I previously published a chart of Bloom’s Taxonomy and iPad Apps, which I use regularly when planning projects or look to reinforce certain skills and literacies. Since I also rely heavily on The Digital Learning Farm concept (based on Alan November’s work), I felt it was time to create a similar chart in order categorize iPad apps for each role.This is by no means an exclusive chart, but meant to be a beginning of seeing iPad apps as a teaching and learning tool to empower students.

If you need a more detailed description of proposed roles to empower student learners, take a look at the following flyer (pdf).

In an attempt to document the trials and errors of using a classroom set of 20 iPads in our K-8 school, I am adding a new post to the collection of iPads in the Classroom:

• Transliteracy- QR Codes and Art
• Working on iPad Fluency with Lower Elementary Students
• Step-by-Step: How to Create a Collaborative Class eBook
• Students Create ePub iPad Book for the World
• Finally! A Book Creator App
• Plan, Do and Review iPad Exploration (by Andrea Hernandez)
• ShowMe App for the iPad- Good Tutorial Designer App?

5th Grade- Storykit- Creating a story in Hebrew

One of the Hebrew teachers approached me with an interest in having her students create a story book in the target language on the iPads.

We chose to test the free app Storykit with this project.

Students read a poem by Leah Goldberg called: (That’s Not Me). Based on the poem, students wrote their own story and created a storyboard how they could illustrate their story.

We had the Hebrew letters added to the iPad keyboard by going into: Settings> General>  Keyboard> International Keyboards>Add New Keyboard> Choose Hebrew

Once the International keyboard is added, a globe appears on your keyboard. Tap the button to cycle through all the different keyboards you have installed.

Once the storyboards were finished, students were ready to work with the iPads. The app allowed users to create their own illustrations, import images from elsewhere or take photos with the built in iPad2 camera and insert them into their story. Students could also add audio recordings to their story.

I showed students how to go to Microsoft Office ClipArt, search for images and download or take a screenshot and edit the image.

Students also used each other to stage scenes from their story to take a photo.

Problems we found along the way:

• students could not re-order the pages of their story in order to imitate leafing/swiping through a book from “right to left” (opposite from the way we turn pages in books in English).
• students were not able to place punctuation at the end of a sentence, since the Hebrew keyboard in Storykit (maybe because it is an iPhone, not an iPad app) does not include a period.

Once the stories were completed, students

• shared (tap share button) their story
• emailed themselves the story link
• went to their emails to click on the generated URL
• took a screenshot of their story pages
• wrote a blog post about their experience
• inserted the story pages into their blog post

I will probably not use the Storykit again, since I want to be able to easily embed the stories on the student blogfolios, as well as export them into our school iBook library.

Take a look at some student samples.

Sarah’s Story

A blog post from Sarah, one of the 5th grade students:

Today in Hebrew class we made a story on an app called StoryKit. We made this on the IPads. My story is called , or in English the name is: It’s Not Me. Our Fifth Grade Hebrew teacher, Morah Liat read us a story about a boy who is acting bad, but is usually a good child. Everyone had to make a story based on that one. Typing in Hebrew on the IPads is very tricky. In English the words go left to right, but in Hebrew the words go right to left. That makes deleting letters difficult. I  spent a lot of time on this Story.

Sydney’s Story

Rachel’s Story

This is Part VII in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students”

• Part I: Reading
• Part II A: Writing
• Part II B: Student Writing
• Part III: Commenting
• Part IV: Connecting
• Part V: Reciprocating
• Part VI: Consistency

Reading, responding, assessing and monitoring our students’ progress on their blog requires pedagogical commitment. It is a commitment to student learning and quality work, not a commitment to using a specific technology platform.

My guiding questions for QUALITY blogging are:

• How do teachers recognize different levels of quality?
• How can assessment for student blogging look like?

The blogging rubric, developed by Kim Cofino, mentioned in Part IIB-Student Writing becomes an invaluable tool to recognize quality, assess your students and plan to support each one at their own level. I have tweaked the original rubric somewhat. Another rubric I consulted and remixed from was University of Wisconsin, as well as Steve Peha’s list of six traits of quality writing from Teaching That Makes Sense. Here is the  link to Kim’s original rubric, so you can make edits to fit your own needs.

Part of blogging is commenting, which deserves its own rubric to address individual components that contribute to the overall quality of a comment.

Andrew Churches divides his Commenting Rubric (pdf) into two parts:

• Construction – this is how the comments is constructed, its flow, logic and language
• Understanding/Evaluations – this is a progression from simple to complex commenting; from simple statements to reflection and critique

See a commenting rubric below that you can use to help you recognize and support quality commenting. The rubric is based on Andrew Churches Bloom’ Taxonomy Commenting Rubric (pdf) from above as well as  Kim Cofino’s rubric and University of Wisconsin’s Blogging Rubric

Take a look at the two videos below, produced by two third grade classes. Mrs. Rogo’s 3d grade class from Florida and Mrs. Yollis’ class from California discussed and shared their ideas and thoughts about quality commenting.

