08 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

This afternoon, we'll meet in my office at TI again at 4:00. When you get there, please let me know how you are coming along with your projects. If you feel more comfortable, you can send me a private chat message (remember last time?) and we can communicate in that way. I will also be at my cell or land line whose numbers I gave you before, so you can get me that way if you prefer. In any event, please be patient with me because I may be speaking to more than one of you in different mediums.

If you have trouble with Java as evidenced by the lack of chat capability, then please let me know. And even though this will be our last online class, you can still cover everything by following this blog.

It is not required that you remain in the office this afternoon for hours on end, but please let me know how you are doing, what kind of help you might need from me, and then spend the remainder of our session accessing the cited articles and working on your projects.

Nomenclature, Schlomentclature. "What's in a name?"

The importance of giving your blog a effective name can not be overstated. You certainly did or would give much thought to naming a child or even a business. Though arguably somewhat less important than either of those examples, it still requires thought and consideration, since your most basic goal is to attract and retain readers.

Take a look at http://4webresults.com/blog/blogging/blog-names and although its author (presumably not Elliot Back) has some interesting word spellings, you'll get the idea. Burrow down to see Mr. Back's article if you have a lot of time on your hands.

This is a very short related article from the blog, Business Writing by Lynn Gaertner-Johnston at http://www.businesswritingblog.com/business_writing/2008/11/naming-your-blog-and-newsletter--think-big.html ...

and TJ chimes in with another slant.

Although some of the above, are business oriented, the basic process of choosing names extrapolates over to our world.


Right off, I'd like you to take a look at a few readings that were listed in the syllabus.

The next few concern blog design. One "to the point" blog entry is found at http://www.garyviray.com/blog-design-considerations-busby-seo-test.html and is called 4 Blog Design Ideas and Blog Authority.

Next is a blog entry whose theme is improving the design of your blog. Its entitled ten steps for a perfect blog redesign and it can be found at http://www.werewp.com/design/10-steps-for-a-perfect-blog-redesign/

Although "ten steps" may seem somewhat esoteric, it will have at least a few design considerations that you might find useful later on in your blogging endeavors. It'll will show you what some are doing with blogs.

A third is titled Blog Tutorial-Blog Templates and can be viewed at http://www.photoshopsupport.com/tutorials/jennifer/blog-templates.html and, again please take from it anything you find useful. You are not expected to assimilate its entirety. Do though, pay attention to the resources listed at the end of the blog. Many of them are "open source" (royalty free) fonts and graphics. Their use is not restricted to blogs and teachers will have no problem adapting them for the classroom. If you spent some time there and burrow down a bit, you'll find a link with a full index of free stock graphics. If you didn't see it, use mine: http://www.photoshopsupport.com/resources/stock-photos.html

Now, I need you to tell me how everything progresses. Please leave me a Whiteboard note or an email.

Next week 4:30! We'll meet next week at MEC for our last class in the Lab. I will be there early, of course for anyone who needs “one on one” time, so if you need special lab time come early. Otherwise please arrive by 4:30 at which time we’ll begin.

I'll have a few remaining syllabus items to cover at that time. Then we'll fill out evaluations and share our blogs with the class. See you then.

Eric

Eric

07 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

I hope you all had a great week and before I forget I want to wish you all a "Happy Thanksgiving." I know how nice it is for you to have a short work week that gives you all more family time-most important of all.

This afternoon, we'll meet in my office at TI's site. When you get there, please let me know how you are coming along with your projects. If you feel more comfortable, you can send me a private chat message (remember last time?) and we can communicate in that way. I will also be at my cell or land line whose numbers I gave you before, so you can get me that way if you prefer. In any event, please be patient with me because I may be speaking to more than one of you in different mediums.

Please access our class blog which will give you some online articles that I'd like you to read. It is not required that you remain in the office this afternoon for hours, but please let me know how you are doing, what kind of help you might need from me, and then spend the remainder of our session accessing the cited articles and working on your projects.

Before, I'd like you to take a look at a few readings that were listed in the syllabus. The first is found at

http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2003/02/blogs.php

and deals with using blogs in your curriculum and the factors that would encourage your students to write to them and then publish them.

"Jeff Golub, technology spokesperson for the National Council of Teachers of English, says that the organization supports the use of Web-based publishing tools to celebrate and share student writing. Golub, who is also associate professor of English education at the University of South Florida, teaches future educators three central principles about encouraging student authorship: "Students will write when they have something to say, when they have an audience, and when they get feedback."

Then please take at a short article on the pedagogy of weblogs at Weblogged's site by going to http://weblogg-ed.com/2004/the-pedagogy-of-weblogs/ and reading about using blogs with students to encourage and improve writing.

The last two articles deal with keeping students safe while they are blogging and blogging etiquette for students.

• Blogging Safety Tips to Protect Kids Online from Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/protect/family/activities/blogging.mspx
• Blogging Etiquette for Students

http://www.wisc-online.com/objects/index.asp?objID=ETO506

Eric

06 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Well, we're back again after a long hiatus...probably too long. Specifically, this afternoon, in class, I'd like to find out how your projects are coming and spend any time necessary in helping accomplish anything you'd like to incorporate into your blogs and, in general, just help you pull things together.

