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.

Social networking is changing our lives

You are part of a social network, if you are reading this post on my blog because you subscribe via RSS  or are a regular visitor or someone has forwarded you this post as a “must read”.

I am about to test out, if social networking has changed the way we live, work and “do business” enough to not only change our virtual lives…but also help in our face-to face-world.

My husband and I are working with several recruiting firms (Search Associates, ISS (International Schools Services) and AASSA  (Association of American Schools in South America) in order to find a position at an International School starting the school year 2012/2013. This is the first time for us going through the process of applying to become a candidate at each one of the firms, then applying to attend their individual recruiting fairs hosted between December 2011 and March 2012.

It is quite a process, as we are filling out endless questionnaires and writing our philosophy of education and personal statements. We are requesting our supervisors and administrators to write and submit confidential reference letters. We are uploading our resumes, transcripts and certificates.

Once accepted as a candidate, we gain access to a database listing the international schools who work with the recruiting companies to hire their teachers and administrators. My husband is looking to be hired as a Physical Education teacher/coach, but my position is not as clear cut. My 21st century learning and literacy specialist/coach job title does not fit neatly into a category that is listed in these databases. I am as much of a Curriculum Coordinator, Information & Media Specialist, Technology Integration Facilitator as I am a Literacy Coach, Learning Manager and Professional Development provider for a school.

Finding the right position that will allow me to grow in my work is our top priority as we embark on this recruiting adventure.

That is when the idea of REVERSE RECRUITING came in.

“Recruiting” is defined as:

The process of identifying and hiring the best-qualified candidate for a job vacancy.

So what is “Reverse Recruiting”?

The process of identifying the best job vacancy for a candidate.

I am on the lookout for the right school for me, where I can contribute my expertise and  continue to grow as a professional.

Which school has already a position like mine? Or what school is ready to move into changing the culture of 21st century learning and teaching at their school by hiring someone like me? Which school needs someone to support, observe, mentor, model, co-teach, coach and plan with their faculty as they upgrade their curriculum content to prepare students for the 21st century?

In comes the experiment of social networking in the recruiting process. Is my network diverse and powerful enough to reach the right international school? Are the members of my social network able to disseminate (via blogs, Twitter, Skype, Facebook or e-mail forwarding to personal connections) this quest around the world.  Has my participation over the last 5 years in social networking built a reputation in my area of expertize that creates value for recruiting in the physical (not virtual) world?

Can my social network help me find the right position at an international school?

If you are teaching or are an administrator at an International School, take a look at the online hub my husband and I have established to get to know us a little bit better. Pass the information along to your administrator in charge of hiring or creating new positions at your school . If interested, they can contact us via the website or take a closer look at our profiles at the recruiting firms.

We are very excited to find out how this social networking experiment will turn out. We wonder if the world of international schools is ready for a new recruiting process and the transparency that it brings or if we will need to go via the traditional route of attending recruiting fairs or a combination of both worlds.

Stay tuned… and yes…. please blog, tweet, forward and talk about our quest.

Twitter, without a doubt, has become the social network for educators to take their professional development into their own hands. Twitter allows teachers to connect with other educators from around the world, join discussions related to their interests and have a steady stream of resources (to help them teach and learn) available to them whenever, whereever and however. Creating a network on Twitter has catapulted educators to be part of a connected world where learning happens anytime, help is only a tweet away, collaboration partners meet and communicate, conversations that directly or indirectly impact their physical lives take place 24/7.  Twitter is helping educators gain many 21st century skills and literacies which could easily transfer to their classrooms.

So the next question is…

How do you bring Twitter into your K-8 Classroom?

If your students are under the age of 13, they cannot create their own Twitter account (Minimum Age Restriction). The solution is to create a classroom twitter account and start tweeting as a class!

Take a look at the following guide I created to help you think of a few ideas to use Twitter in your classroom and how to introduce tweeting to your students:

1. What is Twitter
2. Getting Started
3. How can you use Twitter in the Classroom?
4. Twitter Etiquette
5. The First Tweet
6. What is a Quality Tweet?
7. Logistics
8. Twitter Vocabulary
9. Tweeting Classrooms

Please leave a comment below with your username if you are tweeting with your K-8 classroom. Also add other ideas on how you have successfully used Twitter as a class.

Twitter in K-8 Classroom- Globally Connected Learning

What tools and platforms are available to better assist schools in better communicate and market themselves to parents and a community at large?

