Blogging for Educators Slide Show

This slide show was created as talking points and links for an education conference this weekend. I feel excited and a bit nervous as I prepare for my first workshop on blogging. I have been enjoying my adventures in blogging, but also realize that I am still near the beginning of my adventures.

Think Blogging

I have continued to research blogging and in my quest I have stumbled across several great blog hosting sites that would be appropriate for middle and high school student blogs. I have not however, been able to find any site that is more suited to younger student blogging than Think.com. My 4th grade students as well as a class of 4th grade students at another local school have been blogging at Think.com since early October. It has been a great experience. Part of the positive experience is directly credited to the ease of use and safety measures provided by the site. My students can easily add posts, message boards, votes, and other interactive tools to their sites. They can even link a word document. They can post virtual post it note messages on each other's blogs or participate in votes and discussion boards.

They can even create secondary pages. Some of my students, for example, added a writer's workshop page in addition to their assigned reader response page. I can also create multiple sub-pages. I have an information and directions page, a reading page, and a science page. I can use these pages to post discussions and votes pertaining to read aloud or information that we have covered in science or social studies.

The best part is the safety measures. In order to set up a blog administrators account you need a letter from your district office. Which thankfully my very supportive Assistant Superintendent willingly provided. Think.com then provides parent permission slips and other support materials that can be distributed. A blog administrator can set up classes and create accounts and passwords for all involved parties. Blog administrators can also choose to open student's blogs to other students or maintain a private community. I chose the latter. My students' blogs can only be viewed by invited guests. The site maintains several filters which send messages to the administrators of any attempt of bad language. All members can flag any posted information that is inappropriate or makes them feel uncomfortable. This information is forwarded to the administrator's mailbox.
Blogging has been a great experience for my class. No matter where you choose to blog. I recommend that you involve some school celebrities to post messages on students' blogs. Those that teach in elementary schools will understand who the students look to as celebrities. In my school, this includes the guidance counselor, consultant teacher, principal, librarian, challenge teacher and the reading recovery teacher. This truly makes it a celebration of reading and writing.

A Week of Wiki

Vacation is over and it is time to reflect on the success of our vacation wiki experiments.

• The Odyssey of the Mind team Wiki was a great success. Every student signed in at least once and contributed to the script or discussion. However, most students spent hours at the wiki over vacation. The team wrote and edited their whole script. They also spent some time in the discussion area deciding how they will solve the required problem and what supplies they may need. The students told me today that they really enjoyed working on the wiki over vacation. The students liked the layout of Wikispaces and found it easy to use. One fifth grade student described it as "really cool and fun". Based on this reaction, we will continue using this approach of between meeting collaboration until competition. I will also definitely use a wiki with students again. Another benefit of this wiki is that Wikispaces offers private wikis to teachers. I felt comforted because the site is password protected. Strangers can not edit or post messages.

• The grant writing wiki worked well but was not as inclusive as the students' wiki. A few of us signed in regularly and really brainstormed ideas. We were able to find prices for items and link product sites and add product pictures within the text. It was a great experience for those that participated, but before we move further we will need to also have some non-technology based meetings and discussion. Despite this, I still believe that those of us who participated were able to get more done over vacation than we would have any other way.

Now that I have had a chance to get my feet wet with these wiki's, I am sure that I will continue to look for ways to incorporate them into my professional life.

A little wiki to save the day

I have been grappling with the wiki idea for a while. It seems really interesting and I could see many uses in both the middle school and high school level. Still unclear, was how it would help an elementary school. This week everything changed. Now I am actively involved in two wiki's at my school. The cause of this epiphany: Vacation. We have a week vacation. School is closed but upcoming deadlines don't change.
The first deadline involves a technology grant application. The school librarian and I began to ask questions. If we can't get the committee together over break how can we work on the grant? E-mail? Phone calls? Then the answer came. We set up a wiki at wikispaces, entered the grant information, e-mailed members the information and we are off and running. I can't wait to see the results of this online collaboration.
The second deadline is the upcoming Odyssey of the Mind competition. Seven students who need to meet and won't be able too. How frustrating. Then it dawned on me. Wow, another practical use of the wiki. I quickly set up a wiki for the team and had a short training session with them. They are very excited and some have begun already.
For me this vacation is acting as a testing period for wiki use. I am really looking forward to observing first hand how well the wiki works with elementary students. This is a great testing ground for future wiki projects in my elementary school.
Stay tuned for post vacation results.

Video - The Connected Classroom

The world is changing and so is education. I came across a well made video by YouTube user khokanson. See what you think.

Article Review

I have just created the following slideshow as discussion points for an article review presentation.

Around the Web in 80 Minutes

Slideshare user GladsteinS does a great job of explaining web 2.0 in this slide show. Try following the links and checking out any web 2.0 applications you are not familiar with. I know I enjoyed checking it out and learned a few things along the way.



www.Slideshare.net is a great place to find slideshows created on every topic you can imagine. Try searching education technology or any other topic of interest. I really enjoyed reading the slide shows created for edtech courses. Slideshows by other k-12 teachers and administrators also provide some insight into technologies used in other classrooms around the world. You can also post your own powerpoint shows for embedding into your own blogs, Wikis, and websites. Have fun.

Blogging Research

I spent a few hours today researching how other teachers are using blogs with their students. I came across various family communication blogs. I think it is great how many teachers are able to keep families connected in this way. Some however really stood out. I saw one teacher at Mary Scroggs Elementary School using a blog with kindergartners as a language experience activity. You can see this and many other ideas for using technology in elementary school in this video.

Another interesting find was a blog created by a primary school teacher in Nelson, New Zealand. She has her own blog just chuck full of ideas and tools for blogging with kids as well as a blog that she has created with her students.

I also really liked the science examples I found at the Technology Ninja's Site. These examples showed student created blogs. They were my space "like" blog pages, however they were each designed as if they were created by a planet. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so look for yourselves. Mercury blog