Blogging is a wonderful way to engage students in class, to help develop writing skills and to connect with other students from around the world. What makes blogging different to using a word processor is the ability to comment on each other’s posts. This gives students an authentic audience and creates engagement in the classroom. A blog would be a great way for students to reflect upon their Personal Learning Goals and to allow you and their parents to encourage them on their progress.

There are lots of different ways you can blog in and out of the classroom:

• 1 blog for the whole class, teacher does the blog posts students can read it and comment on it:
• 1 class blog teacher and students share the blog posting responsibility
• Each student has their own blog
• The teacher has their own blog to reflect on their personal learning journey in an area of interest (highly recommended and an excellent way to learn about blogging and to model this to your students)

Where do you get a blog??

There are several different websites where you can sign up for a blog each have their own advantages and disadvantages. All of them are free but some do have an option to get more space and turn off advertising for a small fee.

Edublogs

This blog is an edublogs blog. Set up sepecifically for teachers and schools. It is fully featured and easy to use. There are two options a basic servioce which is free and aedublogs supporter option which costs $40US a year which gives you all the bells and whistles.

21 Classes

Designed for schools. It is an easy to set up otion for blogging. Not as many bells and whistles available but the nice thing is that you don’t need student emaila ccounts to set it up. You can also kepp the blogs private until you are ready to unleash them on the web!

EduKate

Out LMS has a blogging function you can put pictures and videos into the posts but you can’t change the look. This is great as you don’t have to do anything to dset it up. If you are not planning to use the blog for connecting ewithoutside classes this is a great option.

Global Teacher

A website set up by edublogs for victorian teachers. Thos is another really good option if you want bells and whisltes with out cost. It is run by the Victorian Government

Global Student

This is the student version of the above blog site and where you would set up a class blog.

Blogger

This is Google’s version of a blog provider and offers a good free service. Not

specifically design ed for educatinala purposes but easy to use and lots of teachers use it none the less

Some blogging terminology and goodies

Post: An entry into a blog. It can contain text, photos, sound or videos. They appear on the blog with the most recent entry on the top

Page: A blog has a main page but can also have other pages where you can add additional information. For example I have an About Me page on my blog.

Comments: These are added to blog posts and pages by other people you can then reply to the comment on the blog and start a conversation. It is a really good thing to comment on someones blog!

Tags: A list of topics that your post or page is about. Kind of like cataloging a book in a library. E.g. the Tags for this post are: blogs, blogging, edublogs, eduKate, Global Student, Global Teacher, etc

Widgets: These are tool and gadget you can have on the side of you blog to make it more useful/entertaining. Such as a voki, map, calendar, favorite links

Clustr Maps: This is a little map that shows you which countries people have come from who have viewed your blog. Click here to go to Clustr maps website and sign up for one. The kids love them….even the big kids!

Blog Roll: A list of blogs that you read or that have useful information on them.

Tag Cloud: A visual representation of the Tags on your blog posts. A very quick way to see what your blog is about

Categories: A good way of separating blog posts by giving them a category. If you click on Wild Wednesday Workshops in my categories section you will see all the posts relating to that topic on my blog.

Very useful blogging info

The Edublogger Fabulous blog with HEAPS of hint and tips on how to blog with your students. I read this all the time!!

Blogging Challenge i  If you have had a class blog or understand th fundamentals but would like to take it a bit further this year I would STRONGLY ENCOURAGE you to give this a go. It looks like great fun and a great way to connect with other classes!

Connecting with other classes Here is another blog post that has some great ideas on how to connect with other classes when doing your blogs.

I would encourage you to have a go at blogging either personally or with your class. It is great fun!

So I have been incredibly neglectful of my blog over the past couple of months! It has been crazy at school setting up reports for the new semester, completing the timetable (which I haven’t really quite finished yet) finishing off the ICDL, VASS, developing a new college website, handling the implementation of eduKate and general ICT PD and support plus teaching! So tomorrow I am off to the VITTA conference which I am really looking forward to. I can’t wait to catch up with some people I went on the ACCE Study Tour with and to see some new ideas and get some inspiration. I am only attending the Monday and Tuesday of the conference as our reports are due in this Friday and this when staff have the most tweeks and queries on their reports. The conference has free wireless Internet access so I will try and blog each session that I attend. This is what I am planning to attend

• 1101 LAB: Keynote Address – Shift: Tectonic and granular
• 1209 LAB DBL: Tablet Notebooks Computers Across the Curriculum
• 1209 LAB DBL: Tablet Notebooks Computers Across the Curriculum
• 1410 LECT: Cybersafety in schools
• 1510 LECT: Blended Learning – a working model
• 1601 LECT: Open Source for Education
• 2101 LAB: Games in Learning
• 2215 LECT: I’ve Got a Blog and a Wiki so What’s Next?
• 2312 LECT: Google@School: Bringing Google Technology on Campus
• 2412 LECT: Podcasting :: Ed Tech Crew way – first hand tips and tricks
• 2516 LECT: Collaborative Student-Centred Learning Using an ePortfolio

2009 Plans

12 Business Management

I am teaching a full class (not job sharing) next year and I am planning how I am going to integrate technology into this subject. We have eduKate next year but I would also like to use an external blog as it has greater functionality and I can collaborate with other classes. This year in Business Management (year 11) I had a central blog and the students had an individual blog. It worked to a point but was hard to set up as our students don’t have school email addresses and of course hotmail, yahoo mail etc are blocked. So I thought that I would set the students up as contributors to a central blog for ease of use!

PD Plans

Well I am going to be busy doing eduKate training but I would also like to continue PDing staff on web2.0 and we also have to keep on with the IWB training. We had a great session the other week from Callie Whelan from Beyond Chalk which was really well received by our staff. I am really incredibly blessed to have a staff who are champing at the bit to integrate ICT and are doing some great things with blogs and wikis! I am planning to use any official meeting times to do eduKate training and then to run some informal sessions on web2.0 during the first 5 weeks of each term.

Well that’s all for now must be off and get ready for tomorrow and of course watch the Australian Idol final. Go Wes!