It is now time to join in on the bi-annual student blogging challenge!

This challenge is all about having fun, improving blogging and reflective writing skills, and building readership and connections with a global audience.

Last year, the two challenges included thousands of students from over 15 countries around the world!

What is  the Student Blogging Challenge?

• The Student Blogging Challenge runs twice yearly.  A new Challenge starts March and September, each year.
  
• It is made up of a series of 10 weekly tasks all designed to improve blogging and commenting skills while connecting students with a global audience.
  
• Starts mid-September – but registration is happening now
• The Challenge is open to both class blogs and to individual student bloggers from all over the world and of all ages – blogs doesn’t need to be hosted by Edublogs to participate!
• Participants can complete as many of the tasks as they like and in any order
• The Student Blogging Challenge is coordinated by Sue Wyatt,  Sue Waters and Ronnie Burt.

Past challenges have included adding comics and widgets, writing creative posts, discussing travelling, comment etiquette, and more.

How do I start?

We’ve now opened registration for students and teachers who would like to participate in the challenge which starts in mid September.

Here’s the links you need to visit to register:

• Teachers – register your class blogs here
• Students – register your individual blogs here

Who’s registered so far?

You can check who has registered so far here:

• Teachers – heres’ where you’ll find all the class blogs listed
• Students – here’s where you’ll find all the individual student bloggers

How do I get the latest news from the Student Blogging Challenge?

All weekly tasks and upcoming events will be published on Challenge Yourself to Blog (the Student Blogging Challenge blog).

We recomend you either subscribe to:

1. The Challenge Yourself to Blog RSS feed using a feed reader like Google Reader – here’s how to set up Google Reader
2. The Challenge Yourself to Blog email – just add your email address to the form below

Do you have any ideas for challenge tasks?

This is the fifth challenge Sue Wyatt have organized.  She would love  ideas for cool challenge activities.

Please help with ideas for challenge activities by sharing your ideas here!

And for extra incentive to share your ideas — we’ve decided to give away ten Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to the 10 best challenge ideas!

Can you help us?

Every challenge, Sue Wyatt tries to visit each individual student blog at least 3 times over the period of the challenge.

This is becoming harder to visit all the student blogs — due to the numbers of students participating!

We are looking for volunteers who are willing to leave least one, preferably two, comments on student blogs such as:

1. A few clues about how to set up their blogs would be great for the newer students who have only had their blogs less than a week or so .
2. Alternatively choose a post they have written or look at their about page to leave a comment for them.

We would like to do is allocate about 20-30 student blogs to each volunteer.

This is excellent for teachers and preservice teachers (student teachers) who are:

• Wanting to increase their understanding of how blogs can be used with students.
• Unable to participate with their students in our current Challenge but who want to learn more about the Student Blogging Challenge.

Also excellent for students who have participated in previous Student Blogging Challenges and who would love to support other student bloggers!

And off course, we appreciate how busy everyone is so we’ve decided to give away twenty free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to our twenty best helpers!

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to become a Student Blogging Helper!  Can you also tell which age group of students you would like to work with!

And here’s your badges

We thought some of you might like to add badges to your blogs to let your readers know you’re participating in the Student Blogging Challenge.

So here they are!

For Better Bloggers

For Better Commenters

For Student Blogger Helper

Adding your badge(s) to your blog is as easy as:

1.  Download this Student Challenge Zip file – contains the HTML code for all badges with links back to the Student Blogging Challenge blog
2.  Unzip the downloaded file to a folder on your hard drive.
3.  Open up badgecode.txt (contained inside the zip file)
4.  Copy the HTML code for the required badge(s)

5.  Go to Appearance > Widgets in your Dashboard
6.  Drag and drop a Text Widget from the Available Widgets or Inactive Widgets areas on the left into the Sidebar area on the right
7.  Now just paste your HTML code into the text widget, then click Save and Close

Setting up your class-blog

You may be just getting started with your class blog or are looking for ways to make improvements.

