Blog: Blogging (part of email from Peter Carey

(Taken from an email from Peter Carey – June 2004)

Since the theme this week is response writing, I thought I might introduce weblogs, blogs or blogging. I think they have great potential for student writing, portfolios, posting assignments and communicating with parents. I am in favour of anything that gets kids to write. Why not give it a go.

From Jay Cross:
Weblogs are a personal writing space. Easy to share, automatically archived. Weblogs are easily linked and cross-linked to form learning communities. The school logs projects are examples. The school logs also enable a teacher to evaluate a student's thinking, by reading explanations and assignments.
· Weblogs can become digital portfolios of students\' assignments and achievements.
· Weblogs are a novice's web authoring tool.
· Accumulated weblogs become a content management system.
· Via digital storytelling, weblogs play a role in professional development.

Weblogs in the classroom
Presentation on the definition, characteristics and potential for
education of weblogs.
All the News That\'s Fit to Blog
Lesson plan where students critique three Web logs, each of which offers first-hand accounts, but reflect different points-of-view, on the war in Iraq.
Surf The Net With Kids: Blogging
Blogging is a new way to teach writing. This site lists blogging sites.
Weblogg-ed
Ideas for Web logs in the classroom and a clearinghouse for sites and
issues relating to Web logs, RSS and other Internet related technologies in education.
Blogs as Writing Practice
Blogs are an opportunity to publish and share text on the web quickly
and simply and they offer new learning possibilities. Here are some
strategies you might consider for using blogs in your classroom.
Lucy\'s Blog
Lucy from J.H.House Elementary school has created this blog site is
about the news and helping people understand it.

Blog - 2nd Grade Class Summer Reading Fun

Awesome Readers and Writers
Mrs Dudiak has set up a blog. Mrs D posts to the Blog and her Year 2 students comment.

Awesome Readers and Writers
Post 7: How was Green Meadows Farm (Excursion). 52 comments.
Post 6: Can you describe this Waterfall (Photo). 40 comments.
Post 5: Let's talk about our writing. 26 comments.
Post 4: It's show Time. 44 comments
Post 3: Make a choice: Is it Fiction of NonFitction books you enjoy the most? 64 comments.
Post 2: Have a book to recomment? Tell us about it! 28 comments.
Post 1: Are you ready to Blog? 5 comments.

Teaching with a Weblog - Timothy Johnston

Using a weblog (blog) as a class web page has the following features:
(1) A simple, easy-to-use, free web-based editor and free web page host server can be used, so no PC-based software programs (HTML editor or FTP) and no server accounts are needed,
(2) students require minimal training to begin independently publishing work to the blog, and
(3) the instructor’s workload to maintain the class web page is distributed to the blogger software and to the students. These features enable students to share their work with each other online, and make it available from and to any computer that is connected to the Internet.
This paper explains how to use a blog for teaching:
(1) The reasons for putting student work online are discussed,
(2) the steps needed to initiate and manage a blog are described, and
(3) the advantages of a blog as compared with the traditional method of creating web pages are presented.
Abstract of Timothy's Paper - presented April 2002
Teaching with a Weblog - How to Post Student Work Online

Preview of a Junior Primary Mydekstop

Myinternet will be upgrading during September 04. A Junior Primary desktop has been previewed as part of this process. See it at:
http://www.ceo.wa.edu.au/home/share/junior_style.gif

Mydesktop Journal

Journal:
A Journal is a list of comments in order of date.
It has a simple structure – entries are listed in order, much like a timeline with comments along the way.

What follows applies to a Mydekstop Journal.
Use the Mydekstop Tools button to create a Journal or add an existing Journal to your desktop.

A Mydekstop Journal can be restricted to its creator (ie personal journal), or made available to everyone in the school, or only to the teaching group and particular year level(s). In addition, the journal can be:
private – users view their own entries. Teachers view all entries.
shared - users and teacher(s) can view all entries.

Suggestion:
1.. Try adding some existing journals to your desktop to see how people are using them. A good one to try is the Cathednet Video Conference Project Group Journal [Title is: Cathednet myCUCM Project Group].
** A hint for finding existing journals: Select Forum in the Property type and the search will find journals as well as forums.
2.. Create a Journal then add it to your desktop. Try adding a few entries to see how it all works...

Journals could be used for:
Narrative Genre: Story Starters, Diary Entries, Jokes, Anecdotes, Nursery Rhymes, Recount, Haiku,
Transactional: Postcard
Procedural: Messages
Reports: Reviews
Persuasive: Complaints

In favour:
You can decide whether students can see other student entries (modelling) or not.
You can have several Journals on the desktop at the same time.

Against:
Journal entries cannot be edited – only deleted.

Berkeley - Luke has arrived

Berkeley...well here I am, in your blog!

I must have done something right to get this far.
This 'blog' idea, is it a bit like an online forum?

I'm in Bililluna this week, so it might be worth touching base to see where the schools and WAEC are at with their networks.

Luke

Welcome

A blog is a weblog which is a dated diary or journal published on the web.
Paperbark is a sort of private blog - ie for its members mainly.
However, it has a web address so others will be able to access it once they know the name of the blog.
One aim is for invited members to have a go at experiencing a blog.
Another aim is to trial a team blog where members can add their own posts to the one blog.
A further aim is to put together ideas about using blogs in education - for teachers, for students, and how blogs compare with email, journals and forums [journals and fora can be setup easily where myClasses and myInternet are used (eg cathednet in West Australia)]