Quality Blogging & Commenting Audit Meme

As a follow up to the series Stepping it Up: Learning About Blogs FOR your Students, I would like to crowdsource more samples of blog posts and comments for teachers to practice recognizing, evaluating and assessing various levels of quality work.

A meme might be a good way to get the ball rolling.

Wikipedia defines a Meme as:

A meme  is “an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.” A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.

Quality Blogging and Commenting Audit Meme

In order to gather more audit samples from a large variety of age groups and authors, I challenge you to publish a blog post with a post or comment audit.

1. Select a blog post or blog comment to audit (Professional or Student)
2. Take a screenshot or copy and past the post or comment into your blog post (be sensitive whether you want to reveal any names or references)
3. Include or link to the rubric you use to assess the quality of post or comment
4. Audit the post or comment by describing your train of thought regarding the level of quality you would assess your chosen post or comment
5. Suggest how you would coach the author of audited post or comment to improve
6. Tag (at least) three educators and challenge them to audit a post or comment
7. Leave a comment with the link to your audit post on Langwitches

If you have not been tagged, please feel free to jump in, write and link your own audit blog post.

I am tagging Andrea Hernandez, Maggie Hos-McGrane, Nancy von Wahlde, Edna Sackson, Linda Yollis, Kathleen Morris, Kim Cofino

Looking forward to their quality blogging audits

Call for Contribution to Curriculum21 Clearinghouse

Curriculum21 is looking for contributors to their Clearinghouse.

The Clearninghouse showcases selected resources for all subject areas, grade levels, Common Core Standards, Global Education, Professional Development and many more categories.

To contribute a link is easy:

1. Go to Curriculum 21 Clearinghouse

2. Register

3. Fill out your registration

4. Once logged in, click on the “Submit Link” button

5. Fill out the resource by entering a title, description and choose from an available category. Then click “Save”.

Once submitted, the link will be reviewed by a Curriculum21 team member before it gets approved and becomes visible for everyone.

Thank you for taking the time in collaborating to create this unique resource for educators from around the world.

Global Project- Teddy Bears Around the World in its 4th Year

If you are looking to weave global awareness & collaboration into your elementary school classroom, consider participating in the

Teddy Bears Around the World Project

For the forth year, Teddy Bears from around the world are contributing images about their travels, traditions and customs to this blog.

Currently, there are contribution from the following categories:

About the Project:

Teddy Bears Around The World started as a project with a school mascot called Jose,  the travel bear, who enjoyed roaming the world, getting to know new places and meeting interesting people. The Teddy Bears Around the World blog provides the space to hang out and communicate with different teddy bears around the world to hear more about their lives and adventures. This will allow our students to see each other’s countries, customs and traditions through the eyes of our teddy bears and open their horizons through a more global perspective.
The idea is to have an ongoing exchange (no deadlines, no pressure) to contribute stories, photographs, videos or podcasts.

These contributions can be from the teddy bears point of view or from the students’ point of view telling a story ABOUT their teddy bear. We could have seasonal posts or specific story starters, such as:

• Teddy celebrates Thanksgiving in USA (other country specific holidays)
• Teddy is going to the movies
• Teddy’s Eve tradition
• Teddy and his favorite foods
• Teddy looses his first tooth
• Teddy watches TV
• Teddy’s favorite fairy tale
• Teddy celebrates his birthday
• Christmas trees around the world

There is no need to send a Teddy Bear to another school or teacher. All you need to do in order to participate is to register via the Contact Form, integrate writing and documenting (via images, videos or audio) the adventures of your own class’ teddy bear.

• Fill out the form.
• You will be contacted (at the e-mail you supply in the form) to submit an image of your Teddy Bear.
• Once the image has been submitted and has been approved, it will be placed on the Teddies of the World Gallery Page and a placemark will be created on the Where in the World Map.
• You will then receive a username and password for this blog to upload your own posts AND that allow your class to comment on other teddy bear’s posts.
• Your posts could be about life in your part of the world. They could include traditions, holidays, day to day life , school events, etc.

So how about it? Are you an elementary school teacher who wants to get involved in a project that practices:

• writing skills?
• media skills?
• collaboration skills?
• geography?

and exposes your students to

• local & community awareness?
• global awareness?
• being globally connected?