student blogging

Well, I've finally done it!  I have my grade 10s blogging.  Or rather maybe it would be more accurate to say I have successfully managed to get most of my grade 10s onto blogger and they've posted one blog.  I had to give up on the multiple author blog idea, but I've found a way to set up RSS feed for each class on Edmodo that I hope works.  Once again Edmodo comes through!

One of the first things I realized though, is that my plan of gently introducing new aspects of the blogging process to them throughout the semester is unnecessary.  Although I told them the expectations for the first blog post was a paragraph, plain and simple, two of the first three blogs that were posted had not only a paragraph but a picture and video as well.  It isn't that it is all that difficult to do, it is more the fact that they did it without being asked.  I know think that I will allow them to hopefully challenge each other about what to put in their blogs.

One of the things I loved most about this, is that I am only marking these blogs for completion.  I just want them to reflect and write.  I want that writing to be for an authentic audience and I want them to take pride in their work.  I really think that blogging for each other will make them push themselves and  it won't be about what the teacher expects, but what they can share and what they can show each other.

If you are interested in getting your students blogging using Blogger and ugcloud accounts there will be a blogging session offered after school sometime in October (I think).  Or just ask and I'd be happy to help you get started.

Reflection and Challenges

I'm trying to walk the walk.  

My classes are all on Edmodo.  I am using it as a b-learning spot - has quizzes, assignments, homework, extra resources, videos.  I did this last year, I think I'm getting better at keeping up with it, and I find it quite useful.

I have set up a twitter account for my classes.  Students are following me (I'm not following them back) and the grade 12s are getting messages and passing them on - like 'you will need text books in class tomorrow' or 'meet in the library.'  

I created a course google site.  Honestly I don't know why at this point, maybe I'll figure it out, or I'll delete it - whatever.  

I have a Blogger set up for each of my classes.  This is my biggest goal for the semester.  I believe that reflecting on what you're learning is the best way to make it stick and go deeper.  I believe that writing is an excellent way of forcing the reflection process.  I believe that sharing your thought process is key to learning; both by getting some push back or encouragement about your thoughts and learning, and by thinking about the learning of others and commenting on it.  Not only is this my biggest goal and wish for my students this semester, it has also become my biggest challenge.  Now I need to figure out how to approach the challenges.

The challenges: a) Blogger doesn't seem to want to invite my students to be co-authors on my class blog. b) I will have trouble getting library time for students to type blogs.  c) Student buy in.  And the longer it takes to get going, the more I fear I am losing them.

Obviously the first one is the big one.   

Possible Solutions: 1) Give up on blogging - too many challenges.  But if I really believe what I said above about all the benefits, can I really do that?   2) Have students write paragraphs on paper and submit. An option, but not authentic in the 21st Century, and doesn't really meet my reasons for doing blogs.  3) Use a different platform (not google).  I can use EduBlogs - it should work the way I want it with multiple authors.  But I want to support google apps for education (ugcloud) and the students would need yet another login/password that they would forget.   4) Have students each create own blog (not co-authored).  This isn't ideal, but it is an option and does have it's advantages as far as sense of ownership goes.  5) Use lap top cart.  If it's not enough have students take turns typing blogs while doing other in class work/activity.

I haven't quite figured out which solution I'm going with.  I am a little afraid if I leave it much longer before deciding, it will default to the first solution, which is the worst.  The technology right now is the sticking point, and it is not about the technology alone, it is about what I believe the technology can help my students gain.  So, I just need to figure out how what my plan B picture looks like.

Question: How long do you struggle with something that doesn't seem to be working for you and your students?  At what point do you start looking towards plan B?

Trying again...

OK, so it's been a while.  Like working out, or eating better, it's important not to beat myself up about missing the mark in the past, and more important to just try to get back on track now.  I am not going to make any big promises or goals about how often I will write, or what I will contribute this time. I will just start again now:

So it's back to school time.  The learning fair was very good, I saw many teachers willing to jump in and get messy so they can model being learners to their classes.  Learning is challenging and messy and doesn't just mean success all the time.  I believe we need to remember that and be willing to show our students that we may struggle with somethings too - it's OK, it's how you learn.

