EduBlog Insights

Am I Blogging Now?

“My two daughters are both interested in weblogs (blogs), so I’ve decided to learn how to blog, too. I first became interested in blogging when I saw my younger daughter wearing a t-shirt with the words “I’m blogging” written across the front of it. I had no idea what it meant, but I was interested in finding out.”

Later, when my older daughter was visiting me, I asked her what a blog is, and she explained it to me. Then, to my surprise, she said I could try blogging myself. So here I am, blogging for the first time. I am not sure what I should write on this blog, but I’ll just start writing and see what happens.”

Another post:

Reflecting on Blogging

“Well, I’ve been thinking about the fact that I am a blogger. To me, it’s like reminiscing. In my day, that’s what we would have called it. Now I have to get used to the new terms in technology. Not only am I learning something new, but my vocabulary is growing. Not only can I recall the past, but I can blog on anything. Let’s hope the soap box is big enough!”

The above posts were written by my 85 year old mother! I’m the younger daughter in the post. I just love it- she always has had a voice but now more people can enjoy it!  If you have a moment visit Vera’s Corner and welcome her to the world of blogging!

Honors English class from De Anza College will be posting in blogs on the De Anza Web page twice a week. The goal is to create a superior medium for discussion of literature over the old online teaching system.  Professor John Lovas said, “The blog allows us to do things we can’t do in threaded discussion.  Students will be required to post at least twice a week. The blog allows us to do things we can”t do in threaded discussion.” The posts students are required to make center around a quotation, either from the readings or from something somebody said during the class discussion. Students are able to read each other’s blogs and make comments in them.

Another interesting project to follow…..

Nancy’s good work putting together the Saturday weblog sessions is starting to soar.  I love her favorite comment that she shared from Coordinator2 to 1007 Double Spy on Your Side:

“We all come to teaching with our own rich personal history. We face those kids everyday and we go on the journey we call education. Blogging can be about anything. Sharing our inner-being helps us to connect to each other. As educators we have shared experiences that make us come back every day. Looking forward to sharing more stories with you and our fellow bloggers.”

Well said, Coordinator2! The BlogClass Shared Journal is a good way to give a voice to all of the particpants. I really like the way Nancy shared the ups & downs, encouraged each participant on, and in the process formed a community that can continue to blog and learn together. 

In addition, she provides the links to the other teacher blogs.  The teachers are doing some great work! Take a look!

Hey, Nancy! You go girl, you’re getting it done.  In the future, put sleep in the agenda!  As usual, I’m giving advice I don’t always follow!! :-) 

The Creating and Using  Weblogs in ESL/EFL online session that is a part of  the Electonic Village (EV) Online sessions begins tomorrow.  Finishing touches are in place and Joe, Sandy, Aaron and I are ready to begin!  It’s nice to be a part of teaching weblogs over a 6 week period.  Usually I feel lucky to get one session and follow up time is hard to get.  We have kept it simple for beginners but tried to provide good samples, ideas and suggestions. The dialogue is what is important and right now we have 88 participants signed up so it should be a dynamic and informative learning session.  Anyone interested in participating in the dialogue can still sign up. See this post for directions.

via <Dave Winer>

AP: “Best Western will offer free high-speed Internet in all 2300 of its hotels in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean.” 

The article

tired of being nickeled and dimed at hotels.”

I say hooray! Let’s hope all other hotels follow suit. 

—–

Today some of my students in my Wrinkles group were able to make comments on other student weblogs.  For the most part, they were commenting in positive ways about their peer’s use of adjectives, writing style, etc.  This is good and it’s a start. As I walked around reading and observing, I thought that this was an avenue where I could entice them  to take this a step further. It could be a simple yet effective way for them to make deeper connections about what they are thinking about as they read. I need to bump up the thinking.  It could be as simple as giving them a starter comment sentence like…..

This made me think about…..

I wonder why…..

Your writing made me form an opinion about….