The following 9 steps will help ensure that your blog is ready to go for the challenge:

1. Set up your class blog
2. Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
3. Teaching Commenting Skills and Etiquette – Guest post byKathleen McGeady
4. Help Parents Connect With Your Class Blog
5. Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts
6. Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
7. Setting Up Student blogs
8. Add your student blogs to your blogroll
9. Add Your Student Blogs To A Folder In Google Reader

FINAL THOUGHTS

The thousands of students that have participated in the past have found it a great way to improve their blogging and commenting skills and love the global interaction among the community that it builds.

For more information on the student blogging challenge, visit the Challenge F.A.Q. here.

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to become a Student Blogging Helper!
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Can you help?

I’ve been asked for advice for blogging with ESL/EFL students.

I’m sure that ESL/EFL educators and their students will provide the best advice.  So I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Larry Ferlazzo’s Thoughts

And to get the conversation started Larry Ferlazzo (from Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day……For Teaching ELL, ESL, & EFL) has kindly shared his quick thoughts on blogging with ESL/EFL students:

1. Help students get email addresses
2. Compile a list of user names and passwords because someone will forget theirs.
3. Choose a blogging solution that includes an option for leaving an audio comment as it is a MUST – (if you use Edublogs.org you need to use either a Pro blog or Campus blog)
4. Identify some very, very simple tasks that students can do (refer to my Class website Intermediate English for ideas) and then they just have to paste the URL address of their creation in the comments.
   • They’ll get used to the tech that way.
   • Model on a computer projector each task and what is required so everyone sees.
5. Next, have students leave audio and written comments.  Highlight examples on computer projector.
6. Gradually use more complex tasks, like on my class blog.
   • Students can paste essays they write in the comments section, but should type them out in Word first to take advantage of grammar and spell check.
   • However, first, they should write it out longhand so they don’t get intimidated by all the mistakes Word will show them making.

Your thoughts

Would love to hear your thoughts!

1. What have you found works well?
2. What hasn’t worked well?
3. Do you have any questions on blogging with ESL/EFL students you would like answered?

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Richard Byrne and I co-hosted an ISTE Unplugged session on blogging at ISTE 2010 in Denver.

Thanks to everyone who submitted their blogging questions and here’s my responses — for those who were unable to attend!

I’ve focused my responses to student blogging and will do a follow up post on the general blogging questions.

What sort of rubric do you use for blogging?

There are opposing opinions on whether you should or shouldn’t use a blogging rubric; and if you do use a rubric how you would use it.

Konrad Glogowski’s posts are a ‘must read’ to appreciate the need to move the emphasis from grading to focusing on blogging conversations:

• Thoughts on Assessment
• How To Grow A Blog
• Replacing Grades with Conversations
• Making Assessments Personally Relevant
• Towards Reflective BlogTalk

For examples of blogging rubrics check out:

1. Clarence Fisher’s Blogging Rubric
2. Ryan Bretag’s Blogging Rubric post and Blogging Rubic

How do you have students blog for homework if they do not have access to the internet or a computer (in a poor, rural area)?

Steven Anderson covered this during our session by explaining how his schools provide open lab computer access for students without access at home.

What I didn’t have time to mention is some are using alternative approaches to providing a solution.

For example, in Scott Newcombe’s School District they are providing students with mobile phones which could be used for mobile blogging.

To moderate or not who has the time?

Educators have differing opinions on moderation and use two main approaches:

1. Students are allowed to publish own posts and approve all comments
2. Students posts and comments aren’t published until approved by a teacher

Normally those that moderate are either required to by School and/or District policy or are concerned by the risk of inappropriate content being published.

Here’s how you moderate all comments and posts on student blogs — if you need to/want to take this approach.

Those that don’t moderate all comments and posts generally spend a lot of time educating their students about blogging processes and appropriate online behaviour.

It’s common with this approach to see students’ slowly progress from writing comments on the class blog to publishing posts on the class blog to eventually having their own blog.

Good practice with this approach is to monitor all comments and posts from student posts using Google Reader — here is how you do this.  Google Reader makes it easier to monitor all the student content and if necessary deal with inappropriate content.

Could people please share ways to increase the audience for their students’ blogs? Students are excited and motivated when they begin blogging – but without a real audience, excitement and motivation begin to diminish.