How about creating School Information Network Channels by using diverse media platforms to:

• stay in touch
• solicit feedback
• share upcoming and current events
• share different media (audio, images & video)
• share students’ voices

The ideas is to streamline school information through different channels to make it as easy as possible for parents and other interested stakeholders to get informed and stay in touch.

There is much more to consider though:

Channel Selection & Creation

• What Social Network channels and other communication channels make sense to create and maintain in school’s name? Nings, blogs, Flickr, Vimeo, Slidehare, Facebook, Twitter, wikis, social bookmarking, E-mail/newsletter subscriptions, phone trees, etc.
• Creation of school’s universal username
• Establish digital footprint/branding for school

Update Responsibility

• Who will have the responsibility to update the channels regularly. One individual or a team?
• What kind of content should the update include?

Channel Integration

• How can we update in one place and it will automatically update on other channels?
• Flickr sets streaming images to main school sites and Facebook
• Updates posted to Facebook and Twitter simultaneously
• Twitter widgets on blogs,
• Cell phone images postings going to Flickr, Twitter, Ning or Facebook (with provided email address to be shared among Social Networking team)

Teachers

• How do we train teachers and their students to be content providers? Images, videos, news updates, etc.
• Train teachers to regularly post and update their classroom blogs
• How do you create understanding regarding blog usage as communication tool? As collaboration tool? As global communication center? As learning community hub?
• Address parent/teacher communication expectations regarding different platforms:e-mail vs. blog vs. phone calls vs. face to face meetings and etiquette.

Parents

• How do you help parents make the transition of moving from paper, flyers and “Friday” folders to virtual communication on blogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr?
• How do you address and discuss communications etiquette and expectations on these new platforms?

The following is a screenshot of the school’s main website’s sidebar. The links includes:

• Option for e-mail subscription to school site’s updates
• School’s Twitter account
• School’s Facebook page
• School’s Alumni Facebook page
• Classroom & resource, other school blogs
• Images on Flickr
• iTunes Podcast
• Video Channel on Vimeo

At MJGDS, we have created a Social Network Channel Committee comprised of the Head of School, Director of Marketing & Communication, Librarian, Tech Director & 21st Century Learning and myself. We are working out who is responsible to update what? How can we work as a team? How can we streamline, integrate and minimize having to update on multiple channels by maximizing embedding and feed options.

Lately I have been working with iThoughts HD app on my iPad to create flowcharts as I am taking notes of a conversation, lecture or reading a book. It allows me to email the chart as an image or pdf file in addition to emailing a text outline. See below the notes from our first committee meeting.

What is your school doing in organizing and streamlining communication on a variety of platforms. What are some of the organizational successes and pitfalls you have worked through? Please add links to your school’s site and different channels in the comments. I am especially looking forward to hearing about the integration between the platforms to make updating more more organized and time efficient.

Alan Levine put out a call for other educators to contribute Amazing Stories of Sharing. He wanted to

to celebrate the Amazing Stories of things that happen to educators when they share something openly on the web. We are asking our colleagues to share with us a video of their own stories of something surprising, valuable, powerful, or just plain inspiring that happened when that piece of media, that document, that video, that blog post, became valuable to someone they did not know before.

Andrea Hernandez and I were up to the challenge and put together this short video “Blogging Serendipity” about how she had just started blogging and had read the Langwitches Blog when, by chance,  we sat next to each other at a conference. From learning virtually with and from each other on blogs and Twitter, we ended up being physical colleagues working in the same school.

Last week at CMI2010, I had the opportunity to talk to presenters, as well as many participants about Twitter.

I had the feeling that the teachers, administrators, and superintendents, I spoke with, were genuinely interested in learning about Twitter.

Most of them had the notion that “it” was overwhelming and irrelevant to their lives though.  They had heard about Twitter and how it seemed to be the “best Professional Development” tool ever  invented and that more classrooms, schools and districts were starting to use Twitter as a form of communication.. .

…BUT they could not align that notion with their understanding of signing up for Twitter and being inundate with constant snippets of strangers’ whereabouts and responses of  “What is happening?”  in 140 characters or less.

Who has time for that?

It was a pleasure to introduce them to a new way of looking at Twitter, which puts them in complete control  over who they follow and how to grow a learning network  that is personalized to their interests and needs.

It was also important to point out that one did not have to dive in head first, but that it was possible and OK to test the waters and advance into the Twitter world little by little.

Here is another, very detailed  “Getting Started on Twitter”  guides:

• A Twitteraholic’s Guide to tweets, hashtags, and all things Twitter

I have also written a few Twitter related “How-To?” posts here on Langwitches.

