EduBlog Insights

If you want to see a very good student blog from the College of William and Mary just head over to Teaching to Learn, Learning to Teach. Rachel will be graduating in the Spring of 2007 and she has viewed many edublogger’s sites. Her post about the Oregon Trail brought back some memories of my beginning days in technology with the kids. I taught a summer enrichment program and Oregon Trail was a big hit then!

The Jeopardy games are great fun too. My students would each create their own questions in Inspiration using the note feature and then the calculator to keep score. They tried to devise the best questions for their classmates to try out. It’s good to think back and then see now and where we are and then project ahead. Wow! It’s fun to imagine. It is a joy to view through the eyes of an emerging teacher. She talks about planning for the unexpected. I’ve always thought that the one with the most flexibility is the one in control and is able to use those unexpected moments and make the most of the opportunities they bring. I can tell Rachel is going to be one of those flexible teachers. Isn’t it great to see our student teachers blogging?

The professor I’ve been working with who has just started using blogs with her students this semester poses the following question on Bridging Literacies:

I would like to invite the readers of this blog to join us in defining the kinds of literacy and writing expected from teacher educators and their students on educational, as opposed to personal, blogs. What kind of writing and social practices should educational blogs model to teacher and student bloggers?

Read her entire post here. She is exploring the world of blogs and is seeking to have responsible, thoughtful blogging with her students on course content .  If you have a moment, share your thoughts with her.

I have not been blogging a lot lately. I have a reason for that. I am embarking on a new blogging project with elementary students. I am so excited because I have the opportunity to be part of a year long research project that involves blogging. I have been working, literally night and day on this project.I couldn’t be more thrilled. However, I find myself in a totally new arena and it’s an arena that has parameters and issues that I have not previously had to consider. My dilemma has been what can I say, what can’t I say? Not being sure, I just said nothing but I have missed the blogging. I have so many thoughts but have been totally unable to share and get input back from our “great” edublogging community. To make this project authentic I have to blog about it. That’s a big part of what makes blogging work for us and the kids. The blogging keeps me going, keeps me learning and is part of the process I need to do a good job. This give and take helps the students. Some things I will be able to post about, some things will have to wait until later. I am in a learning mode and ask for your understanding as I proceed.
I can point you to the class blog. It’s called Blogical Minds. Student blogs will be up in a couple of weeks. They are on the class blog now but not active yet as we are laying some groundwork first. The blogicians will be entering our wonderful community. Psedonyms will be used by the students and the teachers. The school will not be named. Part of making the project truly authentic is for me to be myself and proceed with the discussions so that those of you who wish to comment can do so, both on the class blogs and the student blogs. I hope many of you will comment to the students and have your students enter the discussions.I need your help in one very important area and that is in the privacy part. If you comment and or refer to the students or me about anything on the blogs please refer to me as Teacher C. Do not use my name. Some things I will be able to blog freely about, others I need to wait and at this point I am not really sure just what those things will be.
What is really of interest here is how things are changing and how we have to change as a result. This covers many more areas than just our classrooms. I’ll post more about that later. I just wanted to invite your participation. Please remember not to use my real name on those blogs and know I will be looking forward to your input. Feel free to email me if you are unsure about anything that would involve your participation. (adavis(AT)gsu(dot)com)

I have been involved in a lot of exciting projects, pending proposals and blogging creations and just have been unable to blog.  It has been a non-stop process full of many twists and turns. The twists and turns have been challenging as well as rewarding because the learning and creating is on full speed. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before I can get back in the school with students and proceed with the next blogging project. It’s funny how you feel a part of you is missing when you are sidetracked from blogging.

I am so excited about this emerging blogging community. I had previously posted A special welcome to EDLA 7550 Class Members. The students blogs are now listed on the sidebar on the class blog, EDLA 7550. So, please take a few  moments  to comment and give these new bloggers a  very warm welcome! If you didn’t look carefully at Bridging Literacies, do so now. It’s a must read. It is the professor’s blog and it is outstanding. This professor has done her homework. Be sure to give her a warm welcome, too!