This post is relevant because….

Your writing made me think that we should…

I wish I understood why….

This is important because….

Another thing to consider is….

Just like asking the right question is so important in our teaching and learning, the comment feature can be a great way to spark those learning connections!

Want to add to the list?  Comment away!!

On Bernie Dodge’s One-Trick Cyber Pony he speaks of introducing blogging to his class of pre-service English and foreign language teachers. He has a page that links to the student weblogs. Last year he just set them up with blogs and didn’t push it much harder than that. This time he is including some specific directions about blogging. They’re using the Blogger service.  He is letting them use the blog in whatever way they want and to think of it as something that they may use after the course is over.  He is putting a grading component into it by having them blog about the themes of his course:

• teaching in general
• educational technology
• teaching in their content area

Then students will choose five postings that they think best reflect their best thoughtful reflections on these issues plus five postings where they have responded to other class members.  This will count for 15% of their grade.

I like the way he has set this up.  It allows the students a lot of latitude but will get them thinking and responding.  This is another one I’ll be following.

Last summer I posted about Writing to the Moment, the official blog for Dr. Chuck Tryon’s English 1101 course at Georgia Tech.  I have been following along with interest and have really been impressed with the students’ writing. His use of weblogs in the freshman composition classroom was featured in Georgia Tech’s student newspaper, The Technique.  There is so much to spotlight that Dr. Tryon is doing but I’ll give it a go.

You can view student blogs on his links on his blogroll.  It is really interesting to view their thoughts on weblogs and the course.  He also has group weblogs listed.  Some samples:

College Food Blog

Educational Issues

Twisted Celluloid

CAR-LOG

One of Dr. Tryon’s assignments was to read and analyze a blog. One of the blogs was Rachel Lucas’ weblog.  Her response to this assignment was “I’m intrigued by the professor’s assignment. I mean, they’re studying blogs , people! Blogs! Color me delighted.”  Read her entire response - it’s delightful.  She closed with “So. I want to thank Dr. Tryon and his students for teaching me something about myself and my blog. I read all of the posts about myself, and of course you all get A’s from Professor Lucas. Gracias. And if any of you ever decide to jump into the vicious yet endlessly fun shark pool that is the blogosphere, let me know. I’d love to read you.”

Dr. Tryon is front and center with making writing the focus on weblogs.  I look forward to seeing what he does this semester! 

WebTalk Radio Guys Show’s Rob Greenlee predicts the top internet trends for 2004.  He lists the top ten that caught his attention. Here’s what he predicts about professional blogs:

Number 5:
Professional Blogs:  Weblogs in 2004 will go through a transition as the explosive growth in the number of bloggers will slow, but the quality of the active blogs will become much better.  The blog technology and uses will expand in 2004 to include more professional journalists, online experts, major media and corporations. The blog hype in 2003 will settle into a smaller group of bloggers as many personal blogs will go out of date for increasingly longer periods of time as many lose interest in keeping them up to date. This is the way personal webpages declined a few years ago.  

Really simple syndication, better known as RSS, took the Internet by storm in 2003 as many bloggers began using this XML-based standard to share and syndicate written content to RSS News Reader applications. RSS is not really a new Internet protocol as it uses the web to syndicate and share content and links.  Look to 2004 to be the year of RSS as we see it compete directly and improve on the World Wide Web and be a part of the decline in use of the web browser. 

I predict that we will see more and more educational blogs as educators continue to explore possiblilities!

On an earlier post, Creating and using weblogs in ESL/EFL, I had talked about the Electronic Village (EV) Online Sessions 2004. A few people have emailed me confused about just how to register for the ESL/EFL weblog session.   You have to first obtain a YahooID and then join the session. Go here for step-by-step directions.

We have a great group of participants signing up - from all over…..Poland, Japan, Spain, Netherlands, New Zealand, Hungary, Argentina, Venezuela as well as many places stateside.  Think about joining the session!  Registration is from January 12-26.