Although we're not scheduled to meet in the lab for two weeks, I'd like to count on having you call me or email me anytime with any tasks you might need help with, and I'd like you to touch base with the me and the group on November 25th and December 2nd at 4:00 pm in my office located at TI's PD site. Please plan on staying as long as you'd like or need. In any case, I do need to hear from you on both of those occasions even if only for my piece of mind.

In addition to office scheduled office hours at TI, I'm available to schedule extra lab time at MEC's lab on the following Mondays: November 24, or December 1 and 8, and the following Wednesdays: November 19 and 26 and December 3. Please tell me ahead so I can plan to be available.

Eric

05 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Dear Class,

I'll be waiting for you in the voting booth....errr...scratch that. I meant my office. Speaking of that, I never even thought about it or even imagined that there could be a possible conflict this evening. I wish you short lines and its probably a blessing that this class will be online, so if you have to come and go, that will make it more convenient for you.

If you have any problems (electoral or otherwise) this afternoon, you can call me. I'm going to give you my land line and my cell (see your email). Cecily, please don't write that number down unless it's on the picture of a saint and burnt later or on the back of a small stamp and then rolled into a ball and swallowed.

I hope that you can find your way up to my office on the sixth floor which has the name, Eric Groves' Office or EricG_Ofc .

In reprise; once you log in and appear in Reception, you can click on the "In this building" link in the left pane of the window. Then you'll see "6 TI Technology Education Offices Floor" with a link TI Tech & Voc Edu Ofc Lobby beside it. Click on it. Then again on the left pane, you'll see "On this floor" and again, click on that. You'll see an alphabetic list of offices. If you click on one of the links "skip to 5" you'll find links to my office listed there.

The other thing you can do is log into TI as you and once in the lobby type in "/joinperson EricG"or type "/join Eric Groves' Office" and then press the enter button in either case.

Whatever you do, do not get shook! Just call one of the above numbers and remember both of them may be busy (although I find that hard to believe) momentarily. Be patient.

...more to come...

Oh yes, when you arrive at the center, remember where you parked your car in their lot. Because of the recent time change, it'll probably be dark when you go back out after class and who knows who could be out there...maybe even a large and confused trick-or-treater from Tewksbury High School. How frightening is that?

Eric

04 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Before I start on relevant to class material, I need to "get a few things off my chest." On Friday, I was invited back to spend a little time at a local high school where I taught for three years, 25 years ago. I guess you could file the following under An Old Shop Teacher's Ramblings.

When I drove up the long curved driveway, I noticed that not much had really changed except that it seemed somehow much quieter almost as you'd find any high school later in the day when the seniors have graduated in May. I know it probably would have been different if I had been there earlier or later in the day when the buses where arriving or leaving. Still it was different.

Before I went into the building, I lingered briefly under the portico and remembered standing with my wonderful colleagues listening to their banter while we performed our bus duty on our assigned mornings.

When I entered the school and looked into the main office, I was propelled back in time to March 17, 1985, my first day as a teacher there. We all have those, what I call "snapshot moments" in our memories. I still have that one as I gazed into the busy office that morning and thinking to myself, "What have I done? I had left a junior high school that I had been comfortable with, bored but comfortable, 2/3 of the way through the school year.

My host took me by the "Royal Suite" where the queens of guidance reign and although I was too late to glom onto the free parents open house breakfast (breakfast is my favorite pastime after lunch), I did manage to get an audience with three of the hardest workers of the high school's staff.




My last stop was the technology wing that was newly built just prior to my arrival. Sadly, it's now closed. The wood and automotive shops are dusty and filled with rusty machinery and stored items such as cases of copy paper. How did something taught for a couple of hundred years and serviced so many students, disappear so quickly? Where do those kids go from here?

On the way out my host took me by the library-very nice, well stocked and maintained. While there, I noticed my little corner where I usually sat during faculty meetings. Finally I spotted my corner in the technology office. It caused me to wonder how I could have ever dreamed all the wonderful things that would happen to me since leaving that little corner.

Today, we'll talk about RSS feeds and how one can easily and regularly have blogs dropped into their email account. We'll try a couple of different methods, but we're going to be somewhat hobbled by our desktop security in the computer lab. With that in mind, I'm going to talk about portable apps and I'm going to give you a disk that contains some of them. We'll try using Firefox instead of Explorer as our browser.

"Until that time, Maynard, until that time." Dobie Gillis

Eric

BTW Here are some links that will enlighten us with regard to RSS or Really Simple Syndication:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/topic.py?topic=12455

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=97933&ctx=sibling

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Don't forget, there will be no class, real or otherwise, next week, October 28th. Our next meeting will take place in space in my office at TappedIn on November 4th at 4:00pm. I'll be waiting for you there. Among other things, we'll be covering Copyright issues including Copyright Commons. I'll have files for you to access including an interactive quiz at the end.