I want to welcome you to the world of educational blogging. You are about to enter a journey that will take your learning to new heights. I am so impressed with your professor’s blog, Bridging Literacies. The objectives she has listed on her welcome post are excellent. I have to admit though that this one filled me with delight:

To model to our students meaningful, respectful, and thought-provoking collaborative learning with modern technology tools;

Now I know that you are on the path to becoming a teacher and may not have given a lot of thought to the importance of modeling for your students but you have a wonderful opportunity here to create a vibrant example of learning for your future students and your future colleagues. You can create a community of learning unlike any you have had before. It is in your hands. I know you will rise to the occasion! It is an opportunity that not many students at the university level get.

I can’t wait to show your blogs to my elementary students. They will be most anxious to comment on your blogs. They are always most interested in what “teachers” and “teachers-to-be” are learning and thinking. I can’t tell you what it means to them to see their learning talked about in respectful and insightful ways by other students who could even one day be their own teacher!

Course educational blogs have distinct purposes. Educational blogging is positive, transformational technology that should not be confused with social sites like Myspace. They serve different purposes. The best educational blogs are rich in ideas and set the stage for active exchanges and critiques.

Your professor has put a great deal of thought into the development of the criteria for your assignment with blogs. This is so commendable and exciting to me. You will be using the power of technology to enable deeper learning. Educational blogs should set an example of learning for others to follow. Your professor is entering new territory herself with her willingness to explore the pedagogical promise in blogging. Join her in making the journey one to celebrate!

You will be writing your thoughts about what you are learning. You will be contributing your ideas. You may provide links that add to the conversations. In turn, your colleagues will be doing the same. You get to reflect about your own thoughts as you pass them through the light of your class members’ postings. Then all of this is open to a much larger community and other readers will join the conversations. Making your thoughts explicit moves the discussion beyond the literal. Blogging leaves a record of the conversations and learners can return to posts to reconsider and improve their own understandings. Blogging can be a powerful tool for discovering and developing meaning. Enjoy the journey!

The flu bug hit me with a vengeance. Don’t these bugs know to leave us alone during the summer months? Anyway I got back to work yesterday and now I am playing catch-up.

I have a professor who is interested in putting one of her class assignments totally online. Of course, I think blogs and believe they can fit any need. I created another word press blog to sort of do a small mock-up to give the professor an idea of how this might work. I’ve been thinking about this a bit more this morning and am wondering if SuperGlu or some other tool like this might work for her. I haven’t used it enough to know if it might work or some of you might know of just the Web 2.0 tool that would work. If you have a couple of minutes check out the blog, Explorations to get an idea of what she needs. I would welcome any suggestions. Any ideas?

I think I will use this Explorations blog to try out some things in WordPress and to just brainstorm other project possibilities that professors bring to the table.

The activity going on over at Blog2Learn is amazing! I am having so much fun browsing through the blogs. Assesment plans from O’Reilly’s Blog, how-to directions from the Byrd House, interesting musings on directions to take with blogging from Browder’s Site, and Project Group 3 (Kim, Chris, and Julie) have already created their own pbwiki! This wiki was announced with a glittering sign “We love wikis” on this post from Mrs. Cole’s Oh No! It’s the BLOG.

Also, take note of how cleverly the cat states one of the blog guidelines on “the talking cat” at the top of her blog.

Brainstorming, lots of Web 2.0 tool use, creativity, and planning is going on. What a week!What a group!
Now I have just highlighted a few of many, many “sparks”. They are all over the blogs.

Then this spark of creativity from Sandy Rittenhouse of Language Links. This is one sample of the talent emerging from this group. Sandy wrote this poem on the first day of the workshop:

Two dozen teachers
Crowded in a lab
Searching and surfing
Typing like mad.
Some are beginners
Some are old hats
But everyone listens
While working like rats.

This was my comment to her:

Wow! I hope we get some more of your poetry. Maybe you could write one about the different language arts blogs. That would tickle some of the authors. What do you think?

