Tag Archives: student blogging

Don’t Miss Out! Student Blogging Challenge Starts Soon

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The Student Blogging Challenge is a free and open collaborative project that runs for 10 weeks twice each year.

And the next series starts next week, so now is your chance to register and get involved!

Students and classes that participate work through a set of challenge activities that build blogging skills and foster collaboration by all involved.

Quick facts:

  • Anyone can participate using any blogging platform
  • All levels of blogging skills welcome – complete beginners encouraged to join
  • Teachers can tailor the challenges or incorporate theme however needed to fit in your time frame and curriculum

This post wouldn’t be complete without recognizing the tireless efforts of the volunteer coordinator of the challanges, Sue Wyatt. From everyone involved, we can’t thank you enough!

Don’t miss out! 

 

Picasa Slideshows: Giving Parents a Glimpse of School

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This is a guest post written by Janet Moeller-Abercrombie.

Janet teaches at an international school in Asia. She is the author of Expat Educator and a contributing author of 1 to 1 Schools. You can follow her at @jabbacrombie.

A parent once remarked, “You do so many great things at school. I wish I could be a fly on the wall and watch my child in action.”

One of the easiest ways to give parents a glimpse of school is to give students a camera, access to Picasaweb, and a blog.

Give students a camera.

Each week, one or two students are given the classroom job of photographer. The photographer gets to carry a camera throughout the school day, snapping shots he or she finds interesting.

Why not take pictures myself? I like to see life from a student’s point of view. Parents like to see that too. What do students find interesting? humorous? entertaining? Student personalities shine on the playground, in the cafeteria, and in the library – places I don’t often supervise.

Also, my school is located in a large urban area. Students don’t have much playground space. A camera allows them to spend their free time in artistic ways. Here is a video to help students begin to take thoughtful shots:

Students who want to know more about photography can look for additional advice at the EasyPhotography or Kodak sites.

The one rule for student photographers: photography cannot interrupt teacher instruction or other students’ work time. It’s a good idea to let specialist teachers know the rule so that they can enforce it as necessary.

Pairs of students choose the final photos.

Have a pair of students look through the week’s shots and choose the 10-12 best. When pairs decide, they should discuss what makes one shot better than another. How is it framed? Is the camera focused on the subject? Authentic communication around shared experiences is great for second language learners.

Photos are uploaded into Picasaweb.

Picasaweb is free if you don’t use too much storage space. Low storage is the main reason I have students select their 10-12 best photos each week.

In the video below, I show how to upload and how to add captions. For privacy reasons, I don’t allow students to include names with a caption.

Change Picasa Viewing Permission

I once made the mistake of not changing viewing permissions. The slideshow looked beautiful from my computer. The next day, students told me the pictures weren’t visible. Oops. Click on the link to learn how to Change Picasa Viewing Permissions.

Choose slideshow mode and embed the code.

This part is the trickiest (at first). Students get the hang of it rather quickly.

The Final Slideshow…

An example can be found here.

The next week…

My student photographers teach two new student photographers. I’m a big fan of students teaching students. With a little explanation and access to the video tutorials above, students are able to upload slideshows to the class blog with limited teacher intervention.

Once students get into the routine of posting photo slideshows, you are left with posts that all students and parents want to view. Parents who travel or who live far away especially appreciate this glimpse into their child’s school life.

How else might you use Picasa slideshows in your blog?

2012 to be the year of student blogging!

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When Edublogs first launched back in 2005, the average classroom had one computer, and many didn’t have even one.

Certainly there were next to no 1-to-1 initiatives or tablets in schools – and mobile computer workstations were just starting to be used.

Getting to the point, the face of blogging in education is way different now then it was just a few years ago.

On Edublogs, the two most popular types of blogs have traditionally always been:

  1. Classroom – Teachers providing updates and resources for students and parents
  2. Professional – A place for educators to share ideas and collaborate with each other

But over the past couple of years, there has been a new kid in town. It’s gone from a few brave teachers here and there that have pioneered the way for others to becoming standard practice in many schools and programs.

It’s student blogging, and it is here to stay!

And we couldn’t be more excited about it. There has always been students using Edublogs in various ways, but now with more devices available and an increased focus in writing and technology use and various curricula, more and more students are finding themselves blogging in school – young and old and across all subjects.

As discussed in this Time Magazine article, research shows that there are more benefits to blogging then you might first think – including improving student self-esteem and confidence offline and outside the classroom.

What does all of this mean?

Well for starters, it means that we at Edublogs have to do an even better job of making it easy for educators to create and manage large numbers of student blogs. We have tons of great tools already in place, especially on our Edublogs Campus sites, but we definitely recognize there is room to improve.

Yesterday we announced a few new tools to help with teachers that need to moderate and approve all comments and posts on student blogs – and there’s a bunch more in the plans for 2012. We believe that the learning benefits of blogging with students is maximized when students have their own personal blogs that they can take ownership of. Our system is designed (and will continue to improve) to let that be a reality in a safe, engaging, and easy to manage way.

This also means that the online community of educators that are blogging with students is growing. Through twitter, blogs, and other means, we need to develop ways to better facilitate collaboration and connect teachers and students that share similar goals. We’ve seen some of this through blogging projects such as this and the twice-yearly Student Blogging Challenge, but putting systems in place that bring it to the masses would be truly powerful.

What do you think? Are you using blogs with your students?

What Edublogs features or community resources would you like to see?

Photo: Teacher With Students from BigStock

What You Wanted To KNOW About Student Blogging

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Sue Waters and Richard Byrne at ISTE unpluggedRichard 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:

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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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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