• What is a Hashtag?
• Capital “RT” stands for Retweeting
• So, You Want to be Followed?

I have been enthralled watching the following TED Talk (Ideas worth Spreading)

How to Listen to Global Voices by Ethan Zuckerman:

Sure, the web connects the globe, but most of us end up hearing mainly from people just like ourselves. Blogger and technologist Ethan Zuckerman wants to help share the stories of the whole wide world. He talks about clever strategies to open up your Twitter world and read the news in languages you don’t even know.

Take 20 minutes to listen to the following TED (Ideas Worth Spreading) video. Ethan Zuckerman is making a great point of the urgency to widen the orbit of information, communication and global world we are perceiving to be part of.

In an attempt to listen more closely, summarize and share the main points I took away from the talk, I am blogging, linking to examples and sharing my notes below (Am thinking that would be a great activity for students to do with any educational video. Am thinking summarizing skills, Information literacy, hyperlinked writing, media literacy…just thinking out loud

Quotes that immediately caught my attention:

“What happens on a Social Network is that you interact with the people you have chosen to interact with”

“We end up in filter bubbles…where we see the people we know and people who are similar to people we already know. We tend to not see that wider picture.”

Zuckerman makes the point that it is relatively easy to purchase bottled water from Fiji, but it is surprisingly hard to see a Fijian featured film, listen to Fijian music or to find news reports about what is going on politically in the country.

“We tend to look at the infrastructure of globalization, the framework that makes it possible to live in this connected world.”

Zuckerman compares the two images below and makes the point that in the first image, a seemingly connected flat world is portrayed. It is very easy for us to hop on a plane and fly to any place in the world.

Connecting flight

A different reality emerges, when you look at the image below that shows hoe the global plane flights move. The world suddenly doesn’t seem to be close to being flat. There are almost no connections between South America and Africa. The majority of plane connections are within the United States.

“There are parts of the world that are very well connected. There is a giant pathway in the sky between London and New York … and parts of the Earth that are systematically cut off.”

Flight Routes

Zuckerman is interested in and asks the following question:

The world is getting more global and connected, more problems are global in scale, the economics are global in scale, but the media is less global by the day.

Percentage of Interntional News in US Media

The following image demonstrates the distorted view of the world we get from being “manipulated” by the choices of news coverage.

Cartogram:Distorted view of the world based on what American television newscasts looked at for a month.

Zuckerman points out that:

“The world on American news is basically reduced to the giant bloated US”

He then concludes that “new media” is not helping us that much either. The shows the example of geo-coded articles in Wikipedia. Turns out that there is a heavy bias towards North American and Western Europe authored articles.

When you look at the top media consumption in different countries you also find out that 90+ percent will come from a domestic news site.

Ethan Zuckerman then proclaims that

“We live in a state of imaginary cosmopolitanism. We look at the Internet, we think we are getting this wide view of the globe [...] but this a problem, because we live in a world with global problems that require global conversations to get to global solutions.

When it comes to finding information on the Internet most people seem to search with Search Engines or are relying on their Social Network to funnel information to them. The problem with this method, according to Zuckerman, is that you end up with the”knowledge of the flock” and it is hard to get other knowledge from other flocks from parts of the world where people have discussions as well.

In order to do make connections with other “flocks’, Zuckerman says that you need a guide. People who are planted firmly with both feet in two different flocks and can mediate, translate

He gives the example of Amira Al Hussani , the Middle Eastern editor for Global Voices. Her job is to figure out what would interest her readers about the Middle East. She is trying to get the reader

“out of their normal orbit and trying to get your attention about a story of someone [...] basically she is a D.J. She is a skilled human curator…

People have to choose to follow and read others, like Amira, who will widen their orbit (I really like that term and the visual it produces).

Another example Ethan shares is of Erik Hershman, the white African. Ethan considers Erik a “bridge figure” with feet in two or more cultures who is able to find a way to “communicate a story from one world to the other, both of which he has deep connections to”. Ethan is convinced that:

these Bridge Fgures are the future of how we try to make the world wider for using the web

From the Bridge Figures, Zuckerman moves on to Xenosphiles, which is defined by the FreeDictionary as:

A person attracted to that which is foreign, especially to foreign peoples, manners, or cultures.

Ethan gives the example of Dhani, a football player and his  (off season) TV show “Dhani tackles the Globe“.

Ethan Zuckerman closes his (amazing!!) TED talk with the Challenge

Make a personal decision that you want a wider world.

