Rochester Teacher Asked to Contribute to White House Blog

Nate Childers, Hart science teacher and 2010 winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Education, was asked by the White House to add a piece to the White House blog. Nate's blog can be accessed by clicking here.

E-Cornucopia Conference

Thanks to all who stayed to listen to our presentation on blogging.  Feel free to 'follow' this blog as we will be updating with new links and ideas for blog use in the classroom.  Please also feel free to comment about about links or assignments you have used.

Blogger.Com Resources

Blogger.com continues to try and enhance its program for users. Blogger in Draft is one of those enhancements.

To try out Blogger in draft, just go to Blogger in Draft and log in. If you want to stop using it and go back to “normal” Blogger, simply log into Blogger.com instead. Your blogs and posts are the same regardless of whether you use Blogger in draft or regular Blogger. The only difference is what you see in the interface.

Because blogger offers templates and customization options, several blogger insiders offer reviews and critiques of different gadgets and template options. Help on Blogger also serves as a great resource on an array of topics. If you decide to go beyond the basic blogger template, you may want to access these blogs and websites for info.

Blogger Tips and Tricks
Blogger Blog Templates
Blogger Templates
Free Blogger Templates


Several You-Tube videos offer you insight into how to set up blogs, change or upload templates, or change settings.

How to Upload a Video

Choosing a Blogging Program

A number of various programs have become available over the past two years for educators to rely on for classroom blogging. Even though Moodle offers its own blogging options, using a free blogging program is advantageous in many ways. Most importantly, they are easily accessible and affordable to students.

Currently, most educators rely on one of three programs. Whichever program you choose, however, you choose one program for all of your students to use. This allows you to set certain permissions and to follow blogs easily.

Explore all three to decide what works best for you and your students. Accessing Pulsed's updated comparison of the following two programs may help you decide which blogging program works best for you.

Blogger.com is probably one of the most widely used programs because of its user-friendly features, but there are some who feel the program is limited. Purchased by Google, the program offers easy set-up and access to free template designs. Using Blogger's Blogger.draft options, users can access a number of templates, backgrounds, and themes to enhance the creative impact of the blog. The other great feature of Blogger is the dashboard that allows users to view and follow blogs easily. One drawback, however, is the minimal control of access. Blogs are in the public domain.

WordPress is a free program that offers some features that make work better for you. Much like blogger, WordPress offers bloggers different templates and posting options; however, some bloggers complain about that upgrade charges. Make sure WordPress covers your needs so that students don't have to make costly upgrades for classroom purposes.

Bloggertalk mentions that, “The main advantage of Word Press is that it provides flexibility and it allows you to be far more creative because its an open source script meaning it can be freely distributed and manipulated by anyone. So if you want the script to do a specific task you can either find an existing plugin or hire a programmer to create one for you.” Also, Akers states, “if you want to start your own blog and generate free traffic over a long period of time without any problems you should definitely use Word Press on your own website. Its far safer and more reliable than Blogger and will give you the flexibility and creativity you need.”

LiveJournal also offers users free housing for blogs. It has the look and feel of Facebook to some degree, buy many students prefer LiveJournal and use it exclusively.

Powered by Wordpress, Edublogs also offers educators a viable option in the classroom. Popular with more K-12 teachers, the program does offer many of the same features the other programs offer. Some indicate that navigating the site is a bit tricky especially when it comes to adding users.

ClassBlogMeister is also a free platform that is for educators only.  Class Blogmeister was created by David Warlick, teacher, author, and speaker, and The Landmark Project. He designed this blog platform with the needs of teachers and their students in mind. This blog platform is rarely blocked by school filters because it has built-in safety features that do not come as the default on other platforms.

Disadvantages of Using Blogs

As with most social media, blogs may present problems for both instructors and students.  Therefore, instructors need to take care to consider some of the following problems when integrating blogs into the classroom:

1). Security, privacy, and access of information may cause problems for student.
2). Informal nature of blogs may not foster deeper meaning and critical reflection.
3). Blog themes may segregate by gender (men tend to write editorial and technical blogs, while women write personal blog).
4.) Students may not want to learn another technology.
5.) If not specific with instructions, blogs don't foster much interaction.
6). Blogs are usually opinion-based, so students have a difficult time distinguishing between high-quality and poorly researched blogs.
7). Can be time consuming because of aggregation (RSS)
8). Published immediately, may get an immediate response

With careful assignment construction, instructors can overcome many of the problems that blogs can present.  Three main areas may need thorough consideration, however, before students are given the green light to blog:

Security Issues: Close Community

Access: Permission Rights

Free Expression Conflicts: Defamation, Libel, Infringement

SOURCE: Trimarco, Ruth.  The Use of Blogs in the College Classroom. 

