CLASS 1: Why Teachers Blog

There are many reasons why teachers have begun to integrate technology and the Internet into their classrooms.  Blogs have proven to be one of the most user-friendly (and kid-friendly) ways to communicate with students, and increase investment in the content and instruction.

Depending on resources available, teacher experience and comfort, and time, there are many different things that can be done with blogs to achieve these goals.  In this class’ lecture we will begin discussing them, and you will begin to brainstorm what kind of role a teacher blog could (and will) play in your classroom.

EXAMPLE OF BLOGGING INCREASING STUDENT INVESTMENT:

Quick win for vocab… every week on Wednesdays my students homework assignment is to use their lingo (vocab) to create a script of some kind (“Script it Out” if you will). They can create a movie script, TV show script, commercial, song, rap, poem, fiction story… the options are really endless as long as the product is well thought out and uses their lingo in sentences, in a way that shows they understand the meaning.

Well, needless to say, while at first this can be exciting and a little different, eventually it becomes just another homework assignment they have to complete. Quick easy win= YOUTUBE! The best scripts are performed the next day (Thursday Theatre) in class, and recorded on my small digital still camera. The good ones are then uploaded on YouTube. If you teach in a computer/Tech lab, it’s easy to embed it on your blog and have them all watch it the next day. If you don’t, just put it on your website (or tell them what it’s titled) and you’d be amazed at how many kids will find a way to look at it outside of school.

Following a class discussion earlier this year about how YouTube is revolutionizing fame, and every middle schooler wants to be famous, kids will do whatever it takes to get their work (and performance) on YouTube.  Whatever it takes in this case is quality homework.  What a beautiful win-win situation

Just another way technology can help invest kids in your subject…

P.S.  Struggling to get videos in a format that upload easily on YouTube?  Try VisualHub- best converter I’ve found.  VERY user friendly.

Once you’ve watched the lecture and completed the assignments, it’ll be time to move on to creating your own!

Check out the Class 1 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 2: Getting Started

After almost every school break, I used to hear many of my kids reference how much time they spent over break going on MySpace, or how they were going to head to MySpace as soon as they got home.

While I accept that MySpace is, and despite what I may hope or wish for, will remain an important part of their social lives, I also accept there IS something I can do about it. Kids are always looking for new things to explore and play with online. Right now they have a TON of ways to connect with their teammates online, but do they have a way to connect with their teachers?

I find classroom blogs an awesome way to communicate with students inside (I’m lucky enough to teach in a room with 24 computers) and outside (you’d be surprised how many will look at it in their free time!) the classroom. I began by writing daily about what happened in all four of my classes (we often forget about how little they see of the other groups, but how much they want to know about the other groups!), and it evolved to updates, commentary I don’t have time for in class, pictures, and could be so much more!

The English teacher on my team then created her own blog, and I LOVED the idea of all teachers in our school blogging! You can write about YOUR interests (how little they actually know about us is amazing, how much they WANT to know about us is surprising!), what you’re reading, thoughts on the world, or whatever you want! Imagine a world where students go home and have the option of MySpace, but also the option of 5-30 teacher blogs to choose from! If we can show the Internet as a place of learning and community with their teachers as well as their teammates, we are expanding their social and personal learning networks to a place where growth doesn’t have to stop at our school door as they board the buses…

Just a thought

Check out my old class blog at:

http://www.saltinerockstars.wordpress.com

In today’s class you’re going to get to set up your class blog.  Begin by checking out the class lecture, which will walk you through all the steps needed, and then dive in to creating your own!  Once you’ve set up the basics, with your first post, head to our class wiki and enter your name, subject, and a link to your blog so we can all check it out!

Check out the Class 2 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 3: The Scary Side of the World Wide Web

While no one loves the use of the Internet in classrooms more than I do, I feel obliged to cover the dangers of it as well.  While those of us who have grown up with the Internet have learned over time, through news stories about dangerous internet encounters, personal experience, or horror stories from friends, ultimately we all came to the same conclusion: you have to be careful about how much of yourself you expose online.

While blogging is slightly different than chat rooms, MySpace, Facebook, etc., we need to take this opportunity to teach students about Internet safety in general.  In very few school curriculums do we build in objectives about Internet Safety, particularly if students don’t have a Computer Skills/Technology classroom, so it becomes inreasingly important to take advantage of this opportunity.