Quality Commenting poster created for 3rd grade

It is hard to teach/coach students in quality blogging, if the teacher does not know what quality in blogging looks like.  As mentioned in Part I- of this series, blogging is about writing, but it starts with reading. Reading other blogs (many different ones) gives us an opportunity to see, become aware, evaluate and recognize all different levels of quality in blogs. Reading other blogs and comments helps us sharpen our own skills.

Andrew Chuches uses Bloom’s Taxonomy very successfully to assess the quality of student blogs. I especially liked his Blog Journalling Rubric (pdf)  where he adds fantastic examples, demonstrating different levels of quality.

I believe that seeing and learning to recognize quality samples of student work in various areas of the rubrics (writing, voice, presentation, citation, community, commenting) is beneficial to educators, new to blogging with their students.

Let’s take a look at several examples that demonstrate different levels of quality blogging.

In the example below, you will see 4th grade students consistently (and almost exclusively) use the words “fun”, “exciting” and “amazing” as they are commenting on a blogs post that documented an author’s visit via Skype into the classroom. Some comments are incomplete, leaving the reader hanging and wondering. Students needed to elaborate further in their comments to show understanding as well as connections.

Click for a larger image

After giving students feedback on their first comments, they went back to re-submit their comments. Take a look and compare these two before-and-after examples.

Click on the image to see a larger version.

Here are a few more comments left by teachers, pre-service teachers  and other adults. These comments are well intended. They surely were left to make conversation, let the blog author know that their posts are being read, acknowledged and appreciated. How would they hold up against the commenting rubric?

• Do these comments contribute to the topic of the original blog post (Even without having seen the original blog post…) ?
• Is there evidence of understanding of topic of original blog post?
• Are links to relevant resources added?
• Is there a meaningful addition (information, point of view)?
• Is an idea or point of view well stated?
• Is there solid evidence of content knowledge or thinking present?

What about these comments below? Where would they fall in your opinion?

Linda Yollis, winner of the 2011 Edublog Awards in the categories of Best Classroom Blog & Most Influential Blog Post left the following comment on Langwitches:

Silvia, you’ve hit the nail on the head…quality reciprocation is the key to building an audience! All the blogging relationships I’ve built with teachers, classrooms, and students have come from reciprocal commenting.

Teachers often ask me how I have connected with so many classes around the world. The answer is through consistent quality commenting. When I started, I would visit lots of blogs and leave comments. I’d try to make a connection or add relevant information to a post, and I’d always end with a question. My hope was to engage the class in a conversation. If I would get a reply from the teacher/class, I would go back. If I got no response, I’d move on to other blogs and keep trying.

Many teachers/classes not only responded in their comment section, but they would visit my class blog and connect. A comment that shows you’ve read the post and are interested in what’s happening in the classroom is much more valuable than “Our class loves your blog, please visit ours!” Of course, composing thoughtful comments takes time, but the payoff is tremendous!

One of the first teachers I connected with was Kathleen Morris (@kathleen_morris). Through reciprocal quality commenting, we’ve built a relationship that spans four classes. Students regularly comment to each other, and two families from Kathleen’s Australian class visited our class when they vacationed in Los Angeles!

I teach third grade and when my students earn their own blogs, they are excited to get that first red ClustrMap dot and a comment or two. I teach dedicated lessons about how to comment
using our class blog, so by the time students have their own blogs, they have a good understanding of composing a quality comment.

Before too long, I will hear a student complain, “No one is commenting on my blog.” My response to them is, “Hmm…well…whose blog have you been commenting on? Where did you leave your last comment?” They look a little sheepish as the light bulb goes on. In life, you have to give to get. If you want people visiting and connecting with you, you have to get out there and model what you want!

Focusing on a few blogs is a good idea. It can be overwhelming to try and keep up with too many classes. Deputy Mitchell’s (@DeputyMitchell) Quadblogging idea is a great place to begin. http://quadblogging.net/

There are so many wonderful global projects springing up. It’s tempting to join too many. I have found that if I over-schedule my class, we are not able to participate fully and that doesn’t help anyone. Budgeting your time and choosing projects that fit your schedule makes blogging and global projects more meaningful and enjoyable.

Finally, I love your idea about mentoring student bloggers. Edublog’s Student Blogging Challenge is a wonderful place to volunteer your time. Following the Twitter hashtag #comments4kids is another way to support students.

As you can see, I am passionate about educational blogging! I thank you, Silvia, for guiding and encouraging teachers to blog. It’s the best project I’ve seen in my twenty-five years in the classroom!