What can we do to increase readership?  How can a student blogger attract more readers?

Realizing that your blog is being read by a global audience and receiving comments from readers in other countries is highly motivating for student bloggers.  It encourages them to blog and improve their writing.

Here’s examples of how you can help your students attract more readers:

1.  #comments4kids

The #comments4kids hashtag is used by educators to tweet student posts that deserves to be commented on such as a post that is awesome or student that needs encouragement.

Here’s more information about #comments4kids:

1. #comment4kids Wednesday
2. Comments4kids wiki

2.  Student blogging challenge

The Student Blogging Challenge is run twice yearly starting in March and September.

It runs for 10 weeks where students are given weekly task designed to improve their blogging skills while connecting them with a Global audience.

I’m wondering how best to create a scenario in which students blog 3-4 times per week, but also a site that will work as a legitimate social network for the course as well (groups, pages, etc.).

What’s the best way of going about putting together such a network?

BuddyPress is one of the best ways of transforming a fully functional blogging platform into a social network.

BuddyPress is a suite of plugins for Wordpress that transforms into a fully functional social network platform.  It is very similar to using a Ning site, except BuddyPress doesn’t have Ning’s blogging limitations as it’s a multi-blogging platform environment integrated with a fully functional social network platform.

Here’s more information on BuddyPress:

1. The BuddyPress Manual
2. WordPress as a Learning Management System – Move over, Blackboard

Check and try a BuddyPress site for yourself here!

Final thoughts

Thanks to Richard Byrne for co-hosting this session with me.  Special thanks to Kim Caise for all her hard work supporting ISTE Unplugged and to Paula Naugle for giving permission for us to use the photo.

Thanks again to those that submitted questions via our Google Form. Apologies but I’ve left one question on student blogging for another posts as I’d love to hear others thoughts on it.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

1. What did I miss in my responses?
2. Do you have any other questions on student blogging you would like answered?
3. Remember I will be doing a follow up post on the general blogging questions — so please leave a comment with any questions you would like answered.

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Spam commenters driving you currently crazy?

You’re not alone — and lots of people have been asking me for advice lately.

So let’s first talk a little on the WHAT and then on ‘the how to deal with them’.

What Are Spam Commenters?

The main reason why people write spam comments is to provide links to promote their web site(s).

Common spamming techniques include:

1.  Creating pingbacks to blog post

2.  Adding links to their web site in the comment and/or the URL

Easiest option is to use Comment Blacklist or Comment Moderation

It’s as simple as:

1.  Go to Settings > Discussion

2.  Add the spammer’s URL, email address, IP address or word(s) commonly used to the Comment Blacklist field or Comment Moderation field

• If you are concerned genuine comments might be blocked you use the Comment Moderation Field

For example, IP address 69.174.246.208, their website and/or car details such as Acura or radiator would work for this comment spam

And it might look like this:

3.  Click Save Changes at bottom of page

Now any pingback that contain any of these words in its content, name, URL, e-mail, or IP is automatically:

1. Held in your moderation queue (if you used comment moderation) – where you can decide if to approve or delete them.
2. Marked as spam and you won’t receive an email notification (if you used comment blacklist)

Alternatively you could also use Akismet – here’s instructions for setting up and configuring Akismet!

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Meet Tammy – a high school science teacher with an outstanding class blog which you can visit here.

Tammy serves as an inspiration to all of us that are interested in creating an online environment that is a natural extension of our classrooms.

She is amazing when it comes to recording her daily classroom notes and embedding them in her class blog as a video.

We thought that you might like to get to know her a bit better and how she does what she does, so we asked her a few questions and she was kind enough to reply.

What were the main reason(s) why you started recording videos for your students?

For years I taught my chemistry and physics students by using dry erase markers on an overhead projector.

When interactive boards came along, I was excited, but I needed to be able to see my students while they worked with me.  When I went behind my demonstration station to work problems on the board, it was like my students thought I’d left the building!

