

Similarities in these posts – they all asked the readers for their opinion and to give clues to me as a newbie blogger. All four of those posts generated quality as well as quantity – many comments in all four posts came from the same people who were willing to share their knowedge with me and recommend other blogs to read or programs to use. 

At the stage of writing those posts, I was not a member of Twitter, but since joining, I notice there are less comments on the posts because I can get immediate answers by sending out a tweet.

Well this has now taken nearly two hours to complete and I am still behind in the challenge.  Oh well, less than half the month to go …..

Today I thought it would be appropriate to jump ahead to challenge 14 – Turn your blog over to your readers.

Since beginning to blog in January this year, I have tried to get staff enthused about using Web 2.0 especially blogging in their everyday classroom activities.  Until a couple of weeks ago, I had been unsuccessful.  I had had a few staff watch me while I was commenting or writing blog posts during my time off and preparation lessons. (I usually use a computer near the photocopier as more traffic comes that way) A couple had made comments about how interesting that looked but they wouldn’t have time to do that with their other commitments.

But last week I held a blogging session after school for about an hour.  Four staff including the school chaplain turned up.  I had organized with a couple of my students to stay behind and help in the session. From my point of view it went well and the staff have been asking for more help with avatars and blogrolls which hopefully we will do next week.

But if you don’t have enough time to actually write your own blog, I would have thought every teacher could spend just 15-30 minutes once a week or fortnight in writing comments on students blogs.

So my question is:  How do we get staff involved in commenting on blogs onto which our 21st century students are putting so much effort to gain a wider audience than their own teacher?

Day 4: Ask a question – this one I do every day.  Whenever I make a comment I usually end with a question – I suppose this just automatic as I comment on so many student posts, that questioning is easy.

Day 5: A blog post I don’t agree with – this is one I am going to have to put off till later.  My blog roll is usually only people who are of a like mind to me.  Maybe I will head to a principal’s blog or a politician’s.

Day 6: Engage another commenter in discussion – this has been made simpler because of the co.mment and cocomment tracking devises.  I found a great article on Christy Tucker’s blog about teen writing and blogging.  The conversation went back and forward with her also visiting my blog on the way.

Day 7: Three lessons I’ve learned – I comment often on student blogs, but now I look at it, more often it is on their emails before they actually publish their posts.  Most of my comments are on student blogs, but often from other schools around the world.  Secondly - I  need time to extend my network to find great blogs to comment on that are not necessarily on educational topics. Finally, thank goodness for cocomments and Twitter – a range of blogs to visit, read and comment on.

Day 8: A blog outside my niche – another challenge to do by the end of the month.

Day 9: Should we be commenting on blogs?  The article made very interesting reading and certainly made me think about why I am blogging.  On my personal blog, I post about my experiences using Web 2.0 tools this year but some of my posts end with a question or activity. To me, this means I welcome comments. But my class blog is a totally different place. Here I expect students to have a go at an activity, visit websites through the links and also to send me posts of things that interest them. When commenting, I expect them to show they are computer and internet savvy in what they say and how they represent themselves. I also expect them to comment on the topic or activity they have had a go at.

Day 10: Comment audit on your own blog – this will be interesting.  I know in my first week of blogging, I wrote my 5th post on “Why is no-one commenting”.  I didn’t realise at that time about developing a PLN (personal learning network), I had never heard of Twitter and I don’t think I had commented on anyone else’s blog.  Well the comments started coming in after Sue Waters twittered about my post and these were the hints to improve my chances on receiving comments.

• Use Twitter
• Add some links to your posts – make a ‘ping’ to another blog – the blogger might then visit your blog
• Write for yourself and put your heart into it
• Make sure your ‘About’ page tells more about you as a person
• Follow a great example like Sue Waters for hints, info and mentoring
• Decide what type of blog you want – informational, reflective, thousands to choose from….
• Have a blog RSS feed so interested readers can follow you
• Have a picture of yourself on the blog – makes a more personal feel
• Write posts that give guidelines or how-to do something, provide explicit opinions on your profession
• Read and make comments on other people’s blogs
• Treat every post as a conversation – comment on comments from your readers

I took all these comments to heart and hopefully have improved my chances of having someone comment on my blog. 

But maybe, you have a different opinion. 

Feel free to leave your point of view.

I have had a couple of conversations, both comment and email, with Sue Waters about problems I was having with cocomment, and I was sick of the ping, ping, ping I kept hearing especially when I opened anything with Google, my reader or mail.  So tonight I decided to get rid of the extension and only use the bookmarklet … lo and behold it is now working well.  I just have to remember to click on the bookmarklet before submitting my comment.

I looked on the wiki tonight to see whose blog I could comment on that I had never contacted before.  One conversation caught my eye, ‘Baby Steps’ especially when mention of senior staff at the school.  I have been trying to get senior staff at my school to write a comment on the students’ blogs but so far no luck.  I doubt whether I could actually get them to start their own blog, so to see James MacDonald begin his own blog without help from the IT staff was fantastic.  Well done James.