Helping people get set up and work in Edmodo at the Minds On Media carrousel was great.  There were many different teachers thinking about different ways of using it in various subjects and grade levels.  The stations all looked busy: People working with Maddie Davies and her iPads, Alanna working with people establishing a positive digital identity, others working with Adobe programs, or Voice thread, or computer animation and of course google apps for education.  If you were unable to be there, the wikispace is up and running with information from each of the stations, as well as contact information if you want help with something you are trying.

I am very excited that some members of my department are going to try having their classes blog (as am I).  I think aside from the technology, our collective fear is that we won't be able to sustain it - we will start out fine, then we'll miss a week or two.  I hope that if we are all tackling this together, we will be able to encourage each other through the rough spots, and if we miss a couple weeks/posts here and there we just get back on, don't give it up for good.

I'm also feeling really positive about the work we've committed to in terms of new units and new assessment ideas.  I hope we continue to rely on each other, be vulnerable with one another and support one another as we try new things.

Here's to a great, messy, learning filled semester.

Specialized Google Searches

Alerts:
Do you want your students to follow a current event? Is there an issue that your students need to be following for their research?  Is there something happening in the world that you want to follow more closely?  With a google account you can set up an alert with whatever news sources and frequency best work for you.  

It is a simple as filling in 5 fields:
Search Query - your topic of interest
Result Type - choose from: blog, news, videos, discussions, books or everything
How Often - choose from: as it happens, once a day or once a week options
How many - choose from: all or only the best
Your email address

When you add your search query, you will see sample results on the right hand side so you can determine if you’ve chosen the exact term you want.   When you are done with this research, you can “manage your alerts” and delete the alert so you don’t continue receiving emails.

From the Google Scholar page:
What is Google Scholar?
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.
Features of Google Scholar

• Search diverse sources from one convenient place
• Find articles, theses, books, abstracts or court opinions
• Locate the complete document through your library or on the web
• Learn about key scholarly literature in any area of research

How are documents ranked?
Google Scholar aims to rank documents the way researchers do, weighing the full text of each document, where it was published, who it was written by, as well as how often and how recently it has been cited in other scholarly literature.

To access both Google Alerts and Google Scholar, on the google search page go to the pull down menu “More” then select “even more.”

Tags and Social Bookmarking

The cloud (on-line workspaces/storage) is amazing.  It used to be if you wanted to keep something, you put it in a file that had one title/heading and you needed to remember where you put it.  If it was something you had more than one use for you may have made a copy and put it in another file somewhere else.  This was true of paper copies in metal filing cabinets and word processing documents.
Online you save stuff using TAGS.  You can give one thing as many different tags as you want so that you can find it again.  So, for example if I found an article on Gladiators that I used for Adventures in World History and I might want to use it for the Ancient Civ course, I can tag it with CHM4E, CHW3M, gladiators, history.  I could later search for it using any one of those tags.
So, “where would one use these tags?” you ask.  Social bookmarking is one place.
Social bookmarking is pretty incredible whether you use it for social/sharing purposes or not.  I’ll start with not, because I think that’s the way most in our department would use it.  
If you are working on your computer at home and you see a website you like, you can bookmark it in Internet Explorer (or Firefox, or Chrome, or Safari...) so you can get back to it later.  But it is only available on that computer, unless you also email it to yourself so you can bookmark it at school (on your network login), but it is still only available in those two places, and only if you are signed in at school.  It is also only part of a long list (that you may have started organizing into folders if you are really on top of things).
If you use a social bookmarking tool (diigo, delicious, google) you have access to your bookmarks on any computer that is connected to the internet.  And rather than one long list to scroll through, you can sort through your bookmarks by using the tags you create.  I have found this quite useful.  It is a great way to save things for later as well.  The tag concept is key here - you should be consistent with the tags you use and think about how you will want to search for the website/article/blog next time.  (Example; I am trying to change my tags ipad, iPad, iPads to something consistent now and it is a little bit of a pain.)