Another challenge was the missing student – students gone on mission trips, students out with the flu, students in tournaments, or students who missed the concepts in class that day and just needed to hear the lesson again.

Everything came together when, from all different directions and just about all at one time, I discovered Edublogs, eBeam Interact (an interactive projection device and software), and the Wacom Cintique Tablet.

How do you create your videos?

I’m able to write on the tablet while facing my students and record both my voice and pen strokes with eBeam and a cordless mic.

At the end of the day, I upload the videos to blip.tv, and then embed them on our class blog.  In addition to blip.tv, other online resources that have been really helpful for me as I post the lessons to the website are compfight.com and Flickr.com

How are you using your class blog?

I use our class blog for posting videos of daily lectures, reviews, and help sessions, but also as an online filing cabinet of sorts for just tons of resources for my students – the weekly syllabus, project information, assignments, interactive websites, tutorials, etc.

So many wonderful teachers and organizations have put such incredible resources for learning chemistry and physics online,  and now my students can access them though our blog.

Another very important way I use our class blog is to keep in touch with my students, and for them to keep in touch with each other, outside of class.

I’m working on helping them learn how scientists across the world communicate by having them share lab results, collaborate on projects, etc., through comments.

They also use the comments to ask me (or their classmates) questions they forgot or might have been hesitant to ask in class.

My chemistry students recently finished the huge end of the year research project, and, oh, my word, I thought someone from Edublogs was going to call and tell us we were overloading the system.

What has been the benefits of your class blog to your students?

Our class blog has proven to be a tremendous resource for my students who for one reason or another have to be absent from class.

From their homes or hotel room, while waiting between races on their lap top, or on iTunes, my students can watch the day’s lecture, watch videos that I might have shown in class through the VodPod, get copies of assignments, learn about upcoming projects, and then ask me or their classmates questions by posting comments.

My students love to see themselves in action, but I could never seem to keep up with getting all the pictures I took printed for everyone to see.  With our class blog, I’m able to use Flickr and post picture and videos on our blog so the students can see all of them, any time, and not just the ones I can afford to print. I also send pics and video to Facebook and Twitter, and I’ve had former students comment on, “I remember when… .”

My kids would never have this kind of interaction with me, with each other, and even with the world without our class blog.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Thank you, Tammy, for all of your kind and informational words!

We would love to hear from others of you out there that are using your blogs in exciting ways to improve the learning experience of students.

Feel free to leave a comment if you would like to share and possibly be part of a future post such as this one!

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Nathan Toft’s response “this must be one of the top ten things to figure out about blogging” to my How To NOT Have Problems Uploading Photos And Using Up Storage Space post has me thinking.

What would my “top ten things to figure out about blogging” list be for new bloggers? And how would my tips compare to others?

Can you help us create a list of “top things to figure out about blogging” for new bloggers?

Please leave a comment to tell us:

1. What are your 3 (or more) most important things a new bloggger needs to know?
2. Alternatively, tell us what you don’t understand or want to know more about in terms of blogging?  So we can help you!

Thanks to Nathan Toft for inspiring this post!

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Many online tools provide embed code that you can use to embed them into other web sites.  The good news is that Edublogs allows you to add almost any embed code into blog posts, pages and text widgets.

This means there are lots of online tools that you can embed to really spice up your posts — providing more variety for your readers and engaging your students!

Let me show you how easy it is to set up a Wallwisher and add it to a blog post.

About Wallwishers

Wallwisher is an online notice board creator.

It’s a really fast and easy way to create engaging activities to use with students.

It’s as simple as:

1. Create your Wallwisher
2. Add some sticky notes
3. Embed into your Blog Post
4. Add more sticky notes

The sticky notes can be as simple as text only OR very creative with images, audio, video, SlideShares, Google Presentations, blog posts (basically almost anything you can link to via their URL)!

And students don’t need to have a Wallwishers account to use it!