Please don’t just notice the length of the comment compared to the others, but take a look at writing, voice, content and presentation. Ask yourself, if:

• this comment contributed further information on the blog’s topic (The role of reciprocation in blogging)?
• the comment’s author added further resources?
• the content was organized and easy to follow?
• the author’s voice came through?

We need to be reading AND consciously reflecting on the quality of a blog post or comment to become good at recognizing and guiding our students to quality work in blogging.

Below you will find samples of blog posts. While keeping the blogging rubric in mind, how would you evaluate them? Where does the blog author need to improve?

Spelling, grammar and punctuation would be something to work on for this student (proof reading and editing). The visual formatting of the body of text could also use improvement. I am not sure if the link included in the post was supposed to cite the author’s source of information or be the image credit. Once I followed the link, I discovered that the site (and therefore I have to assume the image as well)  is under copyright. Simply adding the link to the site where the image was found is not enough.

I liked the inviting title to the blog post. It made me curious to continue reading. The post author starts out describing a personal experience. I am left with wishing for more information. A link to Wikipedia, for example, explaining the condition, would have been inviting to learn more. A visual in the public domain (free to use), grabbed from Wikipedia would have also been a nice addition. I am left with many questions for this blog author. His writing left me unsatisfied. I don’t feel that he told a “whole” story.

The blog post above is from my favorite fourth grade blogger Miriam. She was a finalist in this year’s Edublog Awards. What I love about her writing, is that I can HEAR her voice so clearly (although I have never met her personally). In the above post, she takes her readers along a car ride as she observes the autumn trees changing colors. She takes images of the trees she sees and inserts them into her blog post in order support her writing. The post is not only a narrative, but Miriam weaves information into the post as well. Miriam closes her blog post with question directed at the reader, inviting them to continue a conversation or information exchange.

Take a look at the Edublog Awards nominees as well as the Student Blogging Challenge. There are literally hundreds of links to student and classroom blogs. With the blogging and commenting rubric in hand, evaluate a few (or many) of them:

• what do you like?
• what components do you consider “QUALITY”
• what could be improved?
• how would you coach that student?
• how would you transfer the learning opportunity to your own classroom?

Once you have unofficially “audited” several classroom and student blogs, it will give you a better idea and more confidence in recognizing and gauging quality in your own students’ blogging.

Please share:

• your own auditing methods and successes for quality blogging with students
• an audit of a student blog post you conducted (this could be a great next blog post to tackle!)

This is Part VI in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students”

• Part I: Reading
• Part II A: Writing
• Part II B: Student Writing
• Part III: Commenting
• Part IV: Connecting
• Part V: Reciprocating

I have seen many teachers start blogs (professional and classroom ones), only to abandon them after a short while. The reasons are many:

• it takes too much time
• writer’s block
• no one reads it anyway
• students are complaining of having to write so much
• can’t see the benefits for student learning

By now, we should understand that blogging is not about technology, but about literacies (old & new) and LEARNING. Following the guidelines described in the previous parts of this series, blogging can bring the benefits highlighted therein WITH the understanding that reeking these benefits will take time.

The word “blogging” is in progressive form (the “-ing” form). The progressive form of a verb is the form that is used to indicate that an action is continuing/ on-going.

Blogging is a process, not an event that happens as a culminating activity of a lesson or unit.

The realization and acceptance of blogging as a platform for learning AND as a process, brings in the component of CONSISTENCY.

• Consistency is the key most bloggers list as the reason for successful blogs
• Consistency applies to reading, writing, commenting and connecting!

Consistency constitutes an important building block:

• to establish trust
• to build a relationship with your readers
• to build a loyal readership (you want your visitors to make it a habit of reading your work)
• to experience the cognitive process of learning over a period of time
• to plan, develop, build and maintain a classroom learning community

Linda Yollis, winner of the 2011 Edublogs Awards in the category “Best Classroom Blog” recommends,  in a comment she left on my previous post Part V: Reciprocating,

Teachers often ask me how I have connected with so many classes around the world. The answer is through consistent quality commenting

So, in order to give yourself the best possible chance in making your blog (professional or classroom blogs) a success, prepare yourself and your students to be CONSISTENT!

