About us – the all important class page

As Sue Waters, editor of “The Edublogger”  has asked for feedback on what educators think should be visible on an “About Me” page, I decided to write a post about it and ask my students to comment back on the post (when they return to school).

It is a reminder to me that I tidy up my own class page as well. Students love visitors and an authentic audience.  When I look at the stats for my personal blog, the “about me” page is the third most ‘hit’ page/post. Hence, it is a widely looked at section of a blog and critical for potential

• connections,
• communication,
• collaboration and
• encouraging return visitors.

Suggested content of the “about me/us page”  (bearing in mind school, district or country privacy restrictions and that our audience is intended for a global one.)

• What country, state and city you are from?
• Rural/city type school
• The class year level (if school permissions allow)
• The size of the class, stats regarding school etc
• A photo of the classroom (with/without students)
• Special interests eg podcasting, digital storytelling, moviemaking, connecting and communicating with others.
• Blogging history
• Any global projects participating in
• A contact email for teacher
• A short movie or other multimedia presentation on class activites, outcomes, the school, classroom

Happy belated birthday dear blog!!!

As usual, I often forget  important events and dates and here is one I have actually missed – the birthday salute to this blog. My first post was on June 27th, 2007, entitled Getting started! and my opening lines were “Don’t really know where to start!”. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was going to do, nor where it would lead me, except that I had stated blogging as a criteria for our rich picture case study grant application for the Victorian Education Dept grant. I just had TO DO IT!!!

Now, when I look back I cannot believe where this has taken me. It started as journal entries for journeys with my classes in podcasting, but has become a valuable resource, reflective tool and a means of connecting with so many wonderful people both locally and globally. The value of comments, and the conversations and connections that have evolved have been fantastic and taken my knowledge and use of the emerging technologies to ever increasing levels. I shall reflect:-

My first post Getting Started

My most popular posts:- 

• 20 reasons why students should blog
• Keeping students cybersafe
• One little tweety bird This would be my most memorable post as I shall never forget how alone I felt with some of the web2.0 tools especially twitter.

Most commented on post:-

Day in a Sentence Goes Technicolour (I was proud to be the first overseas host of this wonderful collaborative activity set up by Kevin) and the result of this post is summarized in a slideshare using powerpoint.

I really value all comments but some that stand out:-

•  from Graham Wegner “Great to see more Aussie teachers dipping their toes into the Web 2.0 waters – “we need more switched on educators like yourself prepared to take some risks and work out the potential benefis to our students.”
•  from Bill Genereux   ”I find your international collaborations exciting and fulfilling the dream of what the Internet was supposed to be all about.  Your students should be proud to be involved in this sort of learning. ”   

So to anyone who has read my posts, visited my blog, made comments, mentored me or helped me in anyway a big thank you!!   A big special thankyou to my fairy blogmother, Heather Blakey, of “soul food cafe fame” and my partner in virtual learning and laying the eplanks for a web2.0 school, Jess McCulloch.

Laying the eplanks

 

 

 

 

The ePlanks podcast is up and running! We have 4 episodes all ready to go for your listening pleasure. ePlanks is a project that Jess McCulloch and I are working on. We are trying to lay the ePlanks of the virtual classroom for a Web 2.0 school. This is our theme for our teacher professional leave that we have been granted from the Victorian Education Department.Jess has been a bit busy lately with her little iPod and it’s voice recorder -which has become her favourite piece of technology lately! Please note that I am adapting Jess’ post to place on my blog. So thanks, Jess!!
Episode 1 – We talk to Virginia, one of our staff members, as she begins her journey as a blogger. We ask her what she thinks of the whole Web 2.0 thing. She’s feeling a bit left behind and thinks that she has missed the boat, but that’s ok – never fear, Jess and Anne are here!

Episode 2 – At the recent SLAV conference “Re-imagining: Web2.0 applications and implications”, we met Sandy Phillips from the Victorian Department of Education’s Education Channel and so we sat her down and asked her how Global Teacher got started, which is the blogging campus we have set up many of our students and teachers with for their blogs.

Episode 3 – We (myself, Jess and our librarian, Faye) had a little chat amongst ourselves in the car about blogging as we drove back to Hawkesdale from Melbourne. We chatted about how we started, some fears and just jumping in and trying it.
Episode 4 – As part of our ePlanks project, Anne and I decided to go and visit Coburg Senior High School, who are not just talking the talk of a 21st century school, but also walking the walk. You will have to listen in for more details of this pretty amazing school.

