Preparing Students for Commenting with Wall Blogging

All of our classroom teachers are working hard on their classroom blogs. They are using the blog as a platform to allow parents to have a peek into the classroom. It is a communication tool between school and home. It has been a steep learning curve for some to write, post, embed and upload in this new media until it is becoming a daily routine.

I wrote about this learning curve and process of teacher blogging before. My vision includes a step ladder approach as teachers are moving from a purely informational, static, one-way-communication site to a global communication center.

Step Ladder of Blogging

I am proud of how our classroom teachers are continuing to work hard and move forward in the blogging  process.

A few weeks ago, our second graders created a video tutorial to teach their parents how to navigate their classroom blog. They are excited and self-motivated to check their classroom blog from home to see if their teachers posted something new. Both teachers and students are now ready to take the next step with the ultimate goal of making a global learning community out of their blog. These 7 & 8 year olds are ready to start commenting!

Taking the idea from the “paper blogging“activity, which originated from the No Matter, There blog, the second grade teachers and I decided to prepare students for commenting with “wall blogging”.

In class, teachers had read two books about pilgrims to the children. Outside of the classroom, teachers prepared a wall as a designated “wall blog”. They used push pins to “post” a handwritten piece of paper about their reading and added a few questions at the end. They also wrote a poster with “commenting guidelines” in addition to two images and books and a Venn Diagram poster (to compare and contrast the two stories).

Blogging Wall

Blog Post

As a class, we read the post and went over the commenting guidelines.

Commenting Guidelines

The teachers had also prepared some pre-made comments and students had to decide if they were appropriate comments following the guidelines or not. If they were not, they helped re-write the comments to make them appropriate to be pinned to the wall blog.

Comments

Then it was time for the students to comment. Each one of them received a colorful sentence strip and was instructed to then answer one of the questions from the original (paper) blog post or to comment on one of the comments that were already pinned to the wall.

Adding Comments to our Blog Wall

Writing Comments

There was a lively buzz going around. The students wrote great comments and it was amazing to see how their  minds worked as they were trying to figure out the “best” spot to place their comments. We wanted to make sure that comments who answered the same questions were placed in close proximity to one another. We also talked about the “nested” aspect of comments.

Wall Blogging

We talked about the difference between writing on a piece of paper and writing online. What does it mean when you underline a word on a piece of paper and what does it mean when a word is underlined online?

The wall blogging exercise did not involve ANY TECHNOLOGY! It was all about reading comprehension, writing, categorizing, comparing, contrasting, reflecting, documenting and collaboratively working towards exploring a text. The students will now be able to transfer these skills  to a new medium.

A new medium that allows them to practice the skills mentioned above in addition to:

• be able to do this from home
• learning how to read and write in an online environment
• connect and share with a worldwide audience (not just the people who physically can stand in front of our wall blog)

How are your preparing your students to comment? Please share your ideas.

Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to Classroom Blogs

All of our classrooms at MJGDS have their own blog. Several grade levels are piloting individual student portfolios based on a blogging platform.

• How do you keep up with all this information?
• How do you filter and organize it?
• How can you avoid having to go back to blogs to check if the owner has updated with a new post?

You can download this How-To-Guide for Subscribing via RSS & Google Reader to Classroom Blogs as a pdf.

According to Wikipedia an

RSS (most commonly expanded as Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.[2] An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”,[3] or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.

RSS Feed Icons

RSS in Plain English Video

Google Reader in Pain English Video

Start scanning websites you frequent often for different variations of this RSS feed icon. Some will have the icon listed in a prominent place on the website, others will just have a text link in the sidebar of footer of the page or some will have NO sign that there is an RSS feed available.

You can subscribe, among others to the following RSS feeds:

• ·      Blogs
• ·      Wikis
• ·      Google Searches for specific topics or keywords
• ·      Twitter feeds of individual users
• ·      Facebook feeds for individual users or pages

If you are not sure if  a certain page has an RSS feed available and you are using Firefox as your browser, you check for an RSS icon on the right side in the URL Address box. If a feed is available you can see the RSS icon, if there is no icon, then there is no RSS feed available for this site.

Create a Google Account (if you don’t have one already), sign in and and go to Google Reader- http://www.google.com/reader .

When you are at a website that has a RSS feed, you have a few options available to you.

Copy the URL (Web Address) of the site you want to subscribe to and then paste it into the  “Add Subscription” box

In your Firefox browser, click on the RSS icon in the URL Address bar

A dropdown menu will appear. Choose the RSS feed

Make sure you select Google from the dropdown menu, you might want to check off the option “Always use Google to subscribe to feeds”, then click the “Subscribe Now” button.

Click “Add to Google Reader”

Click on dropdown menu of  “Feed Settings”

Choose an already created folder or choose “New Folder” to create and name.

Your RSS feed will be filed and available in the Subscription Folders in the left sidebar.

A new and unread post will be shown in bold letters.

In order to read the post, click on the title. The post will drop down.

If you would like to read leave a comment on the post  or look directly on the blog click on the arrow  to the right of the post’s title.

You can also star, organize (tag), share or e-mail the posts by choosing and clicking on one of the icon at the bottom of the post in Google Reader.

Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know

Getting an entire school on board with a digital communication platform aka classroom blog is a PROCESS. A (baby) step by (baby) step process… As the interaction between teachers, school, students, parent and global community increases, so does the need for other “little” pieces of 21st century literacies. For example

• Social and global networking
• Global awareness
• Social Bookmarking
• Copyright

As teachers and students become PRODUCERS of content on their blogs it is becoming essential that we model good behavior when it comes to Copyright issues. Rodd Lucier, aka as  thecleversheep ( @thecleversheep on Twitter) has contributed a fabulous presentation to the K12 Online Conference 2010.

Creative Commons: What Every Educator Needs to Know

Here is presentation I had created in the past to give a brief overview of different copyright licenses.

The two videos mentioned in the slideshow are:
Copyright and Fair Use

Creative Commons: Wanna Work Together?