Whoops.....not so anonymous blogging

Some teachers blog as a means of journaling, venting or seeking out comments from other teachers.

One teacher listed as "hipteacher" has an anonymous blog, but was discovered by two of her students. In her blog, she expresses her concerns about this discovery and emphasizes the importance of monitoring what you are writing with the idea that a student COULD find it.

In her blog she writes:

The She's Back FAQ:

1. So why’d you stop writing anyway?

The main reason is that a couple of my students found this blog. Fortunately, they were two students who I adored and respected, Miguel and Coco Rectangle III, so I explained why I kept the blog and why it was important that it be anonymous. Being more mature than your typical ninth graders, they understood, and to my knowledge, didn’t spread the information around to other students. Even so, I worried.

My school was pretty darn small and, even though I don’t think I was writing fire-worthy dirt (at least for my open-minded, liberal district), I felt like the students would easily recognize themselves or their classmates in my posts. The more I thought about it, the more that bothered me. I feel like my kids usually learn to trust me, and writing about them felt a little like a betrayal of that trust. I mean, I get it, and you get it, but would they get it? Probably not.

I took a break from blogging as I thought about all this, and like most habits, it was hard to start again once I had stopped. However, I learned from the experience. For one, I realized even more that blogging is a real conversation rather than a journal/meditation/reflection with oneself.

What started for me as a solitary act, a way to organize my teaching reflections and journals, became connected with the writing of others. It sounds simplistic, but I didn’t get it before my break. Just like two friends who talk everyday, if one stops calling the other or walking by the other’s classroom to chat, the conversation ends. You know how sometimes your cell phone will suddenly act all weird, and the other person can’t hear you anymore, even though you’re still there? There’s just no point.

In the same (sort of) way, when I stopped writing, I stopped reading blogs too. I missed them sometimes, maybe for the comfortable routine and maybe for specific people who I could count on to make me laugh, cry (or laugh until I cried), spark a new idea, or challenge my thinking. But while I was not blogging, I wasn’t in the conversation—even though I rarely commented or specifically blogged about other’s posts.

I feel like I’m not explaining this very well. All I know is, when I wrote, I also read. When I didn’t write, I didn’t read. When I decided I was ready to write again, I started to read again. What I thought was an individual sport is really a team sport, even if it doesn’t even look like you are on the same field.

Who knew?

to be continued

To see her blog click here.

Blogging that benefits both students......and parents

Blogging helps improve teacher, student and parent communication

Wendy Baudoin uses a blog to inform her students about what assignments are due for the week. She also has a number of different links that students can access through this webpage. These links including tutoring, interim reports, spelling lists and news.

Not only can Mrs. Baudoin's students access this page but their parents can as well. This creates great communication between teacher, student and parent. Through this blog, parents are informed of the homework tasks that their students are assigned each night.

Take a look at how Wendy Baudoin uses her blog to maintain great communication in and outside of the classroom.

Click here to access Wendy's Online Classroom

Books On Classroom Blogging

Book Description
This book brings teachers a bold vision and on-the-ground Monday morning practicality. It will move educators to think differently about technology’s potential for strengthening students' critical thinking, writing, reflection, and interactive learning. Will Richardson demystifies words like "blog," "wiki," and "aggregator" making classroom technology an easily accessible component of classroom research, writing, and learning.

This guide demonstrates how Web tools can generate exciting new learning formats, and explains how to apply these tools in the classroom to engage all students in a new world of synchronous information feeds and interactive learning. With detailed, simple explanations, definitions and how-tos, critical information on Internet safety, and helpful links, this exciting book opens an immense toolbox, with specific teaching applications for

• Web logs, the most widely adopted tool of the read/write Web
• Wikis, a collaborative Webspace for sharing published content
• Rich Site Summary (RSS), feeding specific content into the classroom
• Aggregators, collecting content generated via the RSS feed
• Social bookmarking, archiving specific Web addresses
• Online photo galleries

This book makes it possible for anyone, no matter how inexperienced, to harness this amazing technology for the classroom today!