• Don’t let your blog be an add-on
  The easiest way to have your blog become neglected is to treat it as something in addition to “all the other things you already do”. Find ways to replace traditional tasks.
• Use your blog as a tool to “do the things you do”
  Your blog can be your communication and planning tool. It is also a tool to teach and support your curriculum : reading, writing and 21st century literacies (media, network, global, information).
• Let your blog be your hub
  Plan, document, reflect and showcase your (or students’)  work on your blog. Make it your  space and the center of all your work. Link all your other online spaces to your blogs (wikis, social bookmarks, twitter, etc.)
• Build in regular times to read blogs
  It is a conscious decision and effort to continue your own professional learning. Blogging starts with reading. Reading will give you ideas and topics to write about. Make reading blogs easy and convenient, by adding their feeds to an RSS reader and/or to your mobile devices via apps (ex. Flipboard, Zite, etc.) Read whenever you get a chance during the day and for a set amount of time before you go to bed at night. Read as well when your students have free reading time at school. (D.E.A.R. time)
• Build in regular times to write posts
  Do you have a D.E.W (Drop Everything and Write) time in your classroom?
  DEW time is essentially a daily “free write” time. This has been THE single MOST effective strategy we have used to build fluency in writing”.
  Write right alongside your students. Modeling is one of the best teachers.
• Build in regular times to comment
  Comment on your students’ blogs to build conversation. Comment on other blogs from around the world and about a variety of topics in order to build traffic and connections. Comment as a class to model and coach your students. Make this a time for mini-lessons in writing,  vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, etc.
• Be consistent in making connections
  (content and relationship wise) with and for your students. Don’t give up if a connection or blogging collaboration project does not work out. With time, you will build trusting and reliable relationships. Don’t be discouraged if comments don’t come flooding in. Keep it up…with time they will come.

Don’t give up blogging after a few weeks! Hang in there. Remember it is a process and takes time.

• Reflect often
• What works for you and your students?
• What does not work?
• What needs to be tweaked, thrown out, revised?
• Connect with other educators who are blogging.
• Read, read, read other professional, classroom and student blogs

How have you been successful in consistently reading, writing, commenting and connecting on and via your blog? What successful tips can you share with teachers just beginning the process?

If you are a newbie, how do you envision making a “commitment to consistency” work in your case?

This is Part IV in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students”

• Part I: Reading
• Part II A: Writing
• Part II B: Student Writing
• Part III: Commenting
• Part IV: Connecting

So, if we are relying, even expect others (educators, mentors, etc.) to take the time to comment on OUR students’ blogs, we need to be prepared to reciprocate. It is a give and take. You will get the effort you put into reciprocating back.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines the word reciprocate as:

1: to give and take mutually

2: to return in kind or degree

Reciprocating is one of the most important components to make blogging with your students, as a global communication tool, work.

If we want our students to have an audience, we need to be the audience for others.

It is a cycle that needs to renew itself.  We need a commitment from teachers (who are blogging with their students) to contribute to that cycle, otherwise it will come to a screeching halt. By “it” , I mean the connections, conversation and amplification we are seeking via blogging for our students.

Reciprocation can take on the form of:

• taking regular time to leave comments on other student blogs
• teach your students to leave quality comments on other blogs with a link back to their own blog
• be trustworthy and reliable when in a blogging project or partnership with other educators
• take ownership of the quality of blog writing and commenting your students exhibit when connecting with others
• formally volunteer to be a mentor teacher for other blogging classes or students

In a podcast interview, I recorded with Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay, Vicki shared one of the components of a successful global collaboration project. She talked about the commitment from all teachers involved, the commitment to accept the students from someone else as your own.

I believe that this is key. The reward as an educator comes from teaching others…not just the ones that are listed on your class roll. Your students will benefit as well, when other educators reciprocate to take your students under their wings. It is about teaching through the walls of our physical classroom!

What do you think about the importance of reciprocation when involved in student blogging?

How can your reciprocation contribute to the success of student blogging?

What shape has reciprocation taken on in your blogging adventure or how do you envision it for the future?

This is Part IV in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students”

• Part I: Reading
• Part II A: Writing
• Part II B: Student Writing
• Part III: Commenting

As a teacher,

• you have started reading blogs in order to get ideas, inspiration and format from other writers and educators…
• you have content that sparks your own interest and that you are able to connect to in your own writing…
• you are going through the “process of writing” for yourself, in order to coach your students in becoming better writers…
• you have started leading your students in writing on their own blogs…
• you are modeling conversations, critical thinking and connections by commenting on your students’ blog.

Now…

you are realizing that your students are NOT necessarily jumping up and down for you, eager to get to work in order to consistently produce high quality writing. Motivation to get on the blog, blinging it up and producing content might have happened for a brief period right after you started blogging.

The newness wore off fast for these digital natives and now it is (most likely with only a few exceptions among your students) nothing more than school work on a digital platform instead of school work with paper and pencil.

An integral component to keep it exciting and fresh for your students (and yourself too) is to:

Make a conscious effort to CONNECT your students to an audience beyond the teacher.

An authentic global audience for our classroom or individual student blogs does not happen on its own. I have been thinking, researching and experimenting  how to connect classrooms to a global audience for a while now.

In my opinion, it comes down to YOU, as the teacher, to make a commitment to:

• be the connector for your students (especially younger ones) or
• teach them how to reach out on their own.

How does a teacher drive traffic to his/her students’ blogs in order to connect them to an audience?