She emailed me right in the middle of when I was finishing up comments to the others. That was the day Will presented - she was still working away at 9:30 that night (along with me!). Then today I get an email from her and listen to this post entitled Blogophiles:

Language Arts teachers learning something cool,
we’re from Cobb County and Marietta schools.
Instructors far and near, using Skype and other tools,
working hard so we can all turn into blogging fools.

We’ve learned to import files and give our work some style,
and we know how to link to lots of other blogophiles.
The hard part will be leaving our blogs once in a while
to walk the gritty paths of No Left Behind Chile!

One thing I can tell from all this is that for sure “No learner is going to be left behind” by this dedicated group. They get it! I’m ranging out of control but usually when I do that I have to admit it is mostly when I’m working with students. It sure feels good to “range out of control” with a special group of teachers.

I am going to second Will’s post, A Great Day in Kennesaw! What an awesome group of teachers! I can hear that creative buzz of the teachers planning and thinking on the blogs all the way from Kennesaw State to here at Georgia State in downtown Atlanta. I love it!

Yesterday I started the day just talking to the group about the possibilities, shared a few experiences and then just gave them the time to browse the language arts blogs on the wiki. Then we continued the whirlwind journey learning about posting, commenting, guidelines, responsibilities, web 2.0 tools, evaluation, reflection, and pedagogy. One part that let me know that this teachers were “getting it” was the way they reacted to the pedagogy piece. Many of them commented to the pedagogy post, like Jennie who said

Thank you for this post. We will use your site as we attempt to move our system forward into the blogging world. Using many of your pedicalogical ideas will help us with the rhetoric to open the walls that we are hiding behind.

And from Robert:

I’m totally new to blogging and just learning what a valuable tool it can be in my classroom. Yes, indeed it can definitiely aid the process for improving writing among students, but just as important blogs can engage students in valuable reading and learning as well.

I also noticed that Darren had joined Lani in commenting to the teachers. Thanks, Darren! Here’s Darren’s comment to a math teacher in the group

Hi,

This is the best History of Mathematics site on the net that I’ve found;

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/

It seems to be “not responding” at this moment, but keep trying; it’s great. I always find great resources and stories to share with my classes. It adds a little bit of drama, personality and flavour to some otherwise dry lessons.

I’ve also coolected a number of books about the histroy of math in my personal library. An fun place to start might be with Mathematical Scandals by Theoni Pappas.

As for starting a classsroom blog you’ll find lots of ideas as you work your way through the archives on my blog A Difference. But feel free to email me too.

Cheers!
Darren

BTW, Welcome to the blogosphere. You’ve just begun the greatest professional development of your life. Really.

Now I had to highlight his BTW. True, true, true and the teachers are in for the ride of their life. The teachers are busy today using web tools like Flickr, BubbleShare, RockYou! and others on their blogs. They’re busy collaborating, brainstorming, and creating plans for using blogs in their classrooms next year. But you really need to travel over to their blogs and respond to their thinking, planning and how they are using what they learned. Then add to the conversations!

The two Skype conversations with Lani Ritter Hall and Darren Kuropatawa were incredible. They shared key information and were even kind enough to post their part on the wiki afterwards. You can read their summaries by scolling down the the bottom of the Significant Comments page on the wiki. Having the ability to have other edubloggers enter the conversations adds significantly to the learning. I can’t thank them enough!

And I can’t close without this note to Will - I had no “damage to undo” as you set the stage so well for me to follow up with the classroom blogging part. I hope we get more opportunities to do workshops like this where so much preplanning and thought was given by the project leaders- Michael Keleher, Leonard Witt, and Dr. H.E. Holliday. It was indeed a great day in Kennesaw!

Note to participants who may read this: See some great pictures of a fantastic group on the wiki! Now I have to tell you that I wanted that slide show on my blog but I have a learning curve on how to use the code they sent me to do that! Just wanted to mention this so that you see how we all continue to learn! I just bet one of you may figure out the answer to this and will share with me! Enjoy your learning and call on me if I can help! Best to you all!

