Take a moment to write your final post about which PBA future emerging market tool (product or service) you have used and which one you would like to see more of. As some of the coursemates have mentioned in their posts, I would also like to see more of blogging. Blogging is the area that […]
Continue reading Final Post: Blogging and Cloud Computing are Ways to Go Posted in: Week 10: Product-Based Assessments
I first started blogging in 2006. In some ways it was an educational experience, where I was blogging about my trials and tribulations on building a sea kayak. From this, I turned my blog into a general purpose weblog, which is a bit of a no-no. However, I use my blog to communicate with friends […]
Continue reading Day 1 on Day 3: My blog experience Posted in: Week 07: Blogs
wow..you definitely have a lot of experience with blogging and the various products available to do that with! I like the idea of linking the blog (and some link a wiki) to the class website – adds another dimension to the site. I have not explored Drupal or Joomla yet , but from some of the blogs I researched, they are popular for content management. I too am a Twitter-for-professional learning fan – I have found more interesting blogs and articles from my network – maybe I should call Twitter my door to the world of my interests based on who I follow. Thanks for your post!
Doug,
Very informative. I need to check out a few of of those sites you mentioned. I also use my wordpress site as a CMS too. Using it for this purpose have given me more leverage to transform my space into more classroom-like setting. As a result, I am able to do more with my courses and even add things that are not a part of the courses.
Everton
Your considerable exposure to a wide variety of blog platforms gives you a valuable perspective, Doug. It reinforced my initial impressions of several plateforms, and will definitely influence my future blog forays. What is “microblogging” – the equivalent of a blog “tweet”?
Thanks,
KJ
Doug, thanks for your informative post! It definitely sounds like you have a lot of blogging experience, something I can learn from! Blogging is very new to me, so I will definitely be checking out your blogging sites, and hope to gain more experience on blogging!
Jenaca
Hi Doug,
Thank you for sharing your experience in using blogs. Joomla and Drupal are new to me and I intend to research on them. Your post has given me some useful ways of using blogs in my classroom
I have to confess to being a closet blogger. That is, I personally have used blogs to organize and collect things I’ve done and learned online, but I admit to not using them that often in my classes. My first blog was created using Blogger in 2009, but its lack of ability to make pages […]
Continue reading Creepy blogger! Posted in: Week 07: Blogs
Karen,
Nice work! I also like blogs that allow me to be in control. As a result, students think about what they plan to post as it will be deleted or not published if guidelines are not followed. I have also noticed that if the blog is not frequently updated and social media features integrated, students will show little or no interest in it.
Everton
Karen and Everton,
I agree with you that I also like blogs that I can control.
I agree with you Karen that Blogger Dashboard was much harder to use compared to WordPress. I’ve been using WP for my classes since 2 years ago and students like how I’ve set up the blog.
Everton, you are right that students would not be interested if a blog is not updated frequently.
Deb
Hi Karen,
Thanks for the compliment! And I agree that sometimes blogs can look a little overwhelming. When there are long pages of text it can definitely get overwhelming and sometimes the page options of WordPress can decrease the overwhelming feeling.
I agree with you about Drupal and necessity of downloading everything to your computer. In a school system where you have to meet with IT requirements, a system like Drupal can be very cumbersome. I get the feeling that if you were looking at blogs like a venture that was targetted for the K-12 environment, you would prefer to see a cloud-based system. Is there anything else that you would like to see in blogging platforms to make them even better for your applications?
Juliana.
Hi Juliana,
I am glad for this opportunity to investigate different blogging platforms, and find myself preferring the ones that start to look more like multimedia webpages, i.e. Edublog and Posterous. I think the ability to impose privacy limits for class- or educational-only access is important in all web applications that are used for teaching, although that could be seen to impede a real community of learning, I guess. There is a definite approach to encouraging student participation in blogs, as Everton points out above, and I think it’s a case of me needing to play around a bit more in order to tailor the medium to my students’ learning styles and preferences.
Thanks!
KJ
Hi Karen,
Thank you for your post. I think in this day and age, it will be very important to have some sort of security features on blogs. I think that is a definite drawback for some of the free ones out there.
You also spoke of encouraging participation in blogs. What challenges have you seen with respect to participation?
Juliana.
I agree with you that in the MET program we can be overwhelmed with the multitude of requests to create a blog for our eportfolio, but do you see the benefit for students to do the same thing? and would they too be overwhelmed if various teachers requested the same assignment? I am glad you are exploring the various platforms that are available for blogging – our question will be, is there a tool that would do an even better job?
Hi Karen,
It sounds like your class is the digital village for the digital natives of today. Good job! I enjoyed reading your post! particularly because I found a lot of things there that I could relate to myself, e.g. reading other peoples blog and not making mine public. I find that the way you use blogs in your classroom resonates with my ideas about using blogs in the classroom. I am not a teacher but I completely agree with having Moderator rights to review posts before they are published. I like that feature because I think it will make life easier for both teacher and students in preventing inappropriate comments.
Ifeoma
Before you publish your posting, please make sure that you select a category (eg. Introductions) as well as assign some meaningful tags (keywords).
verenanz 7:45 am on November 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hello Deb,
I agree that next steps could be developing rubrics and assessment for PBA assessment tools. Creating a Web 2.0 tool that offers examples. That would be an interesting business opportunity….
Verena:)
Everton Walker 9:43 pm on November 12, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Deb & Ver
Very interesting take on the issue. The rubric would certainly add some form of standard even the aim is not to standardized these assessment. The aim is to keep them as informal and authentic as possible.
Everton
jenaca 4:29 am on November 13, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Deb,
I also agree that blogging should be used more frequently in classrooms for students to use. I think it’s a wonderful way for student’s to be creative and express their thoughts and learned knowledge.
Jenaca