Click here to go to amazon.com and read more about this book.

Book Description
Weblogs are about reading and writing. Literacy is about reading and writing. Blogging equals literacy. How rarely does an aspect of how we live and work plug so perfectly into how we teach and learn? Reading this book will give teachers important clues not only in how to become a blogger and to make their students bloggers, but also how this new avenue of expression is revolutionizing the information environment that we live in.

Click here to go to amazon.com and find out more about this book.

Can blogs help parents stay informed
about what their kids do at school?

Click here to read an article from the St. Petersburg Times in Tampa Bay titled, "Blogging Classroom Connects To Parents"

Safe Blogging with ePALS SchoolBlog

ePALS SchoolBlog was created to allow students to blog freely in a protected environment.


What does ePals claim to offer you and your students?

Blogs are one of the best in-school collaborative technologies. In answering our clients' needs, a major concern with integrating new technology in the classroom is security and protecting students.

ePALS SchoolBlog has been specifically designed for the educational community, with built-in safeguards and the ability to control permissions and settings according to who can post, participate and access the blogs.

ePALS SchoolBlog helps protect privacy online:

• Choose to block personal information and photos from being exposed.
• Limit accessibility to only classmates and parents.
• Have complete control over who can participate, post and access content.

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Teachers and administrators want to know...How safe is safe?

ePALS address these concerns on their website:

Safe Sites, Appropriate Content

A major concern with integrating new and exciting technology into the education space is security and protecting students. ePALS SchoolBlogTM has been specifically designed for the educational community, with built-in safeguards and the ability to control permissions and settings according to your school or district Internet Acceptable Use Policy.

Let Students Blog Freely in a Protected Environment

ePALS SchoolBlogTM helps protect privacy online: choose to block personal information and photos from being exposed, or limit accessibility to only classmates and parents. Create a safe classroom blog with complete control over who can access content.

More Safety Features

Users must agree to an "Acceptable Use Policy"

Personal information is protected

Password-protected areas to ensure only people you want can access your content

Our Commitment to Safety

ePALS has been leading the way for safe "walled garden" educational technology for over nine years. ePALS is internationally recognized as the leading provider of school-safe email and collaborative technology. ePALS supports over 2 million K-12 users and has been selected by several of the largest school districts in locations throughout the world.

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What's the catch???

Here is the catch.....it does cost money to set up a classroom blog with ePALS SchoolBlog....but what are you getting for your money?

Students, teachers, staff and parents can all benefit from the flexibility and power of ePALS SchoolBlogTM. Designed to allow for many different educational applications, ePALS SchoolBlogTM lowers the technology barrier with its simplicity and ease of use. Whether being used to power a school or district website or integrated within an existing website, ePALS SchoolBlogTM provides a strong web presence for schools and classrooms, and enables students, teachers and parents to stay informed through automatic content email updates.

What else?

Benefits of ePALS SchoolBlog include:

	Improve Student Literacy: Increase student writing as the interactive publishing is viewed as an enjoyable activity. Encourage students to explore, express, criticize, collaborate and share. Allow wider participation as reluctant learners often open up online. Use as a base for collaborative activities. Post observations about science experiments and projects. Monitor and review progress of student participation and achievement. Broaden the use of tools and techniques to gather, analyze and interpret data.
	Anywhere, Anytime Learning: Enable learning and assistance outside of school hours. Maintain communication with absent students. Allow online submission and review of student work. Manage, present and store information easily. Post homework assignments and classroom activities. Schedule classroom events and field trips.
	Involve Parents: Offer insight into classroom activities. Notify parents of their child's academic performance. Schedule PTA meetings and open houses. Exhibit student work and presentations. Showcase awards and accomplishments with photos, videos and podcasts.
	Provide Students with a Real Audience: Students are motivated by a real, potentially large audience. Increase participation with peer-editing and easy collaboration in group projects. Encourage multicultural understanding through reading and writing using authentic interactions. Choose to receive feedback from peers and experts via email. Display your students' work to teachers and students in 191 countries through the ePALS Global Network.
	Boost Professional Development: Provide teachers with their own knowledge-sharing platform. Exchange instructional tips and course-related resources with other educators.
	Provide Resources: Post classroom hours, closures and school events. Provide permission slips and parental consent forms online. Searchable archives allow past postings to be easily accessed __________________________________ Click Here to go to ePALS SchoolBlog Home Click Here to see a sample of ePALS SchoolBlog Click Here to start your ePALS SchoolBlog __________________________________