We have to figure out a way to rewire the systems that we have.

We have to fix our media, Internet, education, immigration policy.

We need to look at ways of creating serendipity of making translation persuasive.

We need to embrace and celebrate Bridge Figures and cultivate Xenophiles

Ethan Zuckerman's Challenge

What are YOU doing to make YOUR orbit of global communication wider?

Summer break is here for most of the schools in the Northern Hemisphere. Carefree summer months of vacation time jealously come to mind of most non-educators when they think of the teaching profession.

Summer Break for Teachers

If you are a teacher, you KNOW though that summer break is not all fun in the sun, but it means Professional Development opportunities galore. Many conferences, workshops and seminars are being offered during the time, teachers are not contracted during the summer.

Professional Development

Going to and participating in these professional development opportunities is changing rapidly. Not only are many teachers attending virtually, but the way physical attendees are experiencing, sharing, digesting and documenting their learning is changing too.

21st Century Skills, 21st Century Fluencies and learning are not only happening in theory as the topic for professional development, but are being lived and applied in teacher learning and education at these conferences.

21st Century Skills, such as

• collaborating
• communicating
• connecting
• creating

are important to get the most out of your conference experience.

21st Century Fluencies, as described on the 21st Century Fluency Project‘s site are in demand.

The 21st Century Fluencies are not about technical prowess, they are critical thinking skills, and they are essential to living in this multimedia world. We call them fluencies for a reason. To be literate means to have knowledge or competence. To be fluent is something a little more, it is to demonstrate mastery and to do so unconsciously and smoothly.

These fluencies include:

• Digital Citizen Fluency
• Media Fluency
• Information Fluency
• Creativity Fluency
• Solution Fluency
• Collaboration Fluency

Attending a conference in 2o10 is putting the above mentioned skills to use and demonstrate that we, as educators, posses the fluencies of our century to create a different learning experience for ourselves and students altogether!

Before you physically arrive at the conference center, your experience already begins.

The conference organizers will have established a website with information about the conference, presenters and workshops. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself and explore the virtual setup:

• Explore links to presenters’ blogs, websites, twitter usernames and resources
• Take notice of scheduled video streamed events
• Bookmark and participate in presentation forums set up for pre- and post- conference discussion
• Take a look if the presenter has created a wiki with presentation materials
• Find out the official Hashtag used for the conference

Going to the conference

In the past , conference attendees used to bring a notepad, a pen and possibly a highlighter to presentations. Paper handouts were popular to take notes on and record the presenters contact information.

Image licensed under CC by dblstripe

The conference attendee in 2010, will most likely have one or even several electronic devices to write, record and connect with. Laptops, iPads or Smartphones make connecting with resources, a backchannel, virtual conference attendees, links, notes possible, easy and instant.

In 2010, conference attendees are taking online notes, recording the event via audio or video and sharing them digitally with colleagues, readers and listeners from around the world.

The old fashioned “notes” are now being recorded in form of a blog (journal type entries), on Twitter (microblogging in 140 characters or less), via digital images, audio or video. Instead of uni-dimensional, isolated notes, never to be looked at again, conference attendees are creating summaries, multi-media connected documentation of presentations and events, that collectively represent a variety of learning opportunities that do not end when the conference is over, nor is limited to the physical conference attendees.

Blogging:

When in a presentation, attendees can take notes directly into their blog to document what the presenter is sharing. They are able to link to resources and embed videos mentioned in the presentation. With a Smartphone, they can easily take images live at the presentation and insert into their blog post. Once the presentation is over, the post can be immediately published to invite others to leave their comments.

Blog posts can be:

• simple documentation by note taking
• extensions to the actual presentation by adding additional resources, such as links, embedded videso, audio and images
• your own reflections and reaction to the material, ideas and concepts presented

You can easily create your own blog for free by signing up with a blogging service, such as:

• WordPress
• Edublogs
• Blogger

Tweeting:

Twitter is micro-blogging, since you are limited to writing text to 140 characters or less. It is instant though. While a blog post might wait to be read, until your readers choose to visit your blog site or it appears in their RSS reader, a tweet is seen by your followers the second you post it (Similar to a text message). As you tweet and use the conference Hashtag, your tweets are added to all the other tweets using the same Hashtag, contributing like this your thoughts, ideas or summaries to a collective documentation of the event. Your tweets can fulfill the following functions:

• chronological documentation of what you are seeing and hearing
• precise summaries of concepts and ideas presented
• being the ears, eyes and voice for virtual attendees
• become part of a team that is covering the event and connect with other physical attendees face to face

