Our student bloggers were off on a special event, and I am still dealing with plumbers who aren’t dealing with my soggy bathroom, so I’ve been off my blog for a few days.
And now I’m heading for Tioman Island, the lovely spot where “South Pacific” was filmed, for a few days of snorkeling and being a beach bum. With that to look forward to, the fact that my bathroom, like Venice, is sinking into a canal, is much less distressing.
Bali Ha’i will whisper on the wind of the sea
Here am I your special island
Come to me…Come to me…
It’s happened.
Three of our students have blogged!
The rest are writing away, most with great seriousness of purpose.
I am delighted with the variety of topics being addressed, the care they are taking with their writing, and their willingness to conference.
Tammy, Jabiz and I were all conferencing with students in the lab today, so I haven’t personally seen all of the blogs in progress. A few of the topics are Canada, being an artist, go-carts, video games, horses, and imaginary friends.
I am finding that the pieces are so genuine that it is easy to respond to the content; natural questions arise as I read and we discuss them. Those discussions are often leading to revisions by the students, but it feels different from other writing conferences. My perception is that the students are making the changes because they truly want to communicate with their readers, are caring to be understood. They are not revising merely because it will give them a higher score or because they think it is required. If these blogs accomplish nothing more than this, I consider them a success.
Big plans for my prep time today. I wanted to finish the blogging rubric, set up newsreader on Tammy’s computer, and do a bunch of work for the rest of my job (–What? This blogging project isn’t my entire job?)
However, water is pushing up between the tiles of the bathroom floor here in my apartment. The pools will soon be deep enough for me to add a few koi which would certainly keep the cats entertained — or frustrated since they themselves wouldn’t want to go into the water to get them.
And so, I am home rearranging before the plumbers start hacking out the walls and floor to locate the leak. Maybe I’ll get a bunch sorted and packed by the end of the day in preparation for my move back to the USA this summer. Anything sealed up in a box should be safe from the layers of plaster dust that will soon coat everything in sight. Hmmm… getting started on packing would be a huge step forward. Back to it!
This morning, Tammy taught a lesson on ideas. She worked with the idea of a funnel. For example, the topic of Canada is too broad for a post, so narrow it down to a particular focus within that broad topic. As part of the lesson, her students identified the focus of their blog. By the end of the lesson, her students were getting excited about blogging.
This afternoon, her students visited the lab. We reviewed the AUP (again), taught them how to access their blogs from home, did a bit more configuring of templates, time zones and profile, and then they started blogging.
Jabiz is still willing to help add a sidebar to all the blogs that has links to all the student blogs to make navigation easier.
Tammy says the permission forms are trickling in. We’ve told the kids that they may not publish until we have permission from their parents. Some parents had concerns about having their children on the web, and having them exposed to comments from the world at large. However, they’ve decided to give it a try, always reserving the option to pull their child from the project if they feel it isn’t in the child’s best interest.
I’m frustrated that they have started blogging but still don’t have the rubric in hand. Hopefully I will finish it tomorrow — more on that later.
Now that I’ve jumped in with both feet and done lots of learning by trial and error, I’m finding the resources online that could have helped me. One community that has developed many support materials for educational blogging is ESL/EFL teachers. One great resource came from Creating and using weblogs in ESL/EFL. It takes you through the whole thought process of thinking through student blogs before you create them.
A similarly laid out resource focuses on Literature Circles and EduBlogs. Our fifth grade has a good literature circle process. Using blogs they could have lit circles with children in other schools in other parts of the world.
I’ve been doing some research tonight to find an Mac OS X-friendly RSS/Atom reader to make it easy for us to keep track of the student blogs.
I already use NetNewWire Lite, for the feeds I check regularly. I didn’t want our student blogs added into this already long list so I performed a search at VersionTracker to locate a list of other RSS readers. My preference was to locate one that plugged into Firefox because we are using that browser with Blogger. Firefox is cross-platform and allows us full access to Bloggers’ post creations toolbar and other features.
The first Firefox integrated RSS reader I explored was Sage because it is free and well-reviewed. However, it doesn’t work on a Mac. Next I tried Lektora. It worked well and will actively seek out the RSS subscription for a site, but it is a bit pushy. I need to play with the preferences to see if I can get it to not try to grab the subscription automatically. If it tries to grab a subscription it already has, you are stuck because the back button on the page and on the toolbar don’t work, so you can’t get back to the page you were viewing. However, it does seem to be a well-developed program with many features and good documentation.
Next I decided to look at stand alone RSS readers. One that seems to be working well is Ensemble 1.0. I like that it cleanly imported the OPML file of my feeds that I had exported from Lektora. I also like that it shows all of the subscriptions, even if they haven’t been updated. It makes them bold as it refreshes the subscription and places a number after the title to show how many new posts there are. It has a sidebar to show all of your subscriptions and another pane to show all the posts on a particular page. It has a setting to syncronize it with my .Mac account, but I can’t tell if it is working. I think I will use this reader.
I also checked out RSS Menu 1.2. This little program places an icon on your menu bar. Clicking on the icon drops down a menu of all your subscriptions. A number after the subscription title lets you know how many new posts have been created since you last visited. Selecting a subscription opens the blog in your preferred web browser. This program did not import my OPML file, but it does allow you to enter the username and password for your subscriptions which might be handy in managing student blogs.
On Monday, I’ll install Ensemble on Tammy’s machine and teach her how to use it. I’ll also make it available to Jabiz.
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