We are planning many more episodes for ePlanks, so keep an ear open – we are on the cyberwaves!

Go straight to our podomatic site, or you can subscribe through iTunes.

 Thanks again, Jess for allowing me to adapt and use your post!!

 

Get your newspaper here!!

My blog as a newspaper

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 I would like to sincerely thank @MrKp for ‘walking’ me through this interesting adaptation for blog posts. From @MrKp’s capable instructions, I have converted the last 6 week’s postings for my blog into newspaper pdf format. Check it out.

1. Copy rss feed from you own blog 
2.  Join www.feedjournal.com
3. Delete old rss feeds on there
4. Then add your own feed in, click the articles you want to include and generate the paper. This can then be saved as a pdf. Save the file to your desktop or usb.
5. Then go to issuu to publish the pdf onto the web. Embed code in your blog or add link.

@allanahk tried it as well and this is her tweet “Made my own blog newspaper with Feedjournal- good way to share blog posts minus photos with non-internet parents”

If anyone can help me to actually embed the code into my blog and have it rest there, I would be most grateful.

 

20 reasons why students should blog

Blogging is such powerful learning material and students should blog.

Why?………………………Here are just 20 reasons 

This post has been written as a draft for a few days, but I wish to publish it now, in support of @alupton and his wonderful minilegends. (They have been asked to remove their blog by their education department)

1. It is FUN! Fun!….. I hear your sceptical exclamation!! However, it is wonderful when students think they are having so much fun, they forget that they are actually learning. A favourite comment on one of my blog posts is: It’s great when kids get so caught up in things they forget they’re even learning…   by jodhiay
2. authentic audience – no longer working for a teacher who checks and evalutes work but  a potential global audience.
3. Suits all learning styles – special ed (this student attends special school 3days per weeek, our school 2 days per week, gifted ed, visual students, multi-literacies plus ‘normal‘ students.
4. Increased motivation for writing – all students are happy to write and complete aspects of the post topic. Many will add to it in their own time.
5. Increased motivation for reading – my students will happily spend a lot of time browsing through fellow student posts and their global counterparts. Many have linked their friends onto their blogroll for quick access. Many make comments, albeit often in their own sms language.
6. Improved confidence levels – a lot of this comes through comments and global dots on their cluster maps. Students can share their strengths and upload areas of interest or units of work eg personal digital photography, their pets, hobbies etc Staff are given an often rare insight into what some students are good at. We find talents that were otherwise unknown and it allows us to work on those strengths. It allows staff to often gain insight to how students are feeling and thinking.
7. Pride in their work – My experience is that students want their blogs to look good in both terms of presentation and content. (Sample of a year 10 boy’s work)
8. Blogs allow text, multimedia, widgets, audio and images – all items that digital natives want to use
9. Increased proofreading and validation skills
10. Improved awareness of possible dangers that may confront them in the real world, whilst in a sheltered classroom environment
11. Ability to share – part of the conceptual revolution that we are entering. They can share with each other, staff, their parents, the community, and the globe.
12. Mutual learning between students and staff and students.
13. Parents with internet access can view their child’s work and writings – an important element in the parent partnership with the classroom. Grandparents from England have made comments on student posts. Parents have ‘adopted’ students who do not have internet access and ensured they have comments.
14. Blogs may be used for digital portfolios and all the benefits this entails
15. Work is permanently stored, easily accessed and valuable comparisons can be made over time for assessment and evaluation purposes
16. Students are digital natives - blogging is a natural element of this.
17. Gives students a chance  to show responsibility and trustworthiness and engenders independence.
18. Prepares students for digital citizenship as they learn cybersafety and netiquette
19. Fosters peer to peer mentoring. Students are happy to share, learn from and teach their peers (and this, often not their usual social groups)
20. Allows student led professional development and one more……
21. Students set the topics for posts – leads to deeper thinking activities

This is surely powerful learning!!

Since this post was written, students have been asked to give their reasons why they should blog and here is a year 9 girl’s answer. 

Some further posts that might be of interest

1. What I need to teach students in order to blog!
2. Keeping Students Cybersafe - the first and most important lesson