Here’s examples how you can use with students:

1. Frieda Foxworth’s Wallwisher’s in the classroom – includes a great ‘How to’ Wallwisher video
2. Ann Leaness’s Wallwisher and Stupeflix in the Classroom - make sure you check out the video at the end to see how she uses a Wallwisher to gather images to create a video with Stupeflix
3. Tom Barrett’s 19 Interesting ways to use Wallwisher in the Classroom
4. The Conch’s online “post-it parking lot” for pop culture points. Students earn extra credit when they make connections to what they are learning in class. Click on each post title to check out their different wallwishers.

Below is a  Wallwisher I’ve created:

I’ve set up this Wallwisher as a sandpit site.

Click on ‘Post a Sticky’ to add your own notes to the wall — why not add your thoughts on how it could be used or share links to your Wallwisher!

How To Create a Wallwisher

1.  Go to Wallwisher and click on ‘Build a wall‘

2.  Select your Wallwisher image, add your title and your subtitle

2. Add your name and email address

3.  Choose your Wall URL, who can view, who can post sticky notes and decide if you want to approve every post before it is added to the wall.

4.  Select your preferred theme and click Done.

5.  Presto!  Your Wallwisher is created and you can now start addding some sticky notes.

Adding and Viewing Sticky Notes on Wallwisher

1.  You just double click any where on the Wallwisher to add a new sticky note

2.  When the sticky note opens up add your text and/or the URL location of any images, audio, video, SlideShares, Google Presentations, blog posts etc you would like to include in your sticky note and then click OK

Tips:

1.  To locate the URL of an image just right click on the image and select:

• ‘Copy Image location’ when using FireFox
• Properties and then copy the Address (URL) when using Internet Explorer

2.  When viewing a sticky note with an image embedded – click on ZOOM if you want to enlarge the image

3.  When you link to the URL location of audio, SlideShares, Google Presentations, blog posts etc it shows that link using a View icon.  Clicking on VIEW opens up the item on your Wallwisher.

Embedding a Wallwisher in a blog post

Edublogs and Edublogs Campus blogs have been customised so that users can embed almost any HTML code into posts and text widgets.

This means most javascript, iframes and object code can be added e.g. videos, google calendars, vokis, Voicethreads, ebooks, widgets

To add any type of object that uses HTML embed code into a post it is as simple as:

1. Grab the HTML embed code
2. Click on the HTML tab
3. Paste the HTML embed code
4. Click Publish

Embedding a Wallwisher is the same as any other embed HTML code:

1.  Completely write your post including adding title, text, images, tags and categories.
2.  Click on Save Draft, previewed your post and make all necessary edits.

3.  On your Wallwisher go to Do More and select Embed.

4.  Copy the embed code

5.  Click on HTML Tab on your blog post.

6.  Paste the embed code for your Wallwisher into your post where you want it to appear then immediately click Publish

• Don’t click back to Visual Tab before hitting Publish as it can break the embed code.
  Immediately close your post once you’ve published.
• Change back to Visual Editing mode when you write your next post by clicking on the Visual tab.

Presto! Your Wallwisher is embedded in your blog post and others can view and/or add to it!

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This post was written by Sue Wyatt for the Student Blogging Challenge.

Well, we are now into Week 4 of the March 2010 Student Blogging Challenge.

Students have been creating their blogs and making it their own by adding widgets and avatars; they have written about their country, state or town and many have visited other class or student blogs.

Many have written about why you should visit their blog and should they use a real photo as opposed to an avatar when they are on the net.

Every time the challenge is on, I try to visit each individual student blog at least 3 times over the period of the challenge.

It’s becoming harder each time we run the Challenge to visit all the student blogs — due to the numbers of students participating!

So I am putting out an URGENT HELP ME PLEASE!

The Problem

We now have about 700 individual student blogs in the following age ranges participating in the challenge:

• Age 8-10: about 60 blogs
• Age 11: about 110 blogs
• Age 12: about 130 blogs
• Age 13: about 110 blogs
• Age 14: about 110 blogs
• Age 15: about 50 blogs
• Age 16: about 50 blogs
• Age 17+: about 70 blogs

And this isn’t counting the 60 class blogs participating!

With more and more students taking part with their own blogs, it’s becoming harder for me to visit each of their blogs as often.

But comments on their blogs, especially from others outside their class, are very important for motivating and providing guidance.

