How do you teach students to write well? The Ripple Effect - Commenting Guidelines. We know that good commenting skills are essential in the world of blogging. After all, blogging is really about having and maintaining conversations with other people online. After spending some time getting used to commenting on our own class blog, we established a class commenting protocol that set out to accomplish 7 main goals. Whether we’re commenting on our class blog, each others’ blogs, or other blogs outside our class, we always keep these guidelines in mind: Please let us know if there are more guidelines that can be useful to us or if we need any reminders about following any of them. Image: love story by dhammza released under a CC Attribution – Noncommercial – No Derivative Works license. Digital Tools. 10 Reasons to Ban Pens and Pencils in the Class.
Culture Digital Tools A classic tongue-in-cheek MindShift post from last November is making the rounds on Twitter. For those who haven’t seen it yet, I’m happy to repost here, just in time for back-to-school. By Katie Stansberry According to a recent MSNBC article, 69% of high school currently ban cell phones.
Pens and pencils are distracting. Let’s hope this blog post helps open people’s eyes to the danger of pens and pencils in schools. Related. Learning.now . What Exactly is a Blog, Anyway? The Edublogger’s Introduction to Blogging. Want to know more about blogging, blog terminology and use of blogs in education? Here you go! Check out our “Introduction to Blogging” that you can read online here or download as a PDF version. Enjoy and hope you find it helpful!
P.S. Was created for Teacher Challenge — read more on the Teacher challenge’s About page. What is a Blog? The term blog originated from the blend of the term “web log”. Nowadays blogs compete with mainstream media in delivering news and information. Why? Blogs are written on just about any subject and for a wide range of purposes, including personal, business, work and sharing news stories. Reasons why educators blog include: Examples of educational blogs: Here’s some examples of educational blogs to check out: The Basic Structure of a Blog Blogs are normally made up of the following main elements: 1. This is the back-end area of your blog where you make changes and edits. Here’s where you’ll find more information on: 2. This is what gives it your personal touch. 3. 4. 5. Can Learning How to Blog Change Makeal’s Life? Culture Teaching Strategies How can learning to blog make a lasting impact on a 12-year-old boy living in a rough, East Oakland neighborhood?
In the second installment of MindShift’s My Education series, which examines whether technology in learning can have a lasting impact on low-income kids through the perspective of one child, the question focuses on Makeal Surrell, a sweet-natured kid who lives with his two sisters and his aunt/guardian a few blocks from Elmhurst Community Prep (ECP) middle school. Last year, Makeal missed more than 20 days of school, partly due to being sick from asthma. But since he started an after-school blogging apprenticeship with Google, through the Citizen Schools enrichment program, his absences have declined. During the spring semester, Makeal and his classmates were bussed once a week to the Google offices in San Francisco, where they were taught by Google employees all about blogging. Or at least a little about skateboarding. Student Blogging: It's Time You Began.
One of the roadblocks to teaching children how to blog is that many of us teachers don't know how to do it ourselves. Should that be a requirement? Not necessarily. Teachers need to embrace the authenticity that is derived from blogging, though, and make that their goal. Kids need to write, (we all know that) and blogging provides a great venue. I won't dive into the enormous topic of why you should have students blog due to the exhaustive supportive reasons you can find online if you search for the cognitive whys--the purpose of this blog is to persuade you that it's time to quit postponing what you should be teaching. Ask your students: Do you read online? So, what's stopping you from having students blog? First of all, there are plenty of platforms where you can set up a class, moderate student blogs, and then publish them after review.
Second hurdle: what to write about. Your personal investment as a teacher I can't really help you resolve, but I want to encourage you. Three Purposes for Classroom Blogs. One of the most common requests for workshops that I receive is to help teachers create and utilize blogs in their classrooms. Over the last few years I've run blogging workshops many times and each time the workshop is a little different and hopefully a little better than the last. This year I've run my blogging workshop more frequently than ever and have now arrived at what I think is a simple, but strong framework for introducing teachers to classroom blogging.
I now introduce workshop participants to classroom blogging by outlining three fundamental purposes of blogging. Those purposes are distributing, discussing, and demonstrating. What follows is a brief break-down of each of these purposes. Distributing: At its most basic blogging is done for the purpose of quickly and easily distributing information to others.
Discussing: This is where blogging becomes more than just an exercise in disseminating information. Demonstrating: Seven reasons teachers should blog. 1) Blogging causes you to reflect. Donald Schon suggested that reflection on, in and through practice were vital components of any professional practice. Teachers naturally think back on what has happened in their classroom, and often wonder what they could have done better. Blogging can help with this process, enabling teachers to keep an ongoing personal record of their actions, decisions, though processes, successes and failures, and issues they have to deal with. 2) Blogging can crystalise your thinking. In the act of writing, said Daniel Chandler, we are written. As we write, we invest a part of ourselves into the medium. 3) Blogging can open up new audiences. 4) Blogging can create personal momentum. 5) Blogging can give you valuable feedback. 6) Blogging can be creative. 7) Blogging can raise your game.
Image source (edited) Seven reasons teachers should blog by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Blogs. Educational-Blogging - Home. Blogging: Teaching Commenting Skills. 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. By “quality comments” I mean I really wanted to limit the “I like your blog!!!” I am teaching students commenting skills through I collaborated with my teaching partner, Kelly Jordan on this poster “How Can I Write a Great Blog Comment?” Five Steps to Starting a Class Blog. Blogging.