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

The question is:

Do I start a new class blog for my new class in 2009 or do I continue with my class blog from 2008?

New blog

• Students will feel greater ownership
• Can start new blogroll with these students
• Can link old blog in the blogroll

Old blog

• Students will be able to refer to older posts
• Subscribers won’t need to change
• Change theme – need two sidebars for all links

What do you think I should do and why?

Original image: ‘Savage walk: don’t ask, just go‘
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61787893@N00/275371357
by: Earl

Released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Been back at work now for two days.  Mentioned to the students about blogging and using lots of different technologies in the room – their responses ranged from looks of boredom in having to use the computer and oohs and aahs about having a world wide audience look at their work.

 The Smartboard has not been installed yet, so my lessons on Internet safety that I had put together with Ros will have to wait a few days. But this does allow time for discussions about what the students already know.  I decided to use a lot of the cartoon clips from Cyberquoll which was developed by the Australian government.  Some great worksheets and follow up activities including storyboarding - I’ll see what the students come up with as a way to create a video.

A very wide range of ability levels in my class this year – I was about to give away some of my teacher reference books for lower ability and younger students but I have had to drag them out again to use this year. The students have worked well for two days – been helpful towards each other, polite and courteous, a few chatterers but overall a great start to their year.

I spoke to the principal about using blogs in the room and as long as I had parent permission, separate from the school’s computer user agreement, then it was OK for me to use them.  Some other teachers have asked me about blogging and will be interested in the way students use them and the difference in their attitude towards writing this year. I gave the students a brief introduction to our blog pages just before I gave them the notice they would have to bring back to class; their keenness is shown in that I have had 20 replies to my blogging notice, while only seven replies are back about school computer use.

My niece and nephew spent a day setting up the classroom last week.  They do this every year and it only costs me a bit of money and lunch at the “Golden Arches”. Desks and chairs are set up, posters and pictures put up around the walls of the room, card kits used in the room are sorted into the correct order and all the teacher equipment for the five grade 6/7 classes are sorted and sent to the teachers’ rooms – blu tac, scissors, cardboard, pens, textas etc. Those necessities for everyday life in the classroom.

As part of our agreement with the Education Department we have to do professional development for at least one day before school goes back.  This year there is a big push on using the “First Steps” program which originated in Western Australia nearly 20 years ago.  It has been updated and revised and is a great program for reading and writing.  We looked at the writing program in our PD day and it reminded me of my years teaching in the primary school – charts in the room, creating word lists, describing the steps for writing a great piece of work – then I looked around my middle school class – there were the charts and the steps for good spelling and writing.  Once a primary teacher, always a primary teacher!! Despite having taught through to grade 9, I always have charts and posters on the walls of my room.

My big question for today is  ….  Do I create

 a single classroom blog where all students can create posts and make comments with me as moderator?

or

 one blog for each student  linked to my blog but where I have admin moderation control over each student blog?

Can I create these by using edublogs or do I need to do it in learnerblogs?  I have looked in the forums at edublogs and the responses are so confusing.  Would it be easier with classblogmeister or 21classes ?

Teachers who blog with their students – do you have one class blog or a separate blog for each student attached to a general class blog?

I have about one week left to get myself ready to start with blogging with the students in my new class for 2008.

Everyday, I come into my blog and check if anyone has written a comment.  None for a couple of days but I notice my clustrmap has a few more dots on it.  So how am I going to get people to read my thoughts and questions and also post a comment?

I know, look at a few other blogs from well known bloggers, see what they are writing about, add a comment to something they have written. 

 Well I started with Sue Waters at Edublogger which I also read daily for her hints on how to improve your blog.  In the comments, I then check out the blogs of those people and today found quite a few.  I began with Cathy Nelson posting about her 2008 goals, keeping your head in the sand and women bloggers.  From there I checked out a few of the other comments and this lead to Kathy Schrock with her list of tech educators and Leslie Fisher with her travels in Australia.  I can see from this I am going to have to add to my blogroll.

Well I can see tomorrow will be another day of reading, writing lessons for my smartboard and updating my blogroll.

Well today I have spent the last few hours looking through many sites about blogging, but the one I found most helpful was a wikispace http://aquaculturepda.wikispaces.com/blogs . The author of this wikispace is also writing the following blog which I have also found to have some useful tips for a newbie.

I have decided this year to learn how to blog as well as use my new smartboard in my middle school classroom. So I have lots of questions such as can I add pages to my blog for each of my students so they can blog as well or am I better to have them post comments instead? If you have any great suggestions for using the smartboard, please mention these as well particularly if they relate to Australian curriculum.