How to use this in class:
Because these are social bookmarking tools, you can share your bookmarks with whomever you want.  
My delicious account is:  http://www.delicious.com/LisaUnger711/ You can go here and see what I’ve saved and what tags I’ve used.  You can click on the links and use my bookmarks if they are of use to you.  You could set up an account and share your link with your class, telling them which tags are of most use to them.  You can also make somethings in your list private so they won’t be shared with whomever has the link.  Example: I have the maplewood site saved for myself, but I don’t think you see that if you go in.  You can also use delicious (or diigo) as a search engine.  Type in a tag, see what others have saved using that tag.  It also gives you the popularity of that site/article - how many others have tagged it.
My diigo account is:   http://www.diigo.com/user/lunger711  It works much the same way but is a little more sophisticated.  You can create groups in diigo and other people with a diigo account can add to a group page.  So you could create a CGW4U group and have students with a diigo account also add useful websites or articles to the group (class) page.

Evernote

There was a request that I write about Evernote.  For those of you that don't know, Evernote is a cross platform app/program/website that allows you to save anything (all types of files, websites, images) in one place so you can access them anywhere - there are smart phone apps as well as a website.  You can organize your stuff by folders and tags so you can find what you want again.

I've been trying to write about it for a while, but haven't figured out what to say.  I use it, but not to its full potential, so I've been having trouble figuring out what to say.  Then I ran across this blog that does a MUCH better job than I could, so here's the link:  evernote for education blog

If you would like me to add the evernote app to the iPads so you can encourage students to use it, just let me know.

There are a couple other non-iPad things I'd like to share.  If there is something iPad related apps that you'd like me write about just let me know.  Otherwise, the next topic will be social bookmarking. (Coming soon!)

off topic - creative commons

I want to take a break from the iPad discussion this post to explain about Creative Commons and copyright licensing. (please don’t roll your eyes)  I also haven’t played with Popplet in a collaborative way yet and want to try that before I post about it.

Did you know that anything you create has an automatic copyright attached to it?  I didn’t.  That if anyone wants to use something you’ve made they need your expressed permission to do so?  That if you want to use something someone else has created you are supposed to ask their permission?

There is an easy way around this (legal too! - not just ignoring it).  You can use creative commons licensing.  Notice anything new on my page?  I have creative commons licensed it!  Yeah me!  It was easy and fast - took me less than 3 minutes to do and that included finding the website.  (http://creativecommons.org/)  So now, if you want to use my writing for something else you may, as long as you give me credit, aren’t making money from it and also license your work in the same way I licensed mine.  These are choices I made - if you want to license something you can make different choices.

This video does a much better job explaining it than I can.  Watch it.

I believe it is our responsibility as educators to both model this and encourage (make it necessary?) for our students to respect copyright and only use images that are not-copyright protected.  This is good digital citizenship.  This can be done by searching in the creative commons itself, or using the advanced search in google images to select re-usable images.  Most images in flickr and like depositories are CC licensed.

The hardest part for me has been remembering that I want to do this (and I think it’s important), and being willing to be flexible about the image I get - it may not be exactly what I want, but can I find a different way of expressing my point?  At the very least I have been trying to be more diligent when it comes to citing my sources for images I use that aren’t labelled for reuse (art images).

As a positive heads up - the Canadian copyright laws are changing. See this article. This should make it easier (more legal) to use things for educational purposes.  The laws haven’t been changed since 1997 - which is a very long time in the digital age.

Is this on your radar?  Do you think about the intellectual rights of your work?  Of a colleagues work?  Of a stranger’s work?  Do you expect your students to cite images in posters/powerpoints/prezis?  Do you cite them?

Honest thoughts?