Introduction

I am constantly amazed by the power of the Twitter professional learning network and am always challenged and inspired by my colleagues- needless to say that this does not stop over the holiday period. Today I was tagged in an Internet meme about quality blogging and commenting by Stef Galvin.

An Internet meme is described by Wikipedia as a

“term to describe a concept that spreads via the Internet, Internet meme is an idea that is propagated through the World Wide Web. The idea may take the form of a hyperlink, video, picture, website, hashtag, or just a word or phrase”.

This meme about quality blogging and commenting originated from Silvia Tolisano where she challenged educators to think about the ways they use blogging and how they audit comments.

I have only been a blog writer since September and have only just scratched the surface of blogging with students- so in the blogging world I am somewhat of a novice but am willing to reflect upon and share my ideas in response to this meme.

Creating Authentic and Quality Blog Posts and Comments

When I began blogging with my students I was somewhat naive about the amount of preteaching and modelling that was needed- as a result, what students were writing in the beginning were not authentic or quality forms of commenting. When reflecting on this I decided to integrate blogging within writing sessions, explicitly teaching it as a text type, coming up with a student agreed upon check list and using this to form the basis for student commenting. I suppose I should mention that the ages of students I was working with was between 5 and 8, grades Prep to 2! This in itself was a challenge as I was working with students of varied degrees of ability and interest.

As a class we read a variety of blog posts and comments and discussed what we noticed about them. We came up with some ideas on what makes a quality post or comment and recorded our ideas-

We then created a checklist which allowed students to cross check their comments to ensure they were writing, quality, authentic and relevant comments.

Auditing Comments and Posts

Spread the Word

I have enjoyed reflecting on the use of blogging and assessing student posts and comments and look forward to extending my knowledge further in this area as I endeavor to blog with grade 4, 5 and 6 students next year!

I am tagging three more educators to take part in this meme and invite any other readers to write their own post!

@soingirl – Mrs Watson’s 2/3 Class

@vgridley – Juniors Blackburn

@jodiwoo – Ms Woodward’s Class Blog

For more information on this meme post or tips, ideas and thoughts on educational blogging please visit Silvia Tolisano’s blog- Langwitches or Kathleen Morris’ Quality Commenting and Blogging Meme and Blogging Tips for Students and Teachers.

It has been a while since my last post about team teaching and when thinking about what I wanted to write about for a new post, I asked myself a question- What is something that I have learnt how to use this year that I am proud of? The answer is Google Sites.

In September I attended the IWBNet 5th National Leading a Digital School Conference at the Crown Conference Centre in Melbourne. I was lucky enough to attend a workshop by Richard Lambert about ‘Free and Effective Digital Networks for Your School’. During this workshop I learnt about Google Apps for Education. Google Apps are a suite of Google tools including email, sites, docs, maps and groups. Richard discussed ways of using these apps within the school and wider community to promote collaboration and teamwork for both staff and students. As I work at a new school I was intrigued by how Google Apps was effectively used across different areas of the school. From Richard and my own investigation I found that there is so much that can be achieved with Google Apps-

My school is looking at going ‘Google’ next year with some long term goals being that all classes have a blog or site, students in years 3-6 (initially) will build their own digital portfolio using sites, staff will use docs to collaborate on level planning and keeping track of staff meeting minutes through google docs.

This year I have already experimented with using Google Sites in the classroom.

https://sites.google.com/site/acpsprep12/home

I created this shared site for the three P,1,2 Grades at my school. It has been used with great success. I have found that students are extremely motivated to share and talk about their work with students and teachers from all over the world. It has become a place for students to share and celebrate their learning with an authentic and real world purpose!

Google Sites is very easy and straight forward to use and set up. It does not take long to learn how to add / embed things! The ease of use between the Google Apps has been great, calendars, docs and maps embed effortlessly!

I was however not impressed when I found out that visitors to the site that had not been ‘invited’ were unable to leave comments on the site. As a result I used Google Docs (forms and spreadsheets) to make my own comment forms (click here for guide). This has allowed students to communicate and collaborate with not only their peers but other students and teachers in the wider community, Australia and the world!

I have really enjoyed using Google Sites and will continue to do so in the future!

As I am still in the early stages of using Google Apps I am sure I have more to learn and look forward to using more Apps next year with my students!