• Blogging Buddies
  Connect with blogging buddies (formerly known as pen-pals).
  Find another committed classroom teacher who is blogging. They can be from your own building, district, state, or from another country.
  (Leave your contact info and blog details on this Google Doc started by Kim Cofino, if you are looking for blogging buddies for your students)
• Quad-Blogging
  Become part of a Quad-Blog. Make a connection via the site or organize yourself with three other classroom teachers from your own network.
• Blogging Projects
  Join pre-existing blogging projects (Student Blogging Challenge)
• Twitter
  Tweet about exemplary student posts to your network.
  Use hashtag #comment4kids (more info about comments4kids)
• Cross-Posting, Linking and Commenting
  Cross-post student posts and link them on your professional blogs. Leave relevant comments on other blogs with links back to your classroom and/or student blogs.
• Experts
  Invite “content experts” of a unit your are studying or specific area of student interest to write a guest blog post or become a guest commenter
• Mentors
  Ask a university professor to connect your classroom or student blogs to a group of pre-service teachers. This can be a win-win situation for everyone involved.
• Parents
  Educate and ask parents to take the time to read and comment on the classroom or their student’s blog
  (Idea: Have students create a “How-to-Video” walking their parents through the steps of leaving a comment and give advice on quality comments)

How do YOU connect your students to a larger audience than one? What has worked for you?  Please share.

This is Part III in the series “Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students”

• Part I: Reading
• Part II A: Writing
• Part II B: Student Writing

In Part III , I am exploring COMMENTING on blogs.

Commenting is a great introduction to student writing on blogs. It does not require to plan and write an entire blog post. Commenting could be used as a stepping stone for students to “earn” the right to author their own blog posts on a classroom blog or before they get to be administrators of their own student blog. I have seen teachers require a certain number of “moderated” comments before students “graduate” to be able to post comments without prior approval. The same teacher then requires a certain number of quality “unmoderated” comments, before the students gets promoted to becoming an author on the classroom blog.

Even with classmates or commenters from around the world leaving comments, WE ARE our students’ first and primary commenters. When we comment on our students’ blogs, we model quality writing AND content as well as encourage them to expand their own horizons to make connections in the online world.

It takes time to learn how to become a quality commenter FOR our students. We, as teachers, need to

Model commenting

• Read comments (…lots of comments) to learn to distinguish between poor, mediocre and quality comments.
• Model commenting to your students by leaving QUALITY comments on their blogs
• Avoid comments, such as “Great job”, “Way to go”, or “I really liked what your wrote”…
• Commenting is about continuing a conversation started in a blog post.
• Commenting is about helping to (potentially) push the author of the post in a new direction, give a new perspective or connect them to new resources.
• Commenting is about relating the thoughts, ideas, experiences or resources of the blog author to your own. Sharing them will paint a better picture of the issue, perspectives, or research.
• Ask yourself if your comment CONTRIBUTED to the conversation, the learning of the author or other readers?
• 21st century skills include critical thinking, problem solving and QUESTIONING. The comment section of a blog is a great place to practices these skills in an authentic environment.

Model writing

• Use traditional writing conventions (grammar, word choices, audience appropriate,etc.)
• Add digital writing conventions (linking)
• Integrate reflective writing
• Compose and publish comments together as a class by projecting the blog post

Model proper grammar, etc.

• When you see a student misspell a word or publish a grammatically incorrect sentence, model correct spelling and grammar in your comment to the post
• As a class, go through comments in moderation and edit together

Take the time to discuss and reflect on comments left by others

• It is the perfect time to upgrade and replace traditionally taught lessons.
• Teach writing in an authentic setting.
• Engage in conversation with an authentic global audience.
• Deliver “just in time” mini lessons, as teaching opportunities pop up unexpectedly
• Model by responding to or continuing a conversation

Know the difference between academic and social commenting

• Students (and teachers) are most likely accustomed to commenting via text messages on their cellular devices and on friends’ Facebook walls.
• Teachers need to be aware of the difference between these “social comments” versus academic commenting
• Recognize when students are falling into social comments and coach them to academic commenting.

Craft an acceptable commenting etiquette tailored to YOUR classroom’s need

• Your classroom blog is an extension of your physical learning space and community.
• The age of your students, special needs and personality play a role in creating an acceptable commenting etiquette that works for your classroom.
• It is important to discuss and enlist the help of your students in crafting your etiquette

4th Grade Commenting Etiquette

As a teacher, becoming a quality commenter is imperative to be able to guide and coach your students in becoming better academic commenters.

Need a playground to practice your own comment skills. Follow the Twitter Hashtag #comments4kids and leave quality comments for student bloggers from around the world.

The more YOU practice…the better commenter you will become… the better you can coach your students in becoming good writers in the digital writing world.

We acknowledge that most of us (teachers) did not grow up with blogs, nor did someone teach us how to write our own blog. If we require our students to blog,  we need to be become knowledgeable about blog writing.

In Part I- I reflected upon the need of the importance of READING blogs as a first step of becoming better blog writers.