Sue Waters wrote an exceptional blog post on how to get started with Twitter. Learn about:

Tips for signing up for your Twitter account

Before you start following other people make sure you

Tips for who to follow

Tips for engaging in the conversation

Getting more out of Twitter by Using a Twitter Client

Connecting using Hashtags

Don’t forget how we can use Twitter with our students

Flickr

Take images with your digital camera, then upload them to your Flickr account. If you are taking images with your SmartPhone, you can directly upload them to your Flickr account by e-mailing them to a specific e-mail address that Flickr provides ( Go under Your Account > E-mails & Notification).  Tag your photos with the conference hashtag. Don’t forget to embed images into your blog posts or tweets.

Audio- Podcast

Using an mp3 recorder, your SmartPhone or laptop’s built in microphone, you can record the entire or snippets of a presentation (with the presenter’s permission of course). Later on, these audio files can be edited in GarageBand (mac) or Audacity (PC) to then be uploaded and shared on your blog or conference website.

Ex. On the iPhone there are several apps available to record audio: Audio Memos and Audio Boo

Video Podcast

Flip Cameras or the built in video camera from your SmartPhone are great ways to record snippets from a presentation or interviews with presenters or other attendees about a specific topic. You can also use your laptop’s built in webcam to record diary type reflections about your presentation take-aways.

After the Conference

Once the conference or workshop has ended, the learning is not over yet. Presenters will have or are uploading digital handouts and presentation slides (Ex. Slideshare) Virtual and physical attendees take some time to digest what they have seen and heard before sharing their own reflective blog posts. Other educators around the world continue to add to the conversation that began at the physical conference by linking to presentation posts, tweets, audio or video from the conference.

Your Contribution and Your Learning in 2010?

If you are attending or have attended a conference or workshop this summer, what has been or will be your contribution? What will you add to the global conversation? How will you connect your learning to the learning of others? How will you demonstrate competencies in 21st Century Skills and Fluencies?

Gone are the days, when you had to learn HTML code, know how to upload via FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and create images in Photoshop in order to design a website.

Nowadays, you can use a blog (platform) as an easy tool to create and update a website. Choose from thousands of template themes available online (for free) to have a well designed and good looking presence on the web.

A blog platform makes it easy to update your classroom website by simply uploading one post after another.

There is so much more to a blog though…

In previous blog posts, I talked about a Blogging Unit, a plan to start blogging with your students.

1. Blogging with Elementary School Students
2. Outline Blogging Lessons
3. Introduction to Blogging
4. Online Safety
5. Commenting
6. Writing
7. Setting up the Blog
8. Logistics of Formatting Post

Blogging is a process of several stages. From the beginning of making a decision to integrate blogging in your classroom, then writing, commenting, linking, and embedding media to using a blog as a hub for your classroom’s learning community.

Along the way, you figure out:

• What works for your particular group of students?
• What time are you willing to spend monitoring and commenting your students’ blogging activities?
• What specific skills do you want to promote through your classroom or individual student blogs?
• How will you assess students’ participation and work on the blog?
• How do you help your students along in creating their academic digital footprint?
• What engages and motivates your students to work harder, invest time outside of the classroom for academic purpose, think on higher levels, push themselves further in their reading and writing?
• How to be conscious of your own comfort & technology level and see them increase as you manage your own and student blogs

I listened to one of Wes Fryer‘s podcast as he talked about the difference between accommodating and transformative technology tools for learning.

Accommodating? Tech use which accommodates replicates existing analog (non-digital) learning or communication.

Transformative? Transformative tech use opens new doors of possibilities for learning and/or communication which would not be available without the technology.

Using a blog in the classroom can be an accommodating tool, if used to upload homework assignments and asking students to submit the answers to these assignments as comments instead of a paper turned in.

A blog becomes a transformative tool for learning when students can add constructive comments for each other or write for a wider audience than just their teachers.

Some teachers and their students might go through the different steps of a classroom blog(s) faster than others. As you are moving along in your blogging process and experiences, you might be ready to append another chapter to the above mentioned unit by Connecting your classroom to the world.

By opening up your classroom blog to the world, it truly becomes a transformative tool. As Wes Fryer says, as quoted above, the tool “opens new doors of possibilities for learning and/or communication which would not be available without the technology.”

You might have started out with a static website, then ventured into giving your students a voice by commenting, writing  and reflecting on a classroom or individual blog. With some students (especially younger ones), you might have password protected the site, in order to give them a “playground” or “sandbox” to test boundaries, protect and practice their virtual voices.

