Theology 7372, Fall 2009

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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It’s my great pleasure to introduce our guest blogger, Kathleen McGeady, who provides important advice on teaching commenting skills (regardless of the age of your students).

About our Guest Blogger

Kathleen McGeady is in the seventh year of her career and in that short time her approach to teaching has changed greatly.

The opportunity to take Teacher Professional Leave in 2008 provided Kathleen with the time to explore the role that ICT and Web2.0 tools can play in the classroom.

Kathleen loves to find new and creative ways to use blogs, the IWB, Web2.0 tools, iPod Touches and global projects and in her classroom to enhance the learning experience of each of her students.

Kathleen is currently teaching Grade Two at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. She writes about technology integration on her blog and in Education Technology Solutions magazine.

Blogging: Teaching Commenting Skills

This was originally posted on Integrating Technology in the Primary Classroom and has been cross posted with permission from Kathleen McGeady.

I am currently in the process of introducing my Grade Two students to blogging.

Our 2KM class blog is proving to be very popular with students and families.

As I have previously blogged about, I like to follow these steps when introducing blogging to students.

This is my third year of blogging with young students and I am still learning all the time.

In previous years I believe I progressed much too quickly from having students comment on the class blog to writing posts. My students never really learned how to compose a quality comment and I believe I didn’t set my expectations of the students high enough! I was happy for them just to be commenting.

This year I am taking a different approach. Inspired by the amazing commenting skills of Mrs Yollis’ Third Grade students, I am putting a lot of effort into teaching my students how to write quality comments on posts before we move on to writing posts.

By “quality comments” I mean

• writing the comment like a letter (greeting, body, closing, signature)
• using correct spelling, punctuation and spacing,
• reading over the comment and editing before submitting,
• complimenting the writer in a specific way, asking a question, and/or adding new information to the post,
• writing a relevant comment that is related to the post,
• not revealing personal information in your comment.

I really wanted to limit the “I like your blog!!!” or “2KM is cool” type comments and I am finding this explicit teaching of what a quality comment looks like is really working.

I am teaching students commenting skills through

• modelling and composing comments together  on the IWB,
• teaching students about the “letter” format during writing lessons,
• giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected,
• having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week.

I collaborated with my teaching partner, Kelly Jordan on this poster “How Can I Write a Great Blog Comment?” to teach students about blogging skills.

We will also send a copy of this poster (as show below) home with each child.

Linda Yollis has written a fantastic article about how to teach commenting skills. It is well worth a read!

I have “borrowed” many ideas from Linda such as recording a screencast video that shows how to leave a comment on the blog. I recorded my screencast through Jing. I also used Linda’s idea of sending an email out to all parents to encourage them to leave comments.

As Linda says, “commenting is what keeps the blog alive” and “teaching and encouraging good commenting skills makes your blog more interesting for everyone.” I agree!

Final Thoughts

Thanks Kathleen for writing this guest post and for all your great work!

Please leave a comment here or on Kathleen’s post if you have any more ideas about teaching commenting skills to students!

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It’s my great pleasure to introduce our first ever guest post on The Edublogger!

But first let me tell you the history behind this post.

About Our Guest Blogger

Last year student bloggers wrote some amazing posts for our Share Your Tips– and win BIG! Competition and on my winner’s post I said:

The winning posts submitted by the students are so ‘must read’ that it would be an honour if they guest posted on The Edublogger.

Dominique, a Grade 8 student (13 years old), from USA decided to take me up on this offer (here’s her winning post).

She continues to astound me!

And it was a pleasure to discover that her work inspired her sister Caroline (10 years old) to:

Want a blog so much that she put it on her Christmas list!

Caroline got her Christmas wish early and is blogging at Caroline’s Corner.

J’adore les langues!

Guest post by Dominique from My Blog!

J’adore les langues, ils sont très important en notre monde. Je voudrais être fluent en francais, allemand, espagnol, italien, japonais, chinois, arabique, gaelique, and portugeuse. Et plus je ne peux pas pense de maintenant.

Today our world is so interconnected because of technology that it  is even more  important to know foreign languages.

Although I am only in my third year of taking French, I am happy that I can communicate with French speaking people in the blogosphere.

From blogging I am also alerted to the fact that there are so many wonderful languages just waiting for me to learn them, whenever I find a class blog in a different language I always wish that I could understand it, and that is something that will motivate me to learn more foreign languages.

Imagine how simple communication would be if you could speak a foreign language. And how many opportunities would be available.

Around the beginning of December I entered a podcast contest about the importance of learning foreign languages, hosted by the American Council of Teaching Foreign Languages.

I made a podcast for the contest, but unfortunately mine was not chosen as one of the finalists. Even though it did not amount to anything it was still fun to do.

On the other hand one of my friends, Adrian, made a podcast rap about foreign languages with her friend Peggy. They have actually been chosen as finalists and can be voted for on the website. I already quickly made an account and voted for them.

Here’s Adrian and Peggy’s video — I really hope that they win the middle school category for the contest which is announced this month!!!

It was a coincidence that the podcast contest was brought up in French class shortly after I conceived the idea for this post, specially written to go on Ms. Water’s blog. I think that just goes to show how important foreign languages are  becoming in our world.

p.s. When I mentioned in French, the languages in which I would like to be fluent, those are not all. There are many other languages that I would also like to learn  (I simply do not know how to say them yet in French…).

Thank you very much to Ms. Waters who allowed me to guest post this blog post on the Edublogger, it is such an honor!

Final Thoughts

Thanks Dominique for writing this guest post for us and for all your great work!

And to honor Dominique’s work I would love it if we could all leave comments on this post in different languages and include our locations!

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