In order to clearly and explicitly teach about Internet safety we have to consider the possible dangers, expose them to students (in a way that emphasizes safety and not fear), and equip them with concrete ways to protect themselves.  The idea is not to make them so scared of the Internet they avoid going online altogether, but instead is meant to make it clear there are ways to protect themselves, and help them learn.

In this class, we will talk about these briefly in the lecture, and you will then begin thinking about how you will teach this in your own classroom, and develop the objectives and lesson plans to make it a reality.

Check out the Class 3 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 4: What Does Your Internet Footprint Look Like?

The goal of teaching the idea of an Internet Footprint is to get students to think about EVERYTHING they create online. The idea that what they put on their MySpace profile can affect college and job options in the future, and your blog can be found and looked at by ANYONE, not just your intended audience. Comments you leave on other blogs and VoiceThreads wlll reflect on you, and again can be read by many more than what you originally expect.

Another piece of this I often struggle with, is how much of your Internet Footprint do you really control? Clearly you have most of the control over your MySpace profile, but what about pictures that others tag of you, or comments that others leave on your page? Yes, you have control over your blog, but what about others who reference your blog in theirs? That becomes part of your Internet Footprint, because when someone googles your name, that web site will also appear.

I have a picture that was taken at a American University basketball game where I look ridiculous, decked out in my red, white and blue, face painted, and holding two hot dogs and a pretzel.  One year ago (about three years after it was taken) it was featured in an EagleBlog post (the school blog) discussing school spirit. While I did pose for the picture, I did not have any control whether or not it appeared online. But again, that has become part of my Internet Footprint.

Becoming ‘Googleable’

We, as adults, use google all the time to find out anything and everything we want. Need to find some resources fast? Google it. Trying to put a face to a name? Google it (thanks Google image!). Hoping to dig up more information about a prospective teacher? Google them. Trying to solve a friendly argument with a friend? Google it. (Beware on this one… I first learned about wikis back in college, and was fooled by someone who went in and changed wikipedia first…)

So what exactly are we teaching our students about what their ‘Google Profile’ is beginning to look like?

I know in my classroom the approach I’ve taken is the less we put out there, the better our profile is. But a recent blog post on ‘Web-blogged’ (a great education technology blog by Will Richardson) started to make me question that approach. As a result of such easily accessible information, it unfortunately is taking a more prominent role in hiring (and firing) in today’s workforce. It’s also becoming common for college admissions to ‘Google’ prospective students, and check out their Internet footprint.

In traditional college and job applications, everyone must submit a resume. Even if yours isn’t as good as you would like, you do your best and submit it anyways. I see, and hear, all the time at my school the reinforcement of doing things now that will build a stronger resume later. So instead of just encouraging students to not create an Internet presence at all (or atleast a traceable one), why don’t we explicitly teach them how to create a positive internet presence.

Encourage students to create electronic portfolios with their best, published work. Interested in photography? Introduce them to Flickr and the world that awaits both in terms of inspiration, but also in terms of authentic audience (a huge community is developing around photos on Flickr, with in depth conversations developing around single photographs). Introduce them to VoiceThread where they can create their own voice-guided slideshows and discussions.

What I’m seeing here are three possible outcomes in 4-8 years when a college admissions counselor googles one our kids:

1) They find some embarrassing pictures and potentially crude conversations/posts on MySpace walls, all convincing them to NOT accept our student.

2) They find nothing, leaving them with just the student’s paper (or online) application, resume and GPA.

3) In addition to the student’s application, resume and GPA, they find several year’s worth of published writing, a blog with their (hopefully) insightful thoughts/comments on a variety of topics, published photography and potentially so much more.

So where is this being taught now?

In Class 4′s Lecture we will discuss all of these issues, and your class assignment will equip you to begin tackling them in your own classroom, and preparing your students for creating incredible Internet footprints.

Check out the Class 4 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 5: The New Pencil & Paper: How Blogging Can Change the Way Our Students Write

While blogging FOR the kids is a powerful tool to connect to their world of digital engagement, I enjoy their blogging even more

About two years ago I attended a technology conference in Greensboro, NC, where I was first exposed to the idea of using blogging in my classroom to improve student blogging.  I understood why students would like this (anytime they’re actually using the computers, and especially the internet, they were happier than teachers talking or writing on paper), and was quickly intrigued by the idea of ‘Authentic Audience’.

