I’ve been writing lately about our first elementary blogging project at my school. Because this was our first attempt, I’ve been very hands-on. I have been teaching the lessons while the teacher assists both in class and by tracking down permission forms. We scheduled one extra lap visit per week so I could teach the introductory lessons, help edit blog posts, assist with publishing the first posts, approve the posts and moderate the comments.
I’m happy to say that the classroom teacher is gradually taking over. First, she figured out a rotation schedule for their silent reading time. Each day, x number of kids rotate through using the four classroom computers to write posts, reply to comments, and leave comment on our blog pals’ blogs. No longer do they need to spend lab time blogging.
Today I took the next step and changed the blog email address from mine to hers. Now all comments will come to her to be approved. I’ll also show her one more time how to approve blog posts, and then the system will be hers to run.
Thus far, she seems pleased with her students’ excitement and their eagerness to read and write blog posts. This project is now supporting her classroom curriculum. I hope all my other integration projects go so well this term.
If you are a tech integrationalist, are you being successful at gradually releasing control of projects? Do you have any tips to share to help the rest of us do this well?
If you are a classroom teacher, what steps can tech integrationists take to help you feel more comfortable assuming control and responsibility of integration projects?
On Monday the third graders were exuberant in their delight at finding comments on their blogs. At the start of class I reviewed how to find their post using the category list, and then how to open their comments.
I warned them that the teachers who visited their blogs over the weekend might never visit again, so any replies we left for them might never reach their intended audience. To my surprise, that did not daunt the children. They still wanted to reply before working on their new posts. As is typical with this great group of kids, most put quite a bit of thought into their replies. They have the makings of fine bloggers.
Unfortunately, I am not doing as well. I did finally get the Clustr map working on our site — I’d love it if a few people would now visit the blog so it would start registering visitors. However, now I can’t even get the Widgetbox widgets to work on the site.
I had a clock working before, but took it out because it was so ugly. However, since my attempts to make other widgets work failed, I wanted to put the ugly clock back on so our blog pals could compare their time with our time. No such luck.
I have watched the videos in Learnerblogs that shows how to insert widgets. The problem is caused by many widgets using javascript, which isn’t allowed in Learnerblogs; it will break them. So, the video shows you how to paste the code from the Widgetbox widget into a text editor and extract the panel ID. That is what I did last week that worked so well. Now, the widget code doesn’t have a panel ID when I paste it. It has a different ID and that one isn’t working when pasted into the widgetbox widget holder on the blog. I am NOT amused.
Non-Widgetbox widgets need to be inserted in text widgets in Learnerblogs. However, if they contain javascript, Learnerblogs automatically strips it out. Google Gadgets all seem to use javascript. Does anyone know where I can find a well behaved javascript-free clock?
All but four of the third graders have published their first blog post. They are eagerly awaiting comments. Unfortunately, I know that the person coordinating the project in Bangkok has been out of town, and our Pennsylvania group hadn’t started blogging, so our blog pals would not be visiting our site for a while yet.
Knowing how disappointed the children would be to come to class on Monday and still have no comments, I sent out a quick tweet on Twitter asking for people to comment on the blog posts. Then I went to bed.
When I checked Twitter the next day. I had a message from one kind teacher who had already left some comments. However, I had message from a number of other helpful teachers saying they had tried to leave comments, but were told they had to log in first.
Then I remembered that we had ticked the Learnerblog setting that required people to login to Learnerblogs before they could comment. We had done that to prevent spam, but it was now preventing legitimate comments, so we decided to change that setting.
After a long search, I finally located that setting again, and then I sent out another Tweet. In short order, numerous teachers had left comments for EACH student. Some of the teachers had lived in Singapore or visited Singapore so they were able to personalize their comments to address experiences the children are likely to have had. One of the commenters had attended our school as child, and later had taught at it. All in all, their comments were the thoughtful, well-written type that will serve as powerful models for our students as they comment on other blogs.
Even more importantly, when they visit my lab tomorrow, every single one of those bloggers will feel the thrill and validation that comes from having connected, at least briefly, with another person via their writing. THANK YOU to each of you who made it happen. Know that you have made a difference.
Last week our third graders published their first blog posts. Then they visited our blog pals site and started leaving comments. After I modeled how to leave a comment, they were very eager to begin, (and very intrigued with the need to type the code they saw in the comment box to prove that they are a human and not a spambot.)
Other years, with other classes on other blogging platforms, I had run into the issue of some blog sites not allowing very many consecutive posts from the same person within a short period of time. I assume that system is in place to prevent spambot attacks.