Part II-A - Learning About Blogs FOR Your Students- Writing addresses the need for teacher to be writers (bloggers) and to experience the process of learning for themselves, if they are to teach/model/coach/facilitate writing via student blogs.

Image licensed under CC by Andrea Hernandez- http://www.flickr.com/photos/21847073

Part II-B looks at student writing on blogs.
Disclaimer: When I talk about “student blogs”, I am referring to blogs, intended for academic writing sponsored by a teacher.

I have seen too many student blogs, that are of very poor quality. I have to ask myself:

• Where was the teacher?
• Are students not supervised, guided and coached as they blog?
• Are the expectations set too low?
• Does the teacher know what quality looks like on a blog?
• Does the teacher not see that writing on a blog should have the same quality writing standards they have set for analog writing.

There is a need for us to sketch out and define what a QUALITY student blog looks like.

Quality blog writing includes:

• age and developmentally appropriate content, grammar and vocabulary
• focused quality and relevant content
• traditional quality writing characteristics
• evidence of writing for an audience
• reflection
• logistics of digital writing, such as hyperlinking, embedding media, categorization, etc.

A quick survey on Twitter, revealed the following responses from other educators:

What are your primary objectives for student blogging?

Blogging is surely not about learning the logistics of typing and uploading  posts. It is not about the tool, but about the skills that the tool can facilitate. We MUST keep this in mind as we are asking students to write on blogs.

There are many resources available on the web, if you need help in defining or refining what quality student writing means to you.

On Teaching That Makes Sense, Steve Peha lists six traits of quality writing:

Ideas that are interesting and important. Ideas are the heart of the piece — what the writer is writing about and the information he or she chooses to write about it.

Organization that is logical and effective. Organization refers to the order of ideas and the way the writer moves from one idea to the next.

Voice that is individual and appropriate. Voice is how the writing feels to someone when they read it. Is it formal or casual? Is it friendly and inviting or reserved and standoffish? Voice is the expression of the writer’s personality through words.

Word Choice that is specific and memorable. Good writing uses just the right words to say just the right things.

Sentence Fluency that is smooth and expressive. Fluent sentences are easy to understand and fun to read with expression.

Conventions that are correct and communicative. Conventions are the ways we all agree to use punctuation, spelling, grammar, and other things that make writing consistent and easy to read.

As teachers, it is our job to teach and coach our students in becoming better writers. If you have chosen to use a blog as the vehicle to do that, YOU NEED TO GET GOOD at recognizing quality writing in blogs. As with anything else, in order to get good at something, you need to practice.

• Start reading student blogs (your own students and others from around the world)
• Read A LOT OF STUDENT BLOGS! (While you are at it, leave comments for these students too)
• Consciously be aware of what you like and don’t like. What stands out? What is unacceptable? What is missing? What makes you go “Wow”?
• Start rating blogs you read in several categories, ex. content, presentation, connections, etc.

Via the blogs of Kathleen Morris, Kim Cofino and Clarence Fisher comes a perfect baseline of a blogging rubric, you can use to help you assess student blogs. Here is the link to the original rubric, so you can make your edits to fit your own needs.

It is imperative that as a teacher, who is blogging with his/her students, becomes a coach for them. In order to be a good coach, you need to know what you are talking about.

Learn about blogs FOR your students!

If you have created a blogging rubric or have more ideas on how to coach students in writing QUALITY blogs, please share your experience and/or links to further resources.

You are reading Part II of a series of blog posts that started out of the desire to help teachers learn more about blogs for themselves in order to help/coach/facilitate their students’ blogging adventure. My guiding questions for this series of blog posts are:

• How can I make it easier for teachers to learn about the process of teaching and learning with blogs?
• How can blogging enhance student learning?
• What are components of QUALITY blogs?
• How can I guide teachers in experiencing a shift in teaching and learning and help them make a pedagogical commitment to blogging.

In Part I, I laid out the importance of READING blogs in order for the teacher to be able to gain and understanding of student blogging as a platform FOR learning, not “just” a vehicle for technology integration.

I do see blogging as a journey. It is not as simple as waking up one morning and deciding “Let me blog with my students” or attending one Professional Development workshop or conference presentation about blogging and thinking to yourself: “I’ll start blogging on Monday.”

The journey begins with reading blogs, but it has to continue with WRITING.

I firmly believe, that an educator who expects his/her students to blog for learning, NEEDS to be blogging for their own learning. 

The biggest obstacle for writing is YOU! I hear educators, who are or want to blog with their students,  tell me over and over again the reason why THEY don’t/can’t/won’t blog for themselves:

1. I have nothing to say that might interest anyone
2. I am not a good writer/ I don’t like writing
3. I don’t have time

Let me address each one of these:

“I have nothing to say that might interest anyone”

My response to the reluctant or scared bloggers, who feel that they have nothing to contribute to the edubloggersphere, is usually that blogging should not be about “others”. Writing a professional  blog should foremost be about yourself as a learner and about your own journey. Writing for others might come later down the road.