Normally when students write at school, they turn it in to be read by one teacher.  Occasionally peer writing exposes it to more students, and occasionally exemplar writers are selected to display their work, or read it in class.  But in most cases, students write for only one other person.  And they get feedback from only one other person.  It’s no wonder after years of the same they begin to take it a bit less seriously.

Then they hit Middle School, where they’re developing a voice and just want to be heard.  Yet again, the only one who often ever gets a chance to hear them is their teachers.  Blogging allows them to publish their work for a potentially limitless audience, where they can receive comments,  and see stats on how many people are reading.  They can also design their blog however they want (depending on the flexibility allowed by the teacher), allowing them to use colors, themes, widgets and more to express their personality along with their thoughts.

Soon after this small epiphany I had my students create their first blogs. At first this involved them simply typing up some of their writing from English and responding to a couple prompts from me. Over time, however, as I saw their excitement and the level of their writing quickly improve, I began using it more.  I would see students go back and edit the same post 3-10 times.  Not because I asked them too, but because they knew others could, and probably would, be reading it, and they wanted their writing to be the best that it could.

While I loved the idea of blogging improving students’ writing (the idea that writing for an authentic audience would improve their voice, grammar and style was compelling), students didn’t initially seem to feel that their audience WAS authentic since they weren’t receiving any comments. It was then that a brilliant mind in the world of KIPP suggested ‘Blog of the Day’. I LOVED IT! Since then, an essential part of our Do Now became visiting the blog of the day (written on the board). The Blog of the Day belonged to one (or two) students from our classes, randomly chosen from a cup.

We then discussed and learned what positive and constructive comments looked like, so comments did not become a sort of “writing on walls” if you will, a transfer over from their MySpace and Facebook worlds. In the next unit I then taught the idea of continuing and building the conversation through their comments, to increase the intellectual conversation potential created by a blogging community.

(We’ll talk more about this in Class 8: Upping the Quality)

Okay, now the one huge wall I’m already predicting is from teachers NOT in a tech lab setting. If not privileged with a classroom full of computers here are a couple of options.

1) Reserving the school computer lab so you can set them all up at once. Then save it as an earned privilege, potentially using it as a class incentive, earned however you consider appropriate for your subject and what you want to emphasize at the time.

2) A ‘pod’ of computers in the back of your room, if possible. Even 2-5 computers in the back of your room can be a cool earned privilege for kids making smart choices, or an even rotation where everyone gets signed up and blogging within a week. From there, normal writing assignments in your class can become new blog posts! No need to type them up first, but everyone can write on paper and later transferred to blogs. Encourage kids to visit them at home as well… even those without internet access will miraculously find a way when they WANT to get on. You’ll be amazed by which kids are motivated by this!

Some prompts I found with great responses:

Do you believe in love at first sight? (They’re doing Romeo and Juliet in English right now)

Are there some things that are evil, but in certain situations good? Or things that are good, but in certain situations evil?

If I were a teacher I would…

In 20 years, I will be…

The qualities that make a best friend are…

One thing I’d like to change about the world…

The more controversial/debatable the better. Not only will they love expressing their opinion, but it also makes it easier/more exciting to comment on and spark discussion.

One helpful hint: send home a permission slip first to parents to let them know about your project, and make sure to emphasize with kids this is a CLASS project, therefore what they write should be appropriate for a professional/classroom situation.

In Class 5 we’re going to talk about the benefits of having your students blog in your classroom, and prepare you to begin thinking about how to make this happen in your own room.

Check out the Class 5 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 6: Student Expectations While Blogging

Like any project or activity in a classroom, it will flop without proper expectations set for students.  I made this mistake early on with blogs, and learned constantly as we went.  For example, the first writing assignment I gave students started writing in text speak, using abbreviations, numbers instead of words, symbols, etc.  My initial reaction was to discipline them for a clear breach of directions, and then I realized I hadn’t given any in regards to this.  I assumed they would make the connection that because we’re in school, they should use the same kind of writing they use for all assignments, not realizing that for many of them, this is the only way they’ve ever typed on a computer before.

