Try Blogging?

A fellow TRT in my district shared with me an email that she sent to her whole staff about blogging during the summer months as a way to try blogging.  What a great idea!  Here are the resources from her email:

Traveling anywhere this summer and want to keep a personal record of your experiences?  Try Travellerspoint, a personal travel diary that you can share with whomever you want! 

If you're not sure about a travel diary, per se, you could also try the Travel Blog system, which allows you to keep updated by email or mobile phone.

Sounds like a great way to get into blogging, if you've never done it before! If you try it this summer, please come back and let us know!!

Trails Optional

I have a new blog addiction. Trails Optional written by blogger and educator Jen Deyenberg is inspirational to me.  I found it while searching for some ideas for "Smart" Tips and saw the ones Jen had created.  They were very straight forward and to the point, exactly what busy educators need.  Then I started reading some of her other posts and realized she just started blogging with her students, as well.  That's something we've just started doing at my school too (more on that later).  It was great to read and "hear" the challenges and benefits of blogging with students.

I like her candid humor as well, describing in one post, "What have I done?  I’ve created a groups of kids that rolls their eyes if I pull out a worksheet.  Ok, so I roll my eyes when I pull out a worksheet".  It's the typical catch-22 educators who overtly use technology find themselves in.  We know there will not always be a time when we can use technology, in fact, when we most certainly should NOT use technology.  There are times where it's more beneficial for an activity to be hands on, however, it's also a world where students have technology all around them.  Okay, enough of my soapbox.

I'm looking forward to more thought provoking posts from this blogger and can't wait to see where Trails Optional heads to next!

Photo of Rock Garden Trail, in Glacier National Park, found on Flickr, uploaded by kweaver2.

How Many Ways Can You Blog?

Today, I worked with our Librarian to present information to teachers about our website program, Schoolfusion. This past summer, the site was updated with some new tools (blog, wiki, podcast/video/photo slide show upload) and we discussed how these tools could be implemented effectively into their class pages and lessons.

Let's talk about blogs first. We went over how to add posts or entries to the blogs in Schoolfusion. There were lots of great ideas discussed. Two of our PE teachers talked about using the blog as a way to discuss important health topics with students. One of them asked me to look over her first entry and see if it was a good start. She started with an entry on her fitness routine and asked what students do to get in shape. For a first timer, I think she's on a roll!

The other PE teacher asked about including pictures in entries. Last year, she and I did a trackstar "WebQuest" on different health topics and one of these was anorexia. One of the sites student's visited showed pictures of people suffering from the disease. She asked if she could find a copyright free image and use this in an entry and have a discussion online about it. Another great idea!

Another teacher at our school created a parent blog as a way to communicate with parents especially when they have questions about homework or classwork their students are doing.

We also showed the teachers our blogs outside of Schoolfusion. I showed off My Technication and how I use this as a way to spread information about Instructional Technology ideas and tools. I also talked about added features that Blogger has such as adding widgets (my voki avatar), the blog roll, and my STAR DEN badge. Our librarian showed her blog, http://ashbyreads.blogspot.com, and how she uses this as a online card catalog of books and a discussion forum for students. She pointed out the tag feature that Schoolfusion doesn't have and how students can use this to look up other books in a specific genre.

If you have a blog, how do you use it? Have any great ideas to share for those just starting? Add a comment for this post and I'll compile the best ideas and put them back in another post. Have an idea, but not sure if it will work? Try it out on us first!

Kwality Blogging

I found this great blog a few weeks ago, which I think really epitomizes the idea of blogs, called Kwality Blogging. The blog is written by Mr. Sill, a Video Production teacher at El Diamante High School in Visalia, CA. I didn’t have a chance until today to really go through it and read some of the posts, but I was just fascinated by the post from January 27^th. As I was reading it, my impression was that this was a professor at the collegiate level. It wasn’t until I scrolled back to the top that I saw the blog was from a high school teacher. So that right there impressed me. This teacher knew what he was talking about.

This particular post talks about ideas in documentary filmmaking and the recently released movie Cloverfield, by producer J.J. Abrams, who created Lost and Alias (two of my very favorite television shows). I liked this blog post, especially, because the author threads ideas of using technology in the classroom with that of mainstream society. It made me want to sit in his class and learn about filmmaking! I also thoroughly enjoyed the various links he has through out his post, including the one with J.J. Abrams at TED. TED is another great site if you haven’t seen it. It also made me realize that I could/should be creating links right in the text of my post, instead of waiting until the end of my post. I think I have the hang of that now.

This post of Mr. Sill’s also made me start thinking about this upcoming week of class, in which we will be learning about Windows Movie Maker, the Flip Digital Video Camera, and Public Service Announcements (PSA’s). In my journalism classes as an undergrad, I learned all about PSA’s. Then when I became a teacher, I saw them being used in a different way in the classroom. I think they are a great product for students to make and helps them understand how their voice can be heard on a variety of subjects. I also know a great deal about Windows Movie Maker so that should help in completing our group’s PSA. I’ve seen the flip video, however I have not worked with it, so I am very interested in using this tool this week.