Student Benefits of Blogging

According to Dr. Christopher Long of Penn State, students benefit in several ways from blogging in the classroom.



1). COMMUNITY BUILDING: When instructors empower students to participate, blogs that are accessible to all offer the opportunity for cultivating and community building not only in the classroom but beyond it as well. 

2). FOSTERS SKILLS:  Posting allows students to not only contribute to the conversation but to take the discussion to a higher level by extending beyond general course material. As they begin to realize and recognize the power and impact of their posts, students begin to craft with more care.  Consequently, they learn how to construct posts that offer well-organized, critical insight.

Long notes that blogs empower students to think of themselves as more than writers but as publishers who can have an impact on peers but the community as a whole. 

3). DIVERSITY OF EXPRESSION: Blogs offer an array of ways for students to communicate.  They can add posts, comments, podcasts (auditory learners), images, and video (visual learners).  Because students generate material, they decide how to best community their ideas.

4). BLURS BOUNDARIES:  Long notes that blogging blurs many boundaries.

Student	Teacher
Semester	Lifetime
Practice	Theory
Classroom	World

Instructor Benefits of Blogging

Blogging offers instructors an engaging way to facilitate classroom management, collaboration, discussion, and portfolio building.  Because blogs offer students the chance to move beyond the classroom virtually, blogs offer instructors several benefits to support a number of pedagogies and goals for writing as well as content courses. As a publishing platform, blogs offer an engaging medium to shape student thinking about ideas, how to shape ideas, and the ethics and moral surrounding the posting of those ideas.  The following ideas are some of the more obvious benefits of blogging:

• Free and accessible publishing platform
• Interactivity as students can both post and comment
• Joint de-centered, authorship; students can be tasked to provide content
• Useful in any type of class for reading and writing
• Facilitates any type of communication between instructor and student
• Option of community blogs can work like bulletin boards or discussion forums
• Nurtures discourse among instructors and students
• Provides effective forum for collaboration and discussion
• Motivates students to take ownership of their own writing
• Creates opportunities for students to consider the writing process
• Gives students tools that enable scaffolding, mentoring, and peer review

Assignment Options for Blogging

Instructors from different colleges, schools, departments, and classes utilize many different blogging assignments.   Some instructors use a blog to facilitate all assignments in the course; others use blogs as part of an assignment.

Regardless of how an instructor shapes his or her assignments, however, the biggest challenge instructors face is to construct effective assignments that encourage students to move beyond summarizing course materials.

Once the voluntary nature of posting and commenting at will becomes required, students may try to merely meet the requirements rather than facilitating processing of information and learning. 

The following includes several diverse opportunities that blogs offer for classroom use:

• Individual student projects where students can reflect on data, related topics, or demonstrate mastery of lectures
• One class blog for community learning
• Blog authored by the instructor to extend course material
• Weekly summaries of research, data, analysis, etc...
• Record new vocabulary
• A student/instructor blog that nurtures discourse
• Explore hyperlinks in other blogs
• Post on cultural topics, products, practices, and perspectives
• Record travels or/and read travel blogs
• Journal keeping
• Student portfolios
• Argumentative, Persuasive, Call to Action
• Read and review academic blogs
• Various collaboration Project
• Reporting and Critical Analysis
• Language, ESL idea sharing 
• Academic Blogs for publishing individual texts
• Publishing larger texts (memoirs, etc...)
• Professional sources for sharing opinions research, and discourse

Blogging Models for the Classroom

Even though blogs are not suitable for all courses nor all course objectives, they do offer most courses an array of assignment choices, learning outcomes, and structural options. The list below is only the tip of the iceberg as far as how you can incorporate different blogging assignments into your classroom:

• Reflection
• Critical Reading and Thinking Skills
• Political and Social Awareness and Engagement
• Essay Writing

  

To facilitate learning, two common blogging models exist for incorporating these types of skill building discussions, reflections, or assignments. 

Multiple Individual Blogs: Because students create their own blogs, they take ownership of their blogs and often continue to post once the course ends. For example, Halfway to Somewhere a blog from created by a student from my Winter 2010 course has decided to keep blogging.  She notes the following to distinguish the transition from her personal blog from her classroom blog:

Writer's Note: 

Originally, this blog was created for a college class. Posts later than this point were written specifically for class and may or may not translate to a wider audience (and, may or may not contain a little bullshit).

