Free Blogging in the Classroom
10
June
I have been checking out the online blog with upper primary and secondary. Most students have really enjoyed it and love having their own domain name. I have used wordpress.com. I was pleasantly surprised at how well the secondary Aboriginal ESL classes attempted to write their first blog with Standard Australia English. The amount of reading needed to set up a blog and change the theme and profile was daunting for many of our kids so the original lessons were full on for me as the teacher. My year 4s have started a class blog, I have only given them one username at this stage and they write their first name at the bottom of the blog. I think it will only be 5 top students who will really use it, but that will be good extension activity for them. The next step is to help the teaching staff understand that these children want to be part of the Net, to publish; not just view it and make PowerPoint presentations.
1. Rod Blitvich | June 10th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Gidday Terri.
I’m not a komputa teacher, but got my Yr12 Human Biol kids to do Bloga at the beginning of the year mainly as a getting to know you exercise and goal setting.
We used Blogspot.
You can get to them from http://web.mac.com/blitto/iWeb/Blittos%20Stuff/My%20Students%27%20Websites.html
cheers
Rod Blitvich
2. Steve Adcock | June 10th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Rod seeing as you are making a concerted effort to use podcasting with your students it would be a great individual development tool for each of your students. An example might be that you want to develop their understandings of cells and metabolism. Lets say you get different students to view diferent cells under under the microscope, you might be lucky enough to have a mac compatible one so that students can record their pics for their podcast. You can pose a simple question like describe the visble cell and its structures and their purpose. Then after their podcast you can pose another question to further their answer in the direction and detail that you are after. In effect you are not only developing their individual needs but also improving their ability to write essays to the detail required which is hard to do across a whole class normally. What do you think Rod. I kind of tried this last year with Year 10 Motion asking them to desicribe and design some simple experiments for visually impaired people. IT worked ok but they are still a little immature to work through things quicly enough to make it feasible with the things that need to be covered. Definately worth it with older students.
Cheers Steve
3. Steve Adcock | June 10th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Sorry Rod not sure if the above is very clear but what I meant is that students then keep going back to their podcast and improving based on your new questions. Because you can verbally add the questions to their podcasts you are able to articulate very clearly to suit individuals. It might take some students many questions.
4. Rod Blitvich | June 10th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Steve
I plan to get each yr12 Human Biol student to rough out a summary on a particular section of the course using Inspiration. Then they must plan a podcast of it. we will record it together and i will upload them to my site. Voila - a summary of the whole course to help kids studying for the TEE.
5. Kim Flintoff | June 10th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Hi Terri,
Yor comments about “the next step”… has been one of my bugbears for years…
The idea that the WWW is not just a giant repository for the benefit of teachers who onlu know how to google… but rather as a site for interaction - I’ve long advocated that we all need to GIVE to the internet rather than just take from it…
Our students know that intrinsically - probably one of the more reliable traits of Gen Y. The proliferation and growth of sites like Flickr, MySpace, Blogspot, etc just shows how ubiquitous these forms are. Our students use many aspects of the internet - not for educational purposes normally but rather for getting on with their lives and establshing networks and being seen… for sharing their interests - then at school in many cases they are told to shelve their interests, forget about the full capabilities of the WWW and work within the comfort zone of the teacher and or education authority… little wonder we read so many descriptions of teachers struggling…
Computing as social activity has not seemed to penetrate the educational mindset in many places… still the lone desktop mentality… the ‘workstation’ mindset… very limiting for our studnets and for the development of effective teaching and learning relationships.
Do you have any clues as to how we encourage a very conservative teacher population to expand their vision?
6. Reg Whitely | June 12th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
Terri, maybe it’s time I tried this with my class. How would you suggest we start? I’ve played around a little bit with blogs over the last Christmas holidays, but not seriously, and now being part of the Digital Chalkie Project, and reading your blog on the subject, it makes me think it’s time to get a little bit more serious.
7. Terri Van Zetten | June 13th, 2006 at 9:27 pm
Reg, I started to reply to your statement and started to write tooooo much! So, I have jotted it down on my wiki. I did a silly thing and put spaces in the name of the title, not realising that it was the page name also! Oh well… The site is
http://missterri.pbwiki.com/Primary%20School%20blogging%20with%20WordPress
In reply to Rod’s comment, I have been looking at wikis, blogs and podcasts this term, I like to compare things and it is a great way to compare some similar tools. I also hope to look at online applications including gliffy in the next few weeks.
Now Kim, that is a whole different can of worms, so I am going to create a new post regarding your comment!