About Firefox Live Bookmarks: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Live+Bookmarks

03 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Class,

This afternoon I'd like to speak with you regarding how much of the last two
agendas you managed to sift through.

After that, I'd like you locate a pair of apparently curriculum useful blogs and
subscribe to them. Next, I'd like you to set up a blog for yourself after going
to https://www.blogger.com/start. Between each class, I'd like you to stay
current with your two subscription blogs and then record some of your
observations in your personal blog as reflections. Some guidelines follow:

Please create entries after each class session that reflects on at least two of
the points below:

o how they would use some of the previously covered topics to enhance
their teaching.
o creating a specific Weblog teaching unit.
o at least one useful idea gleaned from another teacher in the previous
class.
o the usefulness of the Weblogs to which they have subscribed


Please give me access to your blog. I'd also like you to let your fellow class
members have access if you don't object. In that way, we get to share in a way
that amplifies our learning experience.

Please look at these additional resources that might help you out and give you
some ideas:

o Locating educational Weblogs from About.com
http://websearch.about.com/od/internetresearch/a/newsblog.htm
o Edublogs Forum http://edublogs.org/forums/
o Mrs. DuBoses' Super Science Class
http://adventuresinscience.edublogs.org/

o Spinning Yarns Around the Digital Fire: Storytelling and Dialogue Among
Youth on the Internet From Information Technology in Childhood Education Annual
(2004), 63-75
http://www.soc.northwestern.edu/gradstudents/huffaker/papers/Huffaker2004_Spinni
ngYarnsDigitalFire.pdf

The below site is interactive. Although I cited it for its etiquette component,
it is very extensive and lets you chose a number of various blogging aspects.
Its worth a look.

o Blogging Etiquette for Students
http://www.wisc-online.com/objects/index.asp?objID=ETO506

All of the above will be sent to you via email this afternoon. See http://mecblogclassf08.blogspot.com/

Eric

02 Blog FSC/MEC Weblogs as Teaching Tools F08

Class,

I want to thank you all for providing me with a wonderful class last evening. You were all great-very interested and curious, and accepting. I thoroughly enjoyed you all and I can't wait to see you in class again.


I'd like to cover the following items before our second session begins:

A basic definition of various flavors of blogs along with a historical time line
of their development can be found below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_blogging_timeline



A more lengthy history can be accessed here:

http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html


Blog related resource links can be found at:
http://www.writerswrite.com/blogging/links.htm



Probably the most important topic at this time is to familiarize yourself with
some tools that will help you locate useful blogs.


I'd like you to begin to search for a few blogs that you would consider high
quality in nature because of their usefulness to you as a classroom teacher. If
you take a look at http://www.writerswrite.com/blogging/links.htm where you'll
find a long list of blog related resources. From there, I went to Search Tools
and then to Blog Hop searched the term "education" and came up with "Little Miss
Teacher" -ideas and resources for the primary school teacher at ( I know I promised I'd take this one out....I lied urrr changed my mind sounds better, doesn't it? I'll add another though. )
http://littlemissteacher.blogspot.com/, and the Annick LIVEbrary at
Bloghttp://annickpress.blogspot.com/ where you'll find lesson plans as well as
other education related links.

The two sites mentioned above were found easily enough. I tried to (as I always
will) find examples that would appeal to teachers of different subjects at
different levels, at least until I get to know you and can zero in on what you
teach.


Deanna is interested in history and I know of a very rich resource that she could use supplement her lessons. Although not a blog alone the site (see blog roll link upper right), it contains some very well done podcasts that could be easily downloaded and played for students. Just for you I loaded a sample, the Battle of Lexington" onto MEC's server and you can get it by going to http://cgi.mec.edu/~groves/hp30_battle_of_lexington.mp3.

http://speakingofhistory.blogspot.com/

http://thwt.org/



Rhonda, I hope you'll find some "paydirt" in some of these blogs on Reading:

http://www.readingrockets.org/blogs

http://readingyear.blogspot.com/

http://wordpress.com/tag/teaching-reading/




These are for our "Queens of Guidance":

Berlin High School, Berlin, CT http://www.berlinwall.org/blog/

http://nhsguidance.blogspot.com/

http://www.thehighschoolblog.com/

http://www.kearsarge.org/11122062815485913/site/default.asp

http://www.uscollegesearch.org/blog/parentscounselors/how-high-school-guidance-counselors-can-help-your-teen/



These are for the "Tech Heads" (term used affectionately as one who proudly once was and still is, I guess)

http://teachertipstraining.suite101.com/article.cfm/science_blogs_in_high_and_middle_school_classes

http://technicaleducator.com/blog/




This blog (http://thinkerslink.wordpress.com/) is published at Wordpress. Its
author is Henry Torrormeo, the colorful and somewhat zany librarian at Haverhill
High School. The blog is well done and he has spent a lot of time cultivating
its readership, often sending out mass internal emails touting its daily
features.

Dig in and enjoy.

Eric