I had hoped to get around it by having my students used linked Gmail accounts as the address they used when posting comments. (If you aren’t familiar with linked Gmail accounts, read Kim Cofinio’s great post about them here.) However, after about 10 minutes, the students started receiving screens telling them to slow down on their commenting. The linked Gmail addresses weren’t solving the problem.
Next, the teacher and I ran around entering first our school email addresses and then my personal address, but that didn’t solve the problem. Evidentally, the system was tracking our domain or IP addresses, not the email address.
I don’t know how to get around that, except to only have a few students comment per session. That makes it seem like commenting could best be done by a few children at a time in the classroom rather than the entire class in the computer lab.
Another solution is to have more than one class blog to visit. Fortunately, we are in position to use the latter solution. Since this blogpal project has begun, we have added classes in Pennsylvania, Florida and Wisconsin to our blog roll.
Another minor problem we encountered involved comment moderation. We have not paired up the students in this project. They don’t have one blog pal; they are free to comment on posts by anyone in the other class. This avoids the problem of students not getting on well with their partner, or of prolific writers being paired with less enthusiastic writers. However, it leaves open the possibility of some children not receiving many responses. Our class decided that we would try, at least this first time, to make certain that every one of our blog pals received at least one comment.
It was a noble goal, but since both class blogs have enabled comment moderation, we couldn’t tell which blogs had already been commented on by our class, so we quickly abandoned that strategy. Fortunately, before we had begun commenting, I pointed how how to navigate their blog using the category links and the calendar, so hopefully students whose post was no longer visible on the front page also received comments.
Now we just need to wait for their teacher to approve the comments, and for them to visit our blog.
About a month ago, Kim Cofino blogged that she was looking for a simple, writing based, collaborative project for her third graders. I was just thinking about the online pen pal project I’d done with a third grade class last year, so I Skyped her. In about 20 minutes, we hashed out the preliminary details for a blog pals project.
We both wanted a project that would encourage reading and writing, and we didn’t want the technology to get in the way. We decided to use a free, multi-user WordPress blog from Learnerblogs.org. This allowed each class to have one student login, and one place for the other class to visit, making it easy for the students to find their way around. Making a category for each child allows visitors to quickly view all of that child’s posts, making it look like each child has their own blog.
Kim developed an excellent set of preliminary lessons that we used with both classes. This time spent up front was well spent. By the time students finally got down to writing, they were very eager to begin and well-informed. I wouldn’t change a thing except to possibly add one more day where they can read blogs. We read blogs the day we researched common blog features, but they really wanted to read the posts, not skim the pages looking for commonalities.
Last week the children wrote their first posts in Microsoft Word and then pasted them into the blog. I didn’t like how small the font was on the blog so I did a bit of research. First I tried other themes, but each had its own problems, so we returned to our original theme.
Next I looked for plug-ins. I didn’t find very many for this multi-user platform. However, one I did find was a more full-featured text editor. It included a button that makes it easy to paste text copied from Microsoft Word. I’ve only had the chance to use it with a few students, but their posts came in at a more reasonable font size.
I also wanted to customize the header to a Singapore-related image. In the Creative Commons section of Flickr I found a number of panoramic Singapore skyline photos that included the durian-shaped Esplanade building, our most-distinctive building.
With those two changes in place, I only have two more wishes. I want to add clocks that show the local time of each of our blog pals (we now have blogpals in Pennsylvania and Florida in addition to our original Bangkok blogpals.) I can successfully add Widgetbox brand widgets, but none of these have the look I want. When I try to add any other widgets, I am unsuccessful. I also want to add a Clustr map. I subscribed so we have a map that we can use, but I’m not having any luck getting it onto our Learnerblog. I can get them to work on Edublogs, but not Learnerblogs. If you have added non-Widgetbox widgets to a Learnerblogs.org blog, I’d really appreciate hearing from you.
If you would like to make a group of third graders really happy, drop by and leave them a comment. And be sure to mention where you are writing from, since the Clustr map isn’t working yet.
Last Sunday I had the honor of chatting with Chris Betcher and Kim Cofino on Skype. Chris polished the discussion and posted it as a podcast on his Virtual Staffroom blog. Our topic of discussions was, appropriately enough, teaching tech.
This was my first time being part of any podcast and I want to thank Chris for making it all so easy. He is a talented interviewer and a gracious host so a good time was had by all.
If you have any interest in it, go check out the podcast. Or better yet, use iTunes to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of his entertaining and informative podcast.
(And three cheers for my old iBook G4 which delights in bonking during Skye calls but was kind enough to work without flaw for the entire session. Maybe it knows how much I’d like a Macbook Air…)
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