“I hate the French….” exploded a former student. I was taken aback and speechless for a moment. I was working with a group of fifth graders on a current events project in one of my technology classes in an elementary school. I stopped, and told the student that while I did respect that this was his opinion, I was curious as to why he felt this way and would love to hear him expand his thoughts on the subject. I asked him to give me three reasons for his opinion. He could not. All he could say was that he hated them. He did not know why. Actually, he had never really given that aspect a thought. I sort of walked him through his statement in a way that respected his right to an opinion yet made him dig a little deeper into his own thinking. I wanted to validate this student and his opinions yet at the same time encourage dialogue about ‘critical thinking.’ I told him that having an opinion could be a good thing but if he wanted to convince others, he needed to base his opinions on facts. This led to a great classroom discussion and we ended up role playing various other opinions, followed by an examination of the basis for the opinion. I called this activity ‘Give Me Three’.

I thought I would try to list some of the “discussion/thinking type activities/techniques that could easily be adapted for short postings for blogs. These postings could foster further conversations in your classrooms through the commenting feature or further postings if students had some thoughts to add to the conversations. For now I am going to call these activities “Blog-its!” I may come up with a better name but they will be ideas that can be adapted to any curriculum you are studying.

I’m blogging these ideas for a couple of reasons. One is in anticipation of my blogging project next year. I also have lots of teachers ask me what I blog about with students and how does it work. Maybe this will provide some help in that area. Let me know.
I love using blogs to get students thinking about how and what they are learning. It really helps them understand what they are learning if they blog about it and share with others. Plus the absolute joy of getting a comment from someone outside our classroom really gets them into this type of blogging. I’m also hoping some of you will share some of your techniques and ideas back. So, here goes….

‘Smartening Up’
I make a conscious effort to not “dumb down the vocabulary I’m using when I teach. I purposefully use words that I’d like them to add to their vocabulary. I’ll check to see if they understand the word and encourage them to use the words back in our discussions. Now when they do it’s a big deal and I make it a celebration of our learning. I encourage the kids to blog about it. I blog about it. I also encourage them to add to the vocabulary. They do. We constantly use the thesaurus. (online and offline) I find that using it together helps clarify when a certain word fits with what they are talking about. Students need lots of practice with this. It’s standard procedure for them to jump up and get the thesaurus. Allowing time to practice this and discuss and use the new words is so important. They get to have fun with the vocabulary by making PowerPoint presentations where they use those call-outs and pictures of themselves using the words with each other. Then they can do quick blog posts using their new vocabulary. They use it, so they won’t lose it!

‘Idioms Are Fun’
Whenever possible idioms are used to describe the content you are learning or to emphasize a point or clarify a point. It’s OK for them to shout out “idiom” when they hear one and then we laugh and discuss the literal vs. figurative meaning. Idioms can be so much fun! I tell my students the sky’s the limit when they throw their hat in the ring and become better thinkers and writers! The fun really begins when they begin to make up their own idioms!

‘Read, Retell, Predict’
We’ll take a sentence or a paragraph dealing with what we are studying and in pairs or small groups the activity will be to read it, retell it and then make predictions on what you think will happen next. Blog about it and have your classmates respond on comments.

‘Summarize & Connect’
Review the day. What did we learn? How does that connect to something else we have learned? What does it mean? Is it relevant to something in our lives? What else do we want to know about as a result of what we learned?

‘Burning Questions’
Think about what you are learning. What ‘burning question’ comes to mind that you would like to have answered? After the student blogs this, others respond.

‘Category Quest’
I haven’t used this but have thought about it. I would like to elicit the students’ help in devising the categories for our blogs. This is another area that merits practice. It would help them organize and think about how we work with information. They could blog about categories and make suggestions. It also gives them the opportunity to let us know what categories they are interested in and think need to be included.
This is a start. I know many of you do these type of activities daily in your class. Start thinking of ones that would be ideas to help those who are a little hesitant to start blogging with students see how easy it can be.

Blog-it!

My day begins with a click on Bloglines and then the windows of learning begin to unfold. Ahhh, so many opportunities. Shall I go here? Shall I go there? Oh, the places I can go…..

