Miss W. and her Smartboard

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.

Day 1 A self audit

As a teacher who moderates the posts and comments of my class and  students’ blogs, I try to comment on at least one of them every day whether it is to improve the post or about the post itself.  I certainly need to get back to my personal blog and write more posts.  I try every week to write back to those people who have commented recently on my posts.

I’ve never thought about tracking my comments, but after reading the Edublogger about the importance of feeds and co.mments and cocomment, I now have installed both of them.  I am going to be recommending that my students keep a record of their comments using an Excel spreadsheet with date, URL and comment made in the first three columns.

I do tend to comment on the same blogs each week, but again I read the Edublogger every week and try to visit the blogs of people who have posted comments.  This allows me to vary the type of blog I have commented on.  But like many people, often I just read and don’t always comment.

Looking at Gina’s tips, I usually stay on topic but as Sue Waters knows, I tend to ask lots of questions about the topic when I comment.  As a newbie to blogging, I need lots of answers. I am certainly owning my own comments and love having the avatar, mainly to use as an example with the students.  I am not knowledgable about the topics and am still unsure how to hyperlink within a comment.  I never learnt HTML at school as we programmed using punch cards and ticker tape - wow that shows my age now.

As many of you will have read in previous posts, this has been a steep learning curve for me this year.  I have been trying to allow my students to join in the challenge of using new aspects of Web 2.0 tools.  I teach all grade 6/7  classes over the year in eight week blocks and one area of history we must teach is historical inquiry.  I mentioned to the other grade 6/7 staff that I would be prepared to assess this aspect of history.  How to do this using the newer technology? 

I decided a wiki would be a great way of allowing students to present the information they found as part of their inquiry.  I began the course teaching them the historical process:

• big question to answer
• smaller questions to help gather the information
• locating sources both primary and secondary
• gathering and organizing the information
• justifying and evaluating the information - does it answer the question?
• presentation of information to an audience

Students usually only have an audience of the teacher but I wanted to broaden this to other students, teachers and members of the community. Part of the curriculum is looking at the local community and I felt this would fit in perfectly with using a wiki to organize and present the information.

Students began by brainstorming what they knew about the history of their municipality. We then decided on the big question. Students worked in pairs and chose an aspect of the municipality they would like to find out about.  Some discussed it with parents and relatives and chose their topic wisely because they knew they would be able to get some information from them. As a class, we then brainstormed where we might be able to find sources for information.  We ended up with a list of about 15 primary and secondary sources.

I then set up the wiki with a basic page of our municipality and a link to a timeline of history in the area. Another wiki page included which students were researching which topics, then finally each pair of students had their own page on which to put their information.  Students then had to get permission from parents to become a member of the wiki; I suggested at least one person from each pair be a member.

Students then began gathering their information. Emails were sent, phone calls made, visits down town to go to shops to run interviews, head to library to find books and of course using the internet.  About two weeks before the end of the course, we discussed how we were going to assess the wiki work and students came up with a rubric that I then posted on the wiki.

 The wiki is going to be an ongoing project with each grade 6/7 class adding to it throughout the year.  Also towards the end of the year, I will advertise the wiki within the community and see if other members of the district can add to the information.  There is though, a place where this can happen now, but as we know, unless something is advertised, then rarely does anyone else know about it on the net.

Already some of the first group of students added information to other pages on the wiki and gave clues as to other sources the students could be using for their research. Students have been emailing me to get help and ask questions and one day when I was ill at home, I actually got on the wiki and was emailing back to students about problems they were having. Students have also been working outside of school hours on their pages of the wiki.  Those students who did not get permission to use the wiki, have had to hand in their work as a word document so they can still be assessed.

My next post will be about the challenge the students had in this first group. Two of the questions I asked them in their assessment lesson were:

• What did you find was a challenge in this assignment?
• Should Miss W teach the class about using a wiki or is it better for students to try things out for themselves? Give reasons.

Logged in this evening to Twitter and there she was - Sue Waters asking us to write a post or comment about blogging and what it means to us.  She also invited us to join in an Open PD session via Ustream or Skype but this was going to be 7am my time in Tasmania.  I might make it but …….if I don’t, here are some answers to her questions.

Where you blog and how long you have been blogging for?

I have been blogging since January this year.  I have a personal blog which you are reading now but since February I have also been teaching students using a class blog.  A few of them have earned the right to have their own blogs in the last couple of weeks.