I explored “Who do You write for?” in a previous post. I listed MY reasons for writing.

• I write for myself, because I enjoy writing.
• I want to practice writing in order to get better at doing it.
• I blog because I want to have a record of my thoughts, my learning process, and resources that I find.

Seth Godin,  in a video, expresses that the METACOGNITION of thinking matters when blogging.

It does not matter if anyone reads it. What matters is the humility that comes from writing it. What matters is the metacognition of thinking about what you are going to say. How do you explain yourself [...]? How do you force yourself to write in three paragraphs why you did something? How do you respond out loud?

The blogger needs to realize that the primary reason for their blogging is NOT to please others, but to be a process that aids in their own learning.

“Obvious to You, Amazing to Others” is a short video clip by Derek Sivers that talks about what so many new want-to-be bloggers also feel like in respect to their potential writing contribution to the field.

“My ideas are so obvious, I will never be as inventive [as others]… but I continue to do my work, I tell my little tales, I share my point of view, nothing spectacular, just my ordinary thoughts.

He continues to explain how one day someone emailed him to ask HIM how he ever came up with that genius idea?

“Everyone’s ideas seem obvious to them[...] so maybe what seems obvious to oneself, might seem amazing to someone else.”

We need to keep this profound little discovery by Derek Sivers in mind, when we think that we might not have anything to contribute through our writing that would be of interest to others!

“I am not a good writer/ I don’t like writing”

Diving into blogging with our students, it is our hope that they grow as writers, that they connect their learning with new knowledge and that they will be able to express themselves in age appropriate eloquence. We also acknowledge that looking and preparing our students for their future must include a literacy (of reading and writing) through different media and new genres.

If we are in charge of preparing our students, we need to be riding the wave as well.

Karl Fish asks on one of his blog posts titled “Just Write Poorly. In Public. Every Day.”

This begs the question, of course, about how much our teachers are writing. Particularly our Language Arts teachers, but really all of our teachers. If it’s so important for our students to write, how come we’re not modeling it?

Seth Godin continues to share in the same video mentioned above that

If you are good at it (blogging) someone is going to read it. If you are not good at it and you stick with it,  you will get good at it.

If you are one of those who feel that they just don’t like writing, maybe due to writing assignments from their own years as a student, keep in mind that:

Writing for your own blog IS NOT like a writing assignment from college. There is pleasure, inspiration and satisfaction to be found in your writing.

Give writing another try, without the deadline, performance Angst or grading pressure that used to come with it. Remember you are writing for yourself. You are writing for your own learning journey.

I don’t have time

Oh yeah… the good old response: I don’t have time…

It is a great response for almost anything. It is easy and quick to say… It fits perfectly, it molds itself to any request, idea, proposal, thought… for the not so good, the great and the best ones…My thoughts are somewhere between “then don’t”… and … ” choose your priorities wisely”…

So, let’s get down to real life tips to help you write your blog. Keep in mind, that the same basic principles apply when facilitating blogging with your students.

• Just write!
  Write for yourself first. Blogging is about your own learning. Use it to remember, to document, to follow and refer back to your own journey. Remember that the destination is not always the goal, but that the journey is what you after. No more excuses for not getting started.
  
• Write about what interests you
  No reason to force subjects and topics on you that bore you. Digg deeper into your area of expertise or explore something you always wanted to learn more about. Don’t feel confined. You can find a niche by writing about one area of interest/subject matter or you can write about anything that think and wonder about. It is, after all, your blog
• Don’t force a certain writing style on yourself
  Find your own: be formal/conversational/narrative/ straight forward in outline form, etc. Experiment with different forms.
• Link to what you read
  Connect ideas you read about to your own ideas and thinking (give credit where credit is due of course!). Collect quote and citations you come across, as you read traditional books or during your online reading. See them as puzzle pieces that you assemble during your writing to paint a picture of your point of view.
• Add visuals
  Find ways to add visuals that support your thoughts. Creative Commons images (from Flickr for example) are your best friend. Sometimes a single visual can even spark your writing. Remember to also take your own images( to use in your blog) as you explain the way you see the world. If you enjoy graphic design, consider creating your own visuals as well. Many visual minds learn best by taking an idea or concept apart and by visually re-assembling it.
• Make writing  (on your blog) part of your work and learning process
  Don’t see blogging as something in addition to what you do. Incorporate, embed, braid it into your work.
  Need to write a lesson plan? Lay it out via your blog. Explain your rational for choosing certain activities and pedagogy. After you taught a lesson, make reflecting  (on your blog) part of the lesson planing cycle.
  Doing research about a certain topic and need resources? Use your blog as the platform where you collect and review the resources you find.
• Leave a positive Digital Footprint
  What would you like others (colleagues, students, parents, administrators, future employers) to find about you, if they were to google you? The answer to this question can give you ideas about what you could write about as you are starting to share and shape your digital footprint.
• Create a professional brand
  Brands used to be reserved for companies. Since we have become a “producing” society (not just a consuming one), the concept of branding has spilled over to us “individuals”. Your “brand” represents who you are, your beliefs and points of view across different media and online platforms. The writing on your blog will help define your professional brand.
• Don’t be a perfectionist
  Obviously do your best, but the point is to get it out, to process your thoughts, to formulate your thinking. Don’t spend hours on finding the “perfect” image at the expense of actually writing the post.
• Don’t get stressed
  You don’t/ won’t (most likely) get paid for your blogging, so don’t add unnecessary stress to your life. Work at your own pace. Don’t set yourself deadlines that you won’t meet and only stress you out. You will enjoy your writing much more.

