Monthly Archives: February 2010

Don’t Forget To Laugh!

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My posts lately have been very serious — off course, nothing wrong with that :)

But thought everyone might enjoy a bit of a chuckle? And a chance to see my funnier side.

Hopefully it helps those feeling frustrated with technology to see we all face the same challenges. 

But together we can get through it and help each other!

Enjoy watching my First Time using an iSight on a Mac

PS No Mac was harmed in the making of this film!  But my PC felt neglected.

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Step 3 – Teaching Commenting Skills & Etiquette (Guest Post by Kathleen McGeady)

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bloggingstep3We’ve designed a series of nine steps, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

Your third step is to teach commenting skills & etiquette.

It’s my great pleasure to introduce our guest blogger, Kathleen McGeady, who provides important advice on teaching commenting skills (regardless of the age of your students).

About our Guest Blogger

Kathleen McGeadyKathleen McGeady is in the seventh year of her career and in that short time her approach to teaching has changed greatly.

The opportunity to take Teacher Professional Leave in 2008 provided Kathleen with the time to explore the role that ICT and Web2.0 tools can play in the classroom.

Kathleen loves to find new and creative ways to use blogs, the IWB, Web2.0 tools, iPod Touches and global projects and in her classroom to enhance the learning experience of each of her students.

Kathleen is currently teaching Grade Two at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. She writes about technology integration on her blog and in Education Technology Solutions magazine.

Blogging: Teaching Commenting Skills

This was originally posted on Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom and has been cross posted with permission from Kathleen McGeady.

I am currently in the process of introducing my Grade Two students to blogging.

Our 2KM class blog is proving to be very popular with students and families.

As I have previously blogged about, I like to follow these steps when introducing blogging to students.

blogging progression

This is my third year of blogging with young students and I am still learning all the time.

In previous years I believe I progressed much too quickly from having students comment on the class blog to writing posts. My students never really learned how to compose a quality comment and I believe I didn’t set my expectations of the students high enough! I was happy for them just to be commenting.

This year I am taking a different approach. Inspired by the amazing commenting skills of Mrs Yollis’ Third Grade students, I am putting a lot of effort into teaching my students how to write quality comments on posts before we move on to writing posts.

By “quality comments” I mean

  • writing the comment like a letter (greeting, body, closing, signature)
  • using correct spelling, punctuation and spacing,
  • reading over the comment and editing before submitting,
  • complimenting the writer in a specific way, asking a question, and/or adding new information to the post,
  • writing a relevant comment that is related to the post,
  • not revealing personal information in your comment.

I really wanted to limit the “I like your blog!!!” or “2KM is cool” type comments and I am finding this explicit teaching of what a quality comment looks like is really working.

I am teaching students commenting skills through

  • modelling and composing comments together  on the IWB,
  • teaching students about the “letter” format during writing lessons,
  • giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected,
  • having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week.

I collaborated with my teaching partner, Kelly Jordan on this poster “How Can I Write a Great Blog Comment?” to teach students about blogging skills.

We will also send a copy of this poster (as show below) home with each child.

Blog comment poster

Linda Yollis has written a fantastic article about how to teach commenting skills. It is well worth a read!

I have “borrowed” many ideas from Linda such as recording a screencast video that shows how to leave a comment on the blog. I recorded my screencast through Jing. I also used Linda’s idea of sending an email out to all parents to encourage them to leave comments.

As Linda says, “commenting is what keeps the blog alive” and “teaching and encouraging good commenting skills makes your blog more interesting for everyone.” I agree!

How to leave a comment

I use a How To Comment page on my 2KM class blog to explain to parents ad students how to comment.

Here’s an example of the type of information you could include:

Please leave a comment on our posts!!

We ask parents who leave comments to please only use their first name if they do not wish to identify their child.

Leaving a comment is as simple as this…

1. Click on the heading of the post you wish to comment on or the “comment” link at the top or at the bottom of the post.
2. Scroll down until you can see the “Leave a Comment” section
3. You will be asked for your name (you can use a nickname) and email address (this is not published)
4. You will also need to write the “spam word”
5. Click “submit comment”
6. Your comment WILL NOT appear straight away. It is sent to Miss McGeady via email for checking first. If your comment is okay it will soon appear on the site!

Example of adding a comment

Comment moderation settings

The default commend moderation settings on Edublogs blogs is that any visitors that have had a comment approved on the blog in the past will have their comment immediately posted and only comments from new visitors go into moderation.

How to moderate all comments

If you would like all comments to be moderated and not be published on your blog until approved by an administrator you need to change your comment moderation setting in Settings > Disccussion to “An administrator must always approve the comment”.

Comment moderation settings

Settings > Disccussion is the Advance Admin interface.

If you are in the Easy Admin interface you need to click on Activate Advanced Admin button at the top of your blog dashboard.