I quickly found students spending more time changing the theme of their blog than actually writing, some using fonts that were unreadable (and therefore ungradable), and some insisting on writing in only pink.

While allowing student expression is a huge advantage of blogs, there have to be limits in order for them to still be effective.  I learned this early on, and wished I had had the foresight to predict these and make directions clear from the start.  I soon implemented rules such as:

1) First 60 seconds of every writing assignment may be used to choose font and color.  After those 60 seconds are up, there are not to be any changes.  If I see you changing these after the first 60 seconds, you will lose the privilege, and in the future can only write in black, Times New Roman.

2) I can only grade what I can read.  If I can’t read your writing, you will not receive a grade.

3) You may only insert pictures when it is part of the assignment.  I will make that clear, and set aside a certain amount of time for you to find, and insert pictures.  If you are searching for and adding pictures when not given directions, you will lose the privilege of writing on the blog, and will earn a pencil and paper.

These are just a few examples, and the main idea of this class is to get you thinking about your students, your class and your setup.

For this class’s assignment there are three parts.

1. Begin by creating a list of potential concerns with blogging in your classroom. Come up with rules/expectations proactively addressing these.
2. Then create a lesson plan for the class period where you will introduce blogs to students, and review basic expectations. Include your list of concerns and rules/expectations at the beginning of your lesson plan.
3. Upload this lesson plan onto the Assignments page, under Class 6, saving with the file name “LastName_ClassExpectations”

CLASS 7: Setting Up Student Blogs

Now that we’ve talked about WHY student blogging is incredible, and we’ve begun thinking about problems we might run into with our students blogging, it’s time to get started!

In Class 7 we will talk about logistics of student blogging, and review the steps of setting up a blog.  In the lecture I will discuss areas where I ran into problems when implementing with a class of 24 at a time, and how to work around those.

Check out the Class 7 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 7 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 8: Upping the Quality to Build Conversation

My thoughts on blogging mentioned yesterday were perfectly summarized in this brilliant blog post from a blog titled “Markitude: Commentary on the trappings of my life”.

http://markitude.wordpress.com

Thought I’d include it here:

People congregate to share ideas.

In urban areas, the coffee shop maybe a favored location to exchange ideas with people in person, or more frequently, online. Forums have been an online fixture, along with newsgroups for many years, and people with common interests tend to gravitate to these areas. Blogs traffic can come from a variety of sources, referrals from other blogs, search engine keywords that occurred in a post, or through referrals from the blog hosting site (hot blogs, next blog, top blogs, etc) based on traffic volumes. As a small sidebar, this latter method tends to be self fulfilling in that once a blog makes it to that list, simply being on the list will drive more traffic. If the blog is interesting, it will stay on the list in seeming perpetuity, ala Scobleizer. If not, then it will cycle through once all the casual clickers have found it, taken a peek and moved on.

Those that stay, and come back day after day appear to do so because of an affinity to the author or the subject of the blog. Posts start a conversation between the blogger and any audience member who chooses to comment, as expected. But then something more interesting can occur. Commenters, begin to have discussions amongst themselves within the comment threads, leaving one comment related to a previous comment rather than the original blog entry. It’s not just a many to one relationship with the blogger, but rather interaction amongst the commenting community. When the same small group of commenters are present day in and out, does the subject blog begin to take on the aspects of a social destination, a virtual coffee house? Are the visiters there for the coffee, or the venue and other patrons?

In Class 5 we’re going to talk about how teaching the parts of quality posts and comments explicitly can drastically increase the level of writing, thinking, and conversation on your blog, as well as your students blog.  After watching the lecture, you’ll have a chance to create the lesson plans for the classes where you’ll teach this, as well as rubrics that you can use to evaluate both posts and comments to evaluate students on mastery of this skill.

Check out the Class 8 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 9: Let’s Aggregate!

I was lucky enough to have two teachers visit my classroom today who were pretty inquisitive about both the hardware in the room (hard to ignore a beautiful SmartBoard with a wall mounted projector) and the content the students were tackling. One of them questioned if I was a ‘blogger’, and, while totally unintentionally, implied that there were certain people, or types of people, who blogged. I became totally intrigued by the perceptions of the ‘outside’ world as to who blogs, and for what purpose.