Gwyneth Jones, The Daring Librarian,  in a post titled ” Just Blog it! Blogging Tips & Ideas” gives the following advice:

Blogs are like pets – you have to feed them regularly [...] If you start a blog you should try to maintain it. Post when you can, be upbeat, share what you can, give anecdotes about your profession, tech tips, lesson ideas, student successes, & professional philosophies.

• Start When You’re Ready, Already!
• No Excuses!
• Keep an Idea Folder Going!
• Schedule it
• Get Graphic
• Share Shamelessly
• Gimme a Widget!
• Be You!
• Give Credit
• Be Thankful
• Be Stubborn

Just as Karl Fish called for above: Just Write Poorly. In Public. Every Day. I am calling educators out to start writing too. To start writing FOR their students (Not necessarily FOR them to read your professional thoughts), but in order to become:

• better writers FOR them (to teach/coach/facilitate)
• transparent learners
• aware of their own learning journey

How can we teach/coach/facilitate blogging and hence writing, if we have not gone through the process ourselves?

What is the most important advice you would give a teacher to start blogging/writing?

I am NOT interested in using the iPad with my students as a worksheet substitution!

Kill and drill apps on the iPad are still just that… kill and drill activities.

I want my students to :

• use apps to create, not just consume
• fluently pick apps that will serve their purpose
• fluently switch between apps, then insert, embed, share and disseminate their creations

We have to expose students to a variety of apps to help them gain skills in iPad Fluency

By fluency I mean the ability to:

• connect tasks effortless together (ex.creating and editing a video, then uploading, embedding and disseminating on several platforms)
• CREATE and then being able to COMMUNICATE- the ability to create and communicate your creation is one of the main characteristics of fluency
• record, edit and then publish a movie that automatically posts to my blog
• take an image…edit…then automatically post to my photo stream as well as embed into a blog post
• work within several apps, then remix content from each one by being able to import them from one app to another.

In the first few weeks after the iPad deployment, we are concentrating on allowing students to test and explore a variety of apps, as well as work on that fluency piece. Here are a few examples of our lower elementary school students.

In first grade, students practiced their Hebrew letters in Doodle Buddy.

They then drew illustrations and learned about emailing the finished image to the teacher.

In second grade, we are helping students create an image, then saving it into the Photo Gallery (by an in-app function, via the built-in camera or taking a screenshot) and then edit and email that image to their teacher.

Yoel

Second graders were learning to introduce themselves in Hebrew. We decided to create an eBook with each student contributing their own page. Take a look at this post how to create a collaborative iPad book.

The image can be created in a drawing app, such as Doodle Buddy, or being taken with the iPad’s built in camera, then imported into Doodle Buddy to write or type over it.

By adding an International keyboard to the iPad, we were able to easily switch between the English and Hebrew letters.

Here were the instructions for our students, which we modeled by mirroring the iPad display via projector:

1. Take an image with the built-in camera
2. Go to Photo Gallery and edit if needed
3. Go to Doodle Buddy app by finding the app icon or by searching for app by name
4. Import image from Photo Gallery as background
5. Choose a marker, color, thickness and write your name in Hebrew on the image
6. E-mail the image to your teacher

We are realizing that after a few run throughs of creating- saving- sending, our students are picking the sequence up easily.  (The hardest part for these early elementary school students is to spell my name in the email correctly

We are also making it a point to have students explore the apps we have loaded on our iPads. As we are discussing, at the beginning of class, WHAT we want to CREATE, we are asking for input from the students:

1. What app would be best suited (any alternatives)?
2. The sequence from creating to saving and then the best way to share it with others (email, publish, classroom blog, etc.)

It is crystallizing itself clearly, that the iPad lessons are building on each other. The best success, I have been able to observe, is when students had explored an app in one class, worked with the app to create, in another class and finally pulled the sequence together for a larger project by remixing, sharing and collaborating.

What are some of the activities you do with your students to increase iPad fluency?