Settings > Discussion

For more information on comment  moderation settings and approving comments refer to:

  1. Controlling who can comment on posts
  2. Managing, editing and approving comments

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen for writing this guest post and for all your great work!

Please leave a comment here or on Kathleen’s post if you have any more ideas about teaching commenting skills to students!

And here’s where you find the other steps for setting up your class blog:

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Step 9 – Add Your Student Blogs To A Folder In Google Reader

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bloggingstep9

We’ve designed a series of nine steps, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging..

This step is to add your student blogs to a folder in Google Reader to make it easier to read their posts.

Why Make it Easier to Read Posts?

It’s important that you and your students are able to quickly read the latest posts from all student blogs because:

  1. You need to encourage your students to be reading and learning off each others’ posts (and comments)
  2. Learning as part of a community leads to greater knowledge gain and innovation than working independently of each other
  3. It makes monitoring what’s written less time consuming and easier

How it’s done

Visiting each individual blog to check for new posts is time consuming.

The better way is to bring the latest posts to you using their RSS feed.

RSS (stands for “Really Simple Syndication) works by retrieving the latest content from blogs and sites you are interested in and bringing them to one location where you can easily read it.

Sites with RSS feeds are normally indicated with the word RSS and/or the orange RSS icon.

Please note - Blogs on all standard blogging platforms automatically include RSS feed and won’t necessarily use words or an icon to indicate the presence of the RSS feed.

Options to bring latest student posts to one location include:

  1. Feed Readers such as Google Reader and Bloglines
  2. Personalized homepages such as NetVibes, PageFlakes, ProtoPage,  iGoogle

Ultimately it’s personal preference whether you use a Personalized homepage or Google Reader.

With personalized homepages you can add a range of different widgets, besides RSS feeds from student blogs, to really customize the page with helpful content for your students.  However, reading posts on a personalized homepage isn’t as easily as reading them via a shared Google Reader folder.

How to Set Up Google Reader

1.  Create a Gmail account (if you don’t have one)

2.  Go to Google Reader and sign in with your Google Account

3.  Add your student blogs, one at a time, to your Google Reader account by:

  • Clicking on Add A Subscription
  • Entering their blog URL
  • Now click Add

Adding Student blogs to Google Reader

3. Next create a folder and place all the student blogs into the folder as follows:

  • Click on Manage Subscription (at bottom of page)

Click on Manage Subscriptions

  • Click on Add to a Folder next to the name of any student blog to create a new folder for your student blogs
  • Select New Folder

Creating a new Google Reader folder

  • Add the name of your folder and then click OK

Naming your Google Reader folder

  • Now add all the student blogs to the folder you have created by selecting all the student blogs then clicking on the drop down menu next to More Actions to select the name of your new folder

Adding student blogs to the new folder

4. Click Back to Google Reader

Go back to your Google Reader

How To Read Posts Inside Google Reader

Latest posts from your student blogs will automatically be added to your Google Reader when they’re published and you read them as follows:

1.  Log into your Google Reader account

2.  Click on the name of the folder that contains your student blogs

Go to the folder that contains your student blogs

3.  The number of unread posts is shown in bold next to the name of the folder.

4.   Now just scroll down through the posts in the folder to read their posts.

5.  As you scroll the posts will automatically be marked as read and the number of unread posts listed next to the folder will decrease.

6.  To visit a post to add a comment just click on the post’s title.

Visiting a blog to add a comment

How To Share Your Google Folder With Students

The easiest option is to change your folder to public and then share the link to this Google Reader public page as follows:

1.  In your Google Reader account click on Manage Subscription (at bottom of page)

Go To manage subcriptions

2.  Click on the Folders and Tags Tab

Go to Folders and Tags tab

3.  Click on the icon next to private for your folder to change it to public

Change your folder to public

4.  Click on view public page to check out your public page.  For example, here’s my public page from this demo.

Example of a public shared folder

5.  Now share this public page with your students by adding it to your blog roll on your class blog as follows:

  • In dashboard of your class blog go to Links > Add New

  • Add a title for your Google Reader public page to the Name Module
  • Add your Google Reader public page URL to the Web Address Module

Creating a link

  • Select Blogroll in the Categories Module and click Add Link

Adding link to blog roll

Provided your Links widget is in your blog sidebar this link to your Google Reader public page will appear in your sidebar —and students just need to click on this link to read the latest posts.

For more how-to info on blog rolls read this post!

FINAL THOUGHTS

And here’s where you find the other steps for setting up your class blog:

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Student Blogging Challenge – Time for students to register their personal blogs

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We’ve opened registration for students to register their personal blogs to participate in the challenge which starts in March.

It’s all about having fun, improving your blogging while connecting with a global audience!

About the Student Blogging Challenge

We’re now into our 3rd Year and 4th Challenge.

We provide weekly tasks for 10 weeks to help you connect with student bloggers in other countries and improve your blogging.