How You Can Help

By the end of mid April, I would like each of these blogs to receive at least one, preferably two, comments from:

1. Teachers, pre-service teachers  or people in the education sector
2. Students who have blogging at least a year and who have participated in at least one student blogging challenge
   

So we are looking for volunteers who are willing to leave least one, preferably two, comments on student blogs such as:

1. A few clues about how to set up their blogs would be great for the newer students who have only had their blogs less than a week or so .
2. Alternatively choose a post they have written or look at their about page to leave a comment for them.

Preferably we would love it if you would write comments where they need to reply to keep the conversation going on their blog.

Here’s example of the types of comments we are looking for:

1. Mrs Yollis’s comment on Abbey’s The Wonderful State of Indiana
2. Great examples of conversation between student and teachers on:
   • Mr Miller’s The Golden State
   • Lojo’s Best Place in the World!!! California
   • Super Scooper’s Our Place in the World

What we would like to do is allocate about 20-30 student blogs to each volunteer.

Benefit of Being a Challenge Helper

This is excellent for teachers and preservice teachers (student teachers) who are:

• Wanting to increase their understanding of how blogs can be used with students.
• Unable to participate with their students in our current Challenge but who want to learn more about the Student Blogging Challenge.

And off course, we appreciate how busy everyone is so we’ve decided to give away twenty free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions (formerly known as Edublogs Supporters) to our twenty best helpers!

You can use these free Edublogs Pro 12 month subscriptions on your own blog or give away to a reader.

To Volunteer As a Challenge Helper

Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to volunteer your services.

Can you please include the following information in your comment:

1. Your name and a bit about your teaching background
2. Your blog URL or website (if you have one)
3. What student age you would like to leave comments for.

Once you have done this we will leave a comment on the post telling you which student on our March 2010 Student Blog list page we would like you to start with and where on the list we would like you to work down to.

Make sure that you tick the notify me of followup comments via email before you submit your comments — so you receive our replies

Please note:

• We recommend that you work directly from March 2010 Student Blog list to visit your student blogs
• Our March 2010 Student Blog list is updated everyday and sorted by age, so new students are added at the end of each age list automatically.
• If you find a link doesn’t go to a blog, could you please copy the line in the student list and email it to Sue Wyatt at tasteach56[at]gmail[dot]com, — so we can fix it
• If you have any questi0ns contact Sue Wyatt by email at tasteach56[at]gmail[dot]com

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We’ve been having  interesting conversations in the comments on Kathleen McGeady’s guest post  Teaching Commenting Skills on ‘is a formal structure or style for writing comments necessary?’

There’s always differing opinions on this type of topic.

So I’d love us to debate it in more detail while expanding the conversation to include blogs posts.

That way we’ll all gain for learning more about why we each take a different approach.

Please leave a comment to share your thoughts on any or all of the following:

1. Should teachers be correcting grammar and spelling in student posts and comments?  If you are correcting, how are you doing this?
2. Is a formal structure or style for writing posts and comments necessary? Refer to Kathleen McGeady’s guest post  Teaching Commenting Skills to see what we mean by formal structure.
   • Is student age an important consideration?
   • And, how do you communicate to your students what is required?
3. How do you balance structure, developing writing skills while empowering student learning and motivating them to want to write?
4. What other advice would you give educators who have just started to blog with their students?

Perhaps you might like to invite your students to share their thoughts?

• Would be interesting to know to what extent they do/don’t want structure?
• How do they feel about their grammar and spelling being corrected in posts and comments?

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We’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 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.

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.

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!

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:

• Step 1 – Set up your class blog
• Step 2 – Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines
• Step 3 – Teaching Commenting Skills and Etiquette – Guest post by Kathleen McGeady
• Step 4 – Help Parents Connect With Your Class Blog
• Step 5 – Add Students To Your Class Blog So They Can Write Posts
• Step 6 – Add A Visitor Tracking Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
• Step 7 – Setting Up Student blogs
• Step 8 – Add your student blogs to your blogroll
• Step 9 – Add Your Student Blogs To A Folder In Google Reader

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