For instance, this morning I clicked on one of my favorite reads, Alan Levine’s CogDogBlog. My first stop took me to WordPress Theme Philosophy, then Dog Facelift, on to iForum Sneak Peek, and finally Web Site Notes. There’s many more stops that I will make a little later.

Alan blogs….

But if you are like me, and want to do some, to moderate, to severe customization, you get more and more into the code, and you look at templates a little bit differently. I have found that not all templates are created quite a like. Some are designed more as a one off, while others really lend themselves to being pried open. So I am going to try and blow the dust off of my braincells and try and outline the changes I have wrought in several WP sites, mostly for my own documentation sake.

So as Alan is dusting off his braincells in order to outline the changes he had made, my braincells are alert and dancing because I know the learning will continue for me. I too am interested in tweaking my WordPress site. Now I started with Manila, have used TypePad, Blogger and some others. Customizing the design of weblogs has never been an easy task for me. I know what I want and can usually figure out the code but seem to continually hit roadblocks as to where to put it, what else do I need to do to make it work and each of my changes sometimes make other changes I don’t want. So I “re-tweak” and spend far too much time on what I am always sure takes others just a few moments. You may know the story, if you are “challenged” in this particular area as I am. I see other sites and really admire the design of many of my colleagues’ blogs. So I try for a while (actually I really persevere) and then tell myself that the instructional part is more important (which it truly is), give up for a spell, and then find myself right back tackling the customization world.

Now that was my lead-in for what I really want to blog about this morning. It is this amazing educational blogging community that is truly an international model for learning. We simply must help build communities like this for our students. Alan’s blog is quite a model for that thought. He blogs about Word Press but he weaves his own learning into the post, gives concrete examples, uses images to help us “see”, gives step-by-step directions, shows many examples, links to relevant spots and then writes in a way that definitely crosses over all the six traits of writing. I am going to use some of his posts as models for my students in “making writing your own” and using humor so effectively. Plus, he ties everything in with the theme of his blog - not the WordPress Theme but his theme “CogDogBlog”. It is inspiring.
Having students writing and thinking about what they are learning on blogs can really evolve. Students need time for this type of learning. They should not be left out. Just imagine an hour a day (at least), students blogging about their learning through this type of sharing and building of communities. Wow! I can just picture the classrooms. After reading Alan’s blog, I am once again feeling that “I can do it!” and I will have this wonderful help from Alan. If we get more kids in on this they too will be saying “I can do it!” This is real learning - much better than “going it alone”. Let’s keep talking about opening the windows in our classrooms. We need those student “voices”!

A few quotes from other edubloggers that speak to this learning and including the student “voices”….

Ewan McIntosh from edublogs:

would any of these teaching / blogging ideas (or all of them) appeal to you?
What about convincing your colleagues to take part?
Are teachers ready for some honest feedback from the people that matter?
Would you spend time with one of your students every week planning how the next week would be taught?

Clarence Fisher from Remote Access:

This is exactly one reason why I want my kids to blog; and just as importantly, to read the blogs of others. Blogs are doors to the rest of the world. This is a powerful explanation of what we try to do. We “invite other people to know our lives,” you “read others’ blogs and discover their lives in other places.” This is why I am adamant that my kids link to, read, and comment on the blogs of people who live in other parts of the globe. I want them to hear from Australiankids, from Brazilian kids. From kids who live in major urban centres, and from those who live in small towns just like they do. They need to learn about their differences, see their similarities, and understand about how, on this ever - shrinking globe, they are a generation of people who will have many problems to solve when they inherit what we are leaving behind.

Darren Kuropatwa of A Difference:

Marc was scribe today. I didn’t think it possible, but he raised an incredibly high bar up another notch.

In her comments to Jefferson Lani suggested:

Just a thought: I wondered about a Scribing Hall of Fame to which everyone could aspire. It seems to me that you, Janet and Michael should be the initial inductees. You have set such high standards!! Maybe the members of the Hall of Fame could even have mention of their membership in their profile image.

Vicki Davis of Cool Cat Teacher Blog: