Hebrew Bible and Christian Scriptures

After a long flight from Los Angeles to Hong Kong, we landed in the city of four thousand neon signs. Our first stop was Starbucks (to demonstrate our devotion) and then we made our way to Sha Tin and the top of the hill to check in at our lodging, the Tao Fong Shan Buddhist-Christian Conversation Center. A charming retreat center with fantastic beds, shower pressure and free internet – we were thrilled. After quick showers, we made began what is affectionately known as “The Death March” by past teams. Stroope’s goal is to conquer jet lag and he does that by not allowing us to rest until after dinner. We walked down the hill (and looked like a living, breathing Kashi add) and walked to the ferry and took the ferry and went to the top of Victoria Hill and took pictures and and and… The last part of the death march was a walk to this noodle shop that Stroope claimed he read about in the New York Times. We got exceptionally lost and ended up eating possibly the worst meal of the trip. I *heart* paying for lame ramen. However, despite the lame ramen – I loved this day. I loved walking around Hong Kong! Walking around a city always makes me feel like I know it better – I would much rather meander through a city than ride in a big tourist bus. While I was only in HK for a few days, I want to go back. I loved the bustle and the chaos. It felt like London and yet completely different and that was fantastic.

The next day was a day full of conversations with American expats navigating life in Hong Kong. It was one of the first times of the trip where I really had to confront the fact that my faith paradigm is not typical for American Christianity. It may be to generic to say that I don’t fit in the faith paradigm of my home culture – so forgive me if that sounds crass – but I’m still figuring out to express my feeling of un-fitted-ness. I am not judging – honestly – there are just simply things taken for granted that I no longer believe to be complete truth. I know that’s a cryptic comment and one that needs to be unpacked with care. But this day was a bit of a preview of things to come, as I spent most of the trip wondering where the separation was between gospel and culture. Of course, to be fair, I’ve been questioning that boundary for a few years now.

One of the highlights of the trip (I think for all of us) was a meeting with Sam Say of Bolaven Coffee. Bolaven is the a sustainable cooperative of organic coffee growers in Laos. As Sam told us his story and the story of the farm, it became more and more clear that this was a special thing that I wanted to be a part of. Thus, I hereby encourage you to purchase this coffee and to support a farm based on excellence and equality.

After that conversation, we headed off to the airport to board our flight to India! Next up on the recaps: templetastic blessings for marriage: or, our time in chennai

Richard 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:

• Thoughts on Assessment
• How To Grow A Blog
• Replacing Grades with Conversations
• Making Assessments Personally Relevant
• Towards Reflective BlogTalk

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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