Effective Blogging In An English Classroom

Jim Anderson, a teacher in Olympia, WA has been using blogging in his English classes for over two years. On his blog he gives suggestions on how to make blogging an effective addition to instruction.




He posts:

I've used blogs in my English classes for two years now, which places me at pedagogy's leading edge. (For once I am ahead of the times.) Each of my classes has its own group blog, used for discussions, debates, research, and instant publishing. Here are some of my suggestions on how to make blogging an effective addition to your instruction....



1. Set up a class blog with yourself as the administrator. If you're well-connected to your school's IT department, they may have software and server space at the ready so you have a relatively easy time putting it together.

2. If you're techno-savvy and your school's server space isn't accessible, a site like blogger.com is the other way to go. As long as you choose to not ping weblogs.com and not add your blog to blogger's listings, your blog will effectively be private. (You can also set it up so that only members of the blog can comment, closing the fence.)

3. Privacy is important for two reasons. One, it mitigates potential nastiness by the more sinister elements of the online community. Two, it gives shy students the knowledge that although their work is accessible from anywhere they can find an internet connection, it isn't being broadcast for the whole world to see.

4. Set up clear rules for acceptable blog behavior, and remove blogging privileges for students who flout them. A sample:

1. Post only if you are opening a new topic. Reserve your responses to established topics for the comment section.

2. Don't post the same thing more than once. Delete the duplicate if you do.

3. Quote your opponent directly (cut-and-paste, and use italics or "blockquote").

4. Include links to relevant websites--news articles, statistics, etc. Don't just type in the address (the URL).

5. Think before you post. Remember, words "seem" different when typed, since there's no body language, no tone of voice, nothing but the words themselves.

6. Spell-check. People often assume that poor spellers are ignorant, and judge their arguments and writing accordingly.

7. No personal attacks--"You Suck," etc. You'll be banned, at my discretion. The same goes for any non-school-appropriate behavior. Be mature.

5. For assessment and grading purposes, make sure each student's display name includes part of their real name. "Snooky567" won't work if you don't know who "Snooky567" is.

6. Give lots of examples for students to follow. Show them how to link (not just type in a URL), how to quote, how to effectively use italics and bold and colored text, how to write a pithy summary of a news article and comment for discussion, how to format paragraphs in an online environment.

7. Promote an operational vocabulary. Never refer to an individual posting as a "blog."

8. In a secure location, record each username and password. If you aren't blogging frequently, students are prone to forget (mostly because they have thousands of other online identities).

9. Speaking of, blog frequently--at least once every other week. This means you'll have to plan lab time and backups for when technology or fire drills put your pedagogy on hold.

10. Have variety in your blogging assignments. Introduce the technology as a form of instant publishing--have your students write a brief story or essay, or comment on a news article. Don't presume that blogging conversations will supplant normal face-to-face discussion, since students have varying degrees of comfort and success with both.

11. The benefits of in-class blogging are obvious. Many students are unaware of the possibilities, even in our information-saturated age. They'll learn valuable skills, and have the chance to hone their writing for a sympathetic audience in a way that typing essays for the teacher doesn't always provide. They may branch off and start their own blog. Some shy, quiet students will become tigers online. Nine out of ten students will be inherently motivated to participate.

12. The drawbacks are minimal. There may be students who try to abuse the medium. If you don't have clear assignments, they may become frustrated or waste time surfing the web. Again, blogging isn't a substitute for small group or whole class discussions and debates, or for more complex and detailed work.

13. Remember that you are part of the blog as well. Comment on students' work. Share your own writing. Lead by example.

Click Here to see Jim Anderson's blog...created right here on blogspot.com