The Blogging Teacher: Setting Up Your Classroom Page

Blogs ("web logs") are an effective way to communicate with parents and the school community about the learning and events taking place in your classroom. As a teacher, using a blog page as a method of sharing news and information can be helpful to parents (and students) by allowing them access to these things online - rather than by paper handouts and agenda writing.

By customizing features of your blog page, you can ensure that this blog page functions just as you intended and does not bring more grief than good. This is my current classroom blog page (grade 8 class). This post will describe how to get started blogging as a teacher.

Here are some simple steps to creating and using blogs as a teacher (using blogger.com):

1. Create a "google account" if you do not already have one (http://blogger.com)

2. Once activated, choose "create blog" to initiate the blog.

3. Once you have chosen a web address, title and background - you are ready to blog!

4. As a communication tool for parents, you may want to enter the "Settings" area and change some of the default options. For example:

BASIC

* Change default so your blog is not added to the blogger listing

* Change default so search engines cannot find your blog

FORMATTING

* Change default in Timestamp format so the time posted is not shown - only the date (no one needs to know when you are posting to your blog)

COMMENTS

* Change default so "Hide" is chosen for comments

* Choose "Only members of this blog can comment" - that way you can email people that you would like to participate in your online blog experience by posting comments.

* Choose "Always moderate comments"

* Choose "word verification" needed.

PERMISSIONS

* If you share a classroom or would like another teacher to be able to post writing to your blog page, you can "Add Author" by sending them an email and requesting to be an author of your blog page.

5. In the "Design" area, you may wish to remove the "Followers" gadget which is included on your blog page by default. You may also wish to remove the "About Me" page if you would like to avoid needing to give a personal description of yourself on your site.

6. I would recommend adding the "Pages" gadget to your blog page which will allow you to add new pages that deal with different subjects or areas in an organized way (e.g. News, Student Assignments, Forms and Letters, Calendars). To do this, go into "Design" and click on the "Add a Gadget" option directly below the title header. Scroll down and choose the 4th option "Pages."

7. If you create your class calendars in Microsoft Publisher, you can add them to your class page by saving them in Publisher as a "jpeg" file not a .pub file. In your blog page options, choose "New Post" and find the "Add Image" icon at the top of the post and find where you saved your calendar as a .jpeg file. You can then alter the size and alignment. This is the same process if you want to add a picture from the internet into a blog post.

You now have a blog that is setup to communicate with parents. You may wish to send home a letter describing how you wish to use this internet resource. In this letter, you will definitely want to include the blog's web address, so parents know where to find it. If your school can link it to the school's webpage that is an even better way to directing traffic to your site.

If you have any questions about this process, please comment to this post and I will do my best to steer you in the right direction. Thanks and enjoy!

Begin Your Web 2.0 Journey

A common theme that runs through most educational discussions on technology seems to be web 2.0 tools. These are applications that allow a teacher to deliver content, and a student to receive it, by designing it online. Things like glogs, blogs, wikis, prezis all offer a new way of reaching students and reshaping the learning process. The problem with these programs is not a new one in the education sector - time.

It takes time to navigate new technologies. Time to become comfortable with them. Time to purposely plan for their use and its impact on classroom learning. Time is always at a premium.

Training does allow for the opportunity to be exposed to these web 2.0 tools, but the majority of training often comes as an after-hours, during breaks, or informally delivered chance with a colleague. Steps in a new direction can be trail-blazing for your classroom practice; but they still need a path - and this path requires a guide. Whether your guide is self-guided learning on the internet at home or networking with a colleague during lunch; your choice of guide can make or break whether you choose to take these new tools and actually use them.

Here is a starting point for those who want to be exposed to some of the possibilities out there. This website offers a list of different kinds of web 2.0 tools and explains their purpose and use. It is not exhaustive and should be merely a starting point. If you truly want to begin your journey of web 2.0 technologies, choose ONE thing and implement it. Let it be messy. Show the students how it looks to figure things out...in front of them. You will be modelling resilience, problem-solving and patience. These are some of the most important skills a student can learn. It serves no benefit to always be perfect and properly execute a lesson as a teacher. Students need to see a mentor struggle to envision what strategies will lead to success.

Don't get overwhelmed if you're new to this. It is a process and simply reading this blog post has landed you somewhere on the web 2.0 path. Now choose your next step if the time is right for change.

My journey begins

Over the past two weeks I have invested a great deal of time and energy to 'feeling out' the waters of online writing. There is a huge potential to do what I enjoy and share it online in a fairly straightforward manner. Over the past 16 days I have managed to expand this writing venture into several spreading directions. This blog is now connected to blogger.com, blogtopsites.com and blogged.com. In addition, the School Board I work for has posted this blog as a link on their new social networking site (www.scdsbnetworkedlearning.com). I have sent emails to friends to let them know and posted links on my Facebook page to this blog. In short, I have put myself out there and am eager to see where this all could lead...

My latest venture began yesterday. I started a "Fan Page" for my blog, "Ignite. Incite. Inspire." attached to my Facebook account. I am still in the process of figuring out how to actually suggest this page to my friends so that they can have easier access to what I am writing. I have tried this twice, but no page suggestions seem to be going out to my friends yet. Also, when I signed up for a "blogtopsites.com" account there was an option to connect to my Facebook account (which I took advantage of). What this means is that my blog posts here are automatically sent as a feed and posted on my Facebook Wall. People can now read my posts without having to navigate to another website (if they don't want to). In the process of adding this Facebook stuff I came across an online writing community that allows people to post articles on their site and have advertisement revenue directed back to them as a royalty. My application was approved by an editor and today I sent my first article to the "Education" editor to be posted (hopefully tomorrow sometime). If you want to read what I am writing on this site the address is http://suite101.com. I will post a link on this blog page in the sidebar to easily access these posts too. To me, this website is a more structured and serious writing opportunity to voice my opinions on things teaching and beyond.

Who knows what could happen here? I guess the message is to put everything behind a goal. I have the goal to post to this blog everyday - and so far have been successful. I would like to consider more serious writing opportunities and am thinking about entering a writing contest through "The New Quarterly Online (http://www.tnq.ca). In the end, I would like to believe that I tested the waters and will come out of it with something gained. I love teaching and this would add a love of writing about a topic that I have (and continue to ) experience daily as an educator. This post adheres to advice that a former leader gave me in the fall, "Be transparent. People will respect you for it and always know where you stand." This is all sides of me and writing in a so-far 16-day relationship.