Why you blog? How does it benefit you or your work?

I blog about my experiences using Web 2.0 tools which are new to me this year. This includes blogging, smartboards and using wikis.  I have also been using teachertube and as Sue knows I have tried a Skype conversation with a little success. The students are definitely more on task when being allowed to blog, and those students with their own blogs are continuously sending me emails during the evening asking about other things they can add to their blogs or posts.  So far at work, blogging has not had much benefit for other staff as they don’t seem to have the time to do it especially if, as a teacher, you are moderating the students’ blogs.

How blogging has helped your students and how long have you been blogging with students (if applicable)

Blogging has helped the students to improve their written literacy skills and has allowed them to tell their classmates and visitors to their blogs more about the things that interest them out of school hours.

Why you feel blogging is important ?

I feel blogging is important for 21st century students because it can be a safe way to start building a network especially for the tween years and early teens.  As long as the teacher is prepared to put in the effort and keep overall control of the experience, students can gradually be allowed more and more freedom within their blogs.  It is also a way for students to see there is a wider world than just that of the town or state they live in, and that other students around the world have similar interests to them.

What are the 3 most important tips you would share with a new blogger?

Blog for yourself first and get used to writing posts with links.

Read and comment on lots of other blogs - easy way is read comments on Edublogger and Edublogs and visit the blogs of those people - make a comment on their blog and lo and behold they come and visit your blog.

If working with students, be prepared to have a large load in the beginning with a class blog - then as students show they can be responsible internet and blogging users, allow them their own blog but with you or their parents as co-moderators.

According to my clustrmap statistics, I am now batting over 1000 visitors to this personal blog.  I have only been blogging for about two months but I am thoroughly enjoying the challenge.  It was easy during the summer holidays to get on and write a post every couple of days about the steep learning curve I was going through.  But now I am back at work, I am only making about one post per week. 

I am also administering a class blog which moved from learnerblogs to edublogs a few weeks ago.  In a bit over a month blogging there, we have had about 500 visitors and the students love looking at the clustrmaps as well.  I have now added Feedjit to both the personal and class blogs to make it easier for the students to see where people are coming into and out of our blog.

But despite the large number of visitors, only about one person in thirty actually makes a comment on a post.  I must admit that I too, only comment in some adult blogs that I read.  But when I visit a teacher’s blog that has student blogs attached, I try to write in at least two or three of the student blogs and also ask permission from the teacher to add their blog to our class blogroll.  This is certainly widening the horizons of my students and I know the thrill on my students’ faces when they get a comment from somewhere overseas - for us that means anywhere out of Tasmania.

How do I know which blogs to comment on?  Firstly I look at those teachers on edublogs home page and I try to visit three blogs per day that I haven’t been to before.  I also look in the edublogger and edublogs blog to see which people I haven’t yet visited.  I also have about 15 subscriptions to blogs of people I enjoy reading and they often mention websites or other bloggers in their posts.  In fact, it is all just one big social network that seems to keep growing all the time.

January 2008

• learning to use a smartboard
• convert videos using Zamzar
• using del.icio.us to tag pages
• learning to blog and make comments in others

February 2008

• learning how to use a wiki
• teaching students to blog
• teaching students to use wikis
• creating class and student blogs

March 2008

• using twitter
• joining Skype - but still can’t get the microphone on the headsets to work - hope my school techie will help
• taking part in an online discussion through Elluminate

WOW!!  Time for a break to let all this information sink into this little grey head.

Being a virtual newbie to blogging (only started personally in January 2008 and with students February 2008), I wondered how safe was it going to be to introduce blogging to students.  No-one else in my school had done this before so I was virtually “on my own”.

I looked at the Australian Government website about internet safety, ran lessons and activities for the students about being internet savvy digital citizens then finally decided to have a go at blogging with the consent of parents.  I still have a couple of students who have not brought back that form so they can only make comments on our class blog.  They will not be allowed to write posts or have their own blog.

Then I decided to look at some statistics relating to blogging.  How likely was it that someone would find our class blog or my own personal blog? Technorati seemed to have the most up-to-date data I could find.  WOW!! I was going to be one in 70 million blogs around the world. How would someone ever find our blogs?  That’s like trying to find me in three times the population of Australia.  Miss W, where are you?