It’s a really great way to learn more about each others cultures!

You can read more about it here:

  1. About the student challenge
  2. Student Blogging Challenge FAQs

Your blog doesn’t have to be hosted on Edublogs to join.

Students using any blogging platform such as 21classes, Blogger, Blogmeister, WordPress, Primary Blogger, Creative Blogs etc, can participate!

So far 44 Class blogs from 10 countries (Australia, Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, New Zealand, Normay, UK, United Arab Emirates, USA) have registered.

Register your student blog now!

Follow these TWO simple steps to register:

STEP 1:  Register Your Personal Blog Using the Google Form

Complete the Google Form below by adding:

  1. Your Name as First name and initial of Surname
  2. Your personal blog URL — for example my blog URL is http://theedublogger.com/
  3. Country
  4. Your age
  5. A few of your hobbies  so other students with similar interests can connect with you

Please Note:

  • Please register from home if you can’t see the Google Form on your school network!
  • You only need to register once!
  • If you are having trouble registering please leave comment on this post so we can help you.

STEP 2: Check your registration details!

Go to the March 2010 student page a couple of days after you added your details to the Google Form to check that your name and blog is on the page.

If your name is not there, it’s probably been removed because your blog URL was wrong.

Please note:

  • The delay in adding your information to the March 2010 student page is because we need to check your details before adding.
  • If your details haven’t been added please leave a comment on this post with your blog URL so we can sort it out for you!

Final Thoughts

Teachers and class blogs need to register following the steps in Student Blogging Challenge – Time for teachers to register their classes.

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Step 4 – Help Parents Connect With Your Class Blog

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Step 4 - Help parents connect with your class blogWe’ve designed a series of nine steps, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging.

This step is to help parents and family members connect with your class blog.

Educating Parents and Students About Blogs

Blogs are a totally foreign concept to most students and parents.

It’s important to educate them so they appreciate the value of blogging, support the process  and understand expectations for interacting with the blogs.

Obviously one approach is to set up your blogging rules and guidelines like we did in the Step 2′s task.

However, it’s also a good idea to provide handouts to send home to families. No point having all the information online if they can’t even find the blog!

Examples of Handouts

Here’s two handouts used by Kathleen McGeady for her Grade 2 class blog:

1. Introduction to Blogging Handout explains:

  • What is a blog?
  • Provides the blog URL
  • Online safety rules

Introduction to Blogging Handout

2.  Guide to Getting the Most out of 2KM’s Class blog explains:

  • How to be automatically notified of  new posts
  • How categories are used to make it easier to find their child’s work
  • How to leave comments
  • How to be notified of new comments on posts
  • How to search for content and reminder to check Pages for helpful information
  • Connecting and sharing with other classrooms through their class blog

Guide for Getting the Most Out of 2 KM's Class Blog

Creating Your Own Handouts

Use Kathleen’s handouts as a guide to the type of info and detail to include — and customise it for your situation and student ages.

A powerful component of her handouts is her use of screenshots.

Here’s a list of screen capture software you could use:

  1. MWSnap – free (PC)
  2. Jing -  free (PC and Mac)
  3. Skitch – free (Mac)
  4. SnagIT – US$49.95 (PC) – this is what I use for all my screenshots

Alternatively you could use PrtScrn and paste the image into MS Paint.

Sett Up Email Subscription

With younger students, such as kindergarten to Grade 3, an important aspect of  the class blog is sharing, with parents and family, what’s happening in the class and what the students are learning.

Email subscription makes it easier for parents and other readers to be automatically notified of new posts.

Email subscription is definitely a ‘must have’ widget on class blogs.

There are three main options for adding email subscription to your blog:

  1. Feedburner email subscription – all blog users except private blogs
  2. Email Subscription Widget – Edublogs Pro only
  3. Subscribe by Email subscription- Edublogs Campus only

Email Subscription Widget

The email subscription widget (Edublogs Pro only) is the fastest and easiest way of adding email subscription to your blog.

It sends an email immediately when the post is published.  Readers click on the link in the email which takes them to the post on your blog.

Adding it is as simple as:

1.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your blog dashboard

2.  Click on the desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets)

3.  Drag the Email Subscription Widget from the Available Widgets area into the Sidebar area on the right

  • It’s a good idea to locate the email subscription near the top of the sidebar

Adding an email subscription widget

4.  The widget will automatically open — just add your desired title to the widget\

Adding a title to your email subscription widget

5.  Presto!  A simple email subscription is now added to your blog sidebar

Email subscription widget in blog sidebar

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen McGeady for sharing your handouts with us! Her blog Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom is definitely worth subscribing to!

And here’s where you find the other steps for setting up your class blog:

If you are enjoying reading this blog, please consider feed-icon32x32 Finding and Adding Creative Commons Images To Your Blog PostsSubscribing For Free!