While I think it’s true there used to be a very small, specific community of people who blogged (in my mind they looked like your traditional techie who sat in a dark room and never left their computers, however not having been a blogger until recently I’m not entirely sure who they were), the idea of worldwide blogging is so powerful when thinking about communication, so many more have jumped aboard. THE WORLD OF EDUCATION NEEDS TO BE NEXT!

There are so many great things going on in so many of our schools across the country, but minus a few cross-campus visits every year, our ideas and innovative approaches to teaching our content often stay within our schools. While teachers are famous for working hard, we need to start taking advantage of technology to work smarter. Here’s where blogging comes in…

There are these brilliant inventions available for free on the web now called AGGREGATORS. Many of you may even be using one and not know it (think iGoogle). They have the power to organize all your favorite websites and blogs on one convenient page (that can also easily be set as your homepage) and feed you new updates as soon as they’re posted. This allows you to see new blog posts to all your favorite blogs in a matter of seconds, all on one page. Now bear with me here…

Picture if a lot of the brilliant minds leading successful schools across the country, and teaching in successful schools, started blogging. Doesn’t have to take much time, even small posts with random thoughts about school culture, middle-school social life, and brilliant misunderstandings that hit you mid-lesson and you wish you had prepared for. Now teachers nationwide open up Internet Explorer (or Firefox or Safari for all you brilliant Mac users) and see your post pop-up. Maybe it doesn’t relate to them or doesn’t interest them, so they ignore it. But for many blog posts, there will be many teachers who are immediately intrigued by what they see and venture to read the whole post. Now they add their own comments to the post, and BAM! A discussion is born. So easy, and SO beneficial to everyone involved. The blogger now has an audience outside their own school. The reader now has resources and conversation bringing in different perspectives. Either way, we’re communicating with each other, and continuing to think about how we can do what we do better. Isn’t that what we’re all about?

While it’s easy to set up, and you’ll quickly fall in love, the bigger picture of cross-school communication can’t happen in a meaningful way until we get more (ideally 100%) of our teachers aggregating, and many of our leaders and teachers blogging. So here’s where to start:

http://www.netvibes.com (if you want to check out my public aggregator to see what it looks like when it’s set up, here’s the link to the one I use in my classroom with my kids. http://www.netvibes.com/saltinerockstars Saltine Rockstars is the name of our Tech Team, and the tab called Saltine Rockstars is a collection of all their blogs… I HIGHLY encourage you to check them out and leave comments… they need help understanding there IS a real audience out there! There’s also some education blogs on there to get you started… I’m working on making a public aggregator for KIPP this weekend, so I’ll put that up here when it’s created)

Here’s a quick video to show you how to actually subscribe to blogs/websites once you’ve set up your aggregator/reader. This one is showing Bloglines (another aggregator), but it works the same way:

In Class 9 we’re going to talk more about aggregators, how they’ll help you grow as a teacher, how they’ll make classroom use of blogs more efficient, and how to set one up.  After that, you’ll have a chance to set up your own!

Check out the Class 9 Lecture by downloading it from the Box.net widget on the left side of this page.

All assignments for this class are also included on the Class 8 section of the class wiki.

CLASS 10: Building Your Audience

While blogging is beneficial with even a very small audience, the best way to increase student motivation and engagement is with a large audience. You’ll find that some students may not respond very quickly to the idea of blogging when they’re receiving no response. But as soon as they get their first comment, many will be hooked. So here are some quick, easy ways to spread the word and build your audience.

1. Send their blog web addresses to your staff listserve. Encourage other teachers to visit them.
2. Send the addresses to friends and family members and encourage the same (make sure to mention to them what kind of comments you’re hoping for… grammar feedback, content responses, or just conversation based off of what they’ve brought up).
3. Send them to other teachers outside your school.

Again, these are just a few examples.  I’ve included many more on the Additonal Resources/Readings section of the Class 10 wiki, so check it out for more ideas!

You’ll be amazed at how much fun it is to read the ramblings of a middle school student… we have a lot to learn from them, and many just need a place to express it.

For this Class’s assignment, all you need to do is pick at least two of the ideas above and try them out in order to build your audience.  In addition, leave a comment on this post with any other ideas you come up with to spread the word about your blogs!