Thank goodness I had made my blog using edublogs.  At least I was with a group of like minded people with education as their main interest.  I had been blogging for about a week when I wrote a post about “Why has nobody commented?”  Suddenly, bloggers were coming into my blog.  Sue Waters, of the Edublogger fame, had “twittered” about my post.  Now I was being given lots of clues as to how I could build up that network of people who might visit my blog on a regular basis.

I needed to build up a PLN (Personal Learning Network); a group of people who would help answer my queries and guide me in my learning about Web 2.0 technologies that I was using with my students. I joined Classroom 2.0 ning as well as a Smartboard teachers ning.

So back to the main topic: safety in blogging.  Would anyone have found my blog or the class blog if I hadn’t used that network of educationalists who were prepared to share their learning with me?  Maybe we would have been safer just having the other students from our class writing comments.  But the thrill I see in students faces when they realise someone from a grade 8 class in New Zealand has written something in their blog makes it all worthwhile. Blogging is all about writing for an audience and with 21st century students needing to be global students, why should we be limiting them to just their local community?

Now that edublogs allows so many different widgets by using the text box, I would like to find some that might interest the students who are under 13 years old.  As I am trying to teach my kids to be honest in what they are writing but still being internet savvy, I would prefer they don’t use programs which in the terms of service say “You must be over 13″.  This is a disappointment because both Voki and Feedjit have these in their terms of service and I know my students were intrigued when I showed these to them.

While reading through some comments in the edublogs blog, I came across one blogger, aboatman, who recommended a Japanese/Chinese avatar creation site. I tried this out and found it very simple to use and also to install in edublogs.

What are some of the other great widgets that the under 13’s could be using?

I made a decision this weekend.  Four students in my class have submitted posts for me to publish; they have written lots of comments in our class blog; they have commented back to students who commented on their posts.  I feel they deserve to have their own blog.

Edublogs has a new create a blog and user function that I thought I would use.  One of those alerts at the top of your dashboard…..  All went well, created their name and blog, email was sent to the students but then I had a problem.

I could get onto their blog by typing in the URL, but then it wouldn’t let me into their site admin.  It kept sending me back to my own personal dashboard.  This happened with all four blogs I had created.  Was it something I had forgotten to do?

I got onto the edublogs blog and made a comment about what had happened and it was recommended that I put the problem with all technical details on the edublogs forum.  I did this and within an hour the problem was solved.

I can now get into the admin side of each student’s blog.  But I think I will leave them as co-administrators until Easter and I will spend this week with them getting their presentation, blogroll and sidebar widgets organized.  Once that is done I will then drop them to editor status so there is less chance of mishaps.  If they want to then make changes they can negotiate a time with me to help them do that.

Nearly two weeks since my last post.  Things at work have been frantic.  Less than a month back at school and we are already talking about our interim reports for after Easter.  What do we have to report on?  Has the Education Department sent us the subjects we HAVE to report on or can we make a school decision?  Oh, no, there are three teachers doing subjects under the heading of ARTS -  will there be a collaborative report or will each write their own?   I usually help organize the mid year and end of year reports but with the changeover to the Tasmanian Curriculum this year, we will need to find out if we can use the same type of report we have used the last few years.  I know I will have to write about Literacy/English which also includes LOTE, Numeracy/Math, History and Health and Well Being which is part of our Social Skills program.  Two subjects, though, must be assessed in all other areas and these are ICT and thinking.  I wonder how some of the teachers will do this? 

 I haven’t had time to make comments in other teacher’s blogs but I am glad that I have RSS feeds to at least ten blogs that I can easily read in my Google Reader, so  I can find out about what has been happening especially in the USA with all the conferences that have been happening.  Julie Lindsay, Vicki Davis and Larry Ferlazzo always have great blogs with lots of interesting information or del.icio.us links to look at.

 I have also started my history class on a wikispace about our community.  As we have never used this form of Web 2.0 technology, it is a learning experience for both myself and the students.  As well as the history wikispace, our grade 6/7 team is doing our planning for our Social skilling program on a wiki.  Again, a great learning opportunity.  I have had two of the staff actually add information to it.  I know it will be successful when most of the staff had added their bit of wisdom to the discussions.

Finally, the smartboard is now  permanently set up in the room.  Some students will be writing a post for our classroom blog about this momentous event in our room.  A couple of students were reporters and photographers for the day while the board was being set up.  They interviewed the workers and took some digital photos to use in their blog post.