The next step, is to leave the “local” playground behind and connect your classroom to the world. I use the term “local” when the two way communication on the blog is confined to a teacher and his/her students or between physical classmates.

My definition of a Connected Classroom Blog site includes:

• A two way communication between class and the world
• Teacher and students actively looking to connect with peers, mentors or experts from around the world
• Connecting classroom learning to authentic opportunities & audiences
• Contributions to learning of others

Two Way Communication Between your Class and the World

Just as a static teacher-created-website (with no two way communication channel),  a classroom blog (not open to comments, responses from and collaboration opportunities with the rest of the world) can seem like a one way street. Students and teachers might be blogging in a password protected environment preventing others (outsiders) from reading, commenting and interacting. After having introduced Online Safety , discussed and continuously reinforced the concept with real world examples and teachable moments within the classroom, you and your students might be ready to lift the password protection to the site, allowing global voices into your learning community.

You might start out by opening up to outsiders  from within your school. Ex. Blogging buddies between 3rd & 5th graders. Or you might connect with the same grade level and a teacher from another school just down the street from yours. Depending on your comfort level, you might just take a leap and connect with teachers and students half a world away.

Teacher and Students Actively Looking to Connect with Peers, Mentors or Experts from Around the World

Another block, preventing from having a connected classroom blog is not being “found” or not receiving comments by others. In order for your classroom blog to be connected, the teacher and students need to actively be looking for peers, mentors or experts to interact with.

Peers
A great place to start contacting and connecting with other classrooms is Sue Waters’ Class Blogs list. Don’t be shy and contact another teacher to inquire about possible blogging collaboration between your two classes. Another great way to jumpstart connecting your students to the world is by participating the Student Blogging Challenge.

Mentors
University professors have accepted the challenge to connect their pre-service teachers as mentors to K-12 students. Imagine connecting your advanced students to mentor students from other schools or countries? Read all about Darren Kuropatwa‘s mentoring partnerships he has established for and with his students.

Experts
What an incredible opportunity to find and connect a subject matter expert or eye witnesses of an event with your students. You could also connect your foreign language students with native speakers to practice the target language as well as support a cultural exchange. A great way to be able to get in touch with all different kinds of experts (in a variety of fields), is to build a PLN (Personal Learning Network) on Twitter. By growing and maintaining a network of professional global educators willing to help YOUR students, many of them at a moments notice, is vital to connecting your students to authentic learning experiences. Listen in on another podcast from Wes Fryer’s  Ideas for International Study Students Adopting Classrooms and Inspiring Students to Constructively Write the Web.

Connecting Classroom Learning to Authentic Opportunities & Audiences

Find and connect to other classes, who are:

• studying the same units
• working on similar projects
• researching the same topics

Set up blogging buddies between the classes to document, summarize, reflect and comment on each other’s experiences and learning.

Find buddy classes who can complement a unit of study by bringing in a new perspective and points of view (different culture, history, geography, language, religion).

By allowing students to publish their work on the Internet, making their work available for potentially millions of people to view, read, comment on and learn from gives them a true authentic audience. Gone are the days, when only the teacher read their work and gave them feedback through a grade. If it was a particularly good work, the paper would make it home for parents to read and then pinned to the refrigerator.

Contributions to Learning of Others

A blog is the perfect platform for students to share their work with others, including embedded images, audio and videos.

Alan November identifies Six Roles to Empower Student Learning:

1. Contributors to Society
2. Tutorial Designers
3. Researches
4. Official Scribes
5. Collaboration Coordinators
6. Curriculum Reviewers.

Blogging is a platform that allows students to get empowered through many of these venues. Blogging provides a way for students to empower the learning of others too! As students are creating and sharing tutorials, summarizing their learning and reflecting upon their work, they can provide a valuable contribution for others.

• Imagine students becoming aware of their learning process and sharing it with classmates in their school as well as peers from around the world?
• Imagine classes reflecting on their learning goals and accomplishments and sharing these with the upcoming grade level to learn from and improve upon?
• Imagine students documenting unique learning opportunities, such as field trips or guest speakers, with text, images, audio or video to share with learners separated through time or space?

No matter where you are in the blogging process (static site, local site or connected site), what matters is that you are aware of your location and the direction your are moving towards. Be aware if you are using your blog as an accommodating or a transformative tool with your students.

If you want a great way to get your feet wet with blogging, you might want to consider to be THE mentor for someone else’s class