A few disadvantages, however, exists for this model. The first is that because the blogs are dispersed virtually, the followers are required to follow multiple blogs. As a result, the blogs are individual pieces rather than a unified discussion.

Common Course Blog: By making students administrators or authors of blogs, they can post, add pictures and links, and even alter the template. English 200 Community Blog offers an example of a common course blog. As a collective, students cultivate a community by building a comprehensive virtual structure that allows for more interaction in a quicker format. Dr. Christopher Long, a long-time user of blogs in the classroom, has experimented with both models and sees the Common Course Blog as the better choice. Because he relies solely on blogging posts for assignments, etc..., Long designed a blogging rubric for student blogging participation.

Collaborative Blogs: Another model is to have students groups collaboratively work on developing, writing, and editing blogs.  As part of the assignment, student can present their information and support and defend their choices of template, text, sources, images, and links.  Blogs at Penn State is another example of constructivism where faculty, staff, and students are building knowledge structures by creating blogs that cover research, professional insight, and an array of other topics.


 Blog Combo: You also have the option of combining different blog models to give students exposure to the medium in a variety of ways.   Don't Waste Your Precious represents an individual response to a service learning project she participated in.   Major Initiative reflects her contribution to a group blog of 4-5 students who collaborated on a blog calling for student action to participate in service learning.  You can read more about their experiences by reading "Students Blog About Service Work."

The Pedagogy Behind Blogs

In "Content Delivery in the 'Blogosphere," the authors contend that blogging can enhance many different pedagogies, but also that there is a pedagogy behind blogging itself. The authors reference Vygotsky's educational theory (1978), in that educators emphasize "knowledge construction" processes of the learner and suggest that "meaning making develops through the social process of language use over time."

Because this knowledge construction is discursive, relational and conversational in nature, as students gain and transform knowledge, they must have real outlets for publication of knowledge. This publication scaffolds learning in that it allows instructors to see the students' connections between ideas. In turn, students receive feedback on published works that allow them to understand the relationship and context basis of "knowledge, knowledge construction, and meaning making."

To read more about the pedagogy behind blogging, consult "Blogging Pedagogy."

(Source: www.thejournal.com/articles/16626)

Evolution of Blogs

A blog is different things to different people.  Some bloggers use blogs for personal reasons and post daily insights or opinions.  Other bloggers use blogs to share research, links, commentary, and help for followers.  

Media outlets have started to use blogs to complement editorials and articles, and corporations are now blogging to give customers access to the inner workings of companies and products.  A blog can really be anything you want it to be.  Most often, however, blogs are characterized by the following criteria:

• Frequent Postings
• Reverse Chronological Order of Posts
• Real Simple Syndication 
• Publishing Platform

Here are some other generalized features of blogging:

1. Blogs do not require software or knowledge of computer programming (may need to edit html a times).
2. Many free, accessible blogging programs and hosts.
3. Blogs do offer different security options such as limiting access for reading and posting.
4. Blogs disregard the status of the user; blogger can use real name or remain anonymous.
5. Blogs can consist of text, audio, images, pictures, and hyperlinks.
6. Blogs have auto-archiving features, which means that all posts are archived and available for searches.
7. Blog content can be distributed via subscriptions.

Because blogging has evolved beyond that of an online journal, the complexity of blogging has changed as well.  As a result, new methods and options are constantly emerging.  Here are two good resources to visit to familiarize yourself with blogging terminology:

Blogging Terms Glossary

Blogware Terminology

History of Blogging

In 1998, a handful of blogs existed in the form on online, diary-like forums.  Most blogs were personal in nature creating a voyeuristic like community - "I'll write about ME, and you READ it!!!"

A slow trickle of blogs were created in the next few years, but the opinion of many changed when presidential candidates in the 2008 election created blogs to attract readers.  Now, most media outlets and corporations have blogs; even The White House has a  blog.

With the availability of new hosts, such Blogger.com, blog nation has exploded. Experts report that every second, someone creates a blog.  However, many have stopped counting as the numbers, to some degree, don't matter anymore since most people now see the medium as a legitimate source for information.

If you want to read more about the history and evolution of blogging, Rebecca Blood's books and her blog Rebecca's Pocket are good sources to explore.  She offers an insider's view of blogging since she was on the blogosphere frontier back in the 90s.  You could incorporate some of Blood's articles and her blog itself into a classroom in a number of different ways.

However, if you are contemplating starting a classroom blog or a blog of your own, Will's ThoughtStream: Seven Ways to Find Time to Blog is another good resource for motivating you to create and post.