Earlier this fall I was talking about deciding on the best forum for my students' on-line book reviews. While I ended up choosing Google Sites, I am thinking that Kid Blogs may have actually been a better fit, at least as an initial introduction to on-line book reviews and reflections of learning. While younger students are still getting used to blogging I have realized that it can be quite time consuming for basic posts and I have not been able to integrate in many of the features that Kid Blogs does not have and that I saw as a reason to choose Google Sites over Kid Blogs.
However, with experience I am seeing how Kid Blogs would be an excellent introduction to blogging and probably does have everything I need, especially for 6th and 7th graders. With Google Sites, even though the announcement page works as a micro-blog, I don't like how all users are able to edit posts, rather than just being able to post a comment (one difference between wikis and blogs).
When I started to do my first multi-age on-line book club of the year, I decided to have students do it on Kid Blogs. While we did on-line book clubs last year, this was different because I decided to have 8th graders lead the book club discussions. In partners the 8th graders did a post for each discussion day and the 6th and 7th graders added comments to discuss with their group. It has been going very smoothly. As I had known from before, it was so easy to set up and the students were quickly able to transition to using Kid Blogs since they were already familiar with posting and writing comments.
For now, I would recommend Kid Blogs vs. Google Site and re-evaluate when it seems like students are ready for more than Kid Blogs has to offer. This will change year to year as students arrive at my classroom with more previous experience with technology. Earlier this year our director and a couple of teachers wanted to do some book blogging with 2nd and 3rd graders, so I helped them set up a Kid Blog, and they have loved it. Once those students are 6th graders, they will already have a foundation in blogging and may be ready for a more advanced format - or not. I guess I will just wait and see each year, considering which technology tools are available and which are the best match for the students. Always so much to experiment and explore with educational technology!
Showing posts with label student and children blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label student and children blogging. Show all posts
Monday, February 21, 2011
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Google Sites Books Read List
Earlier this fall I wrote about my journey to find a platform for my students to share the books that they have been reading and how I ended up going with Google Sites that is available through Google Apps Education Edition. I also did a follow-up post to explain how I envisioned students writing about their books. Yesterday when I wrote a first quarter update post, Tara requested more information about how I set up student Google Sites, so I thought it was a perfect time to share how the process has been going.
Since Google Sites was new to me, I have been experimenting right along with the students, making sure to try out everything that I request they do before hand in order to share an example and walk them through the process. As always with technology, it is so nice to have a classroom set of laptops and a SMART Board where I can walk students through the process of exactly what they should be doing.
Students created their sites, which was super easy since they already had their education edition email accounts, so it was as easy as clicking a few buttons. I had each class categorize their site by the year they will graduate from our school as eighth graders, making it easy for me to skim through sites by class and for them to look for their classmates' sites as well. On the welcome page they wrote a statement about themselves as readers and writers. This gives me as a teacher a lot of insights into them.
Next, each student created a new page, set up as an announcements page (functioning like a blog) titled 2010-2011 Book List. Every time they finish a book, they are supposed to write a post reacting to the book. I have a rubric posted on my site, as well as maintaining my own book list for them to use as examples. This has not been too much work for me because I can often copy and paste responses directly from my book blog, often with just a few adjustments to tailor it to my students as an audience instead of my wider open blog audience.
Each post is supposed to be titled with a number and title. The number reflects the amount of books they have read this year. For example, a title might be: 3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, which would mean that it was the third book the student completed since the school year started. Each month I have two deadlines. One is for students to choose one English book response, and the other is for a Spanish book response. I have them write the one that they want me to look at on the bottom of their weekly self-evaluation form. Then I skim through their selected posts.
We just completed our first round, and I was able to make note of areas in which I can scaffold them to improve. Topics range from remembering conventions to adding depth to their reader reaction to hooking their readers with their summaries without giving away too much of the book. Right now I kept the posts simple without adding book cover images or links in order to focus on the content. Later on I will layer in these aspects.
A few students have already begun to visit each other's sites and leave comments for each other, but I have not demonstrated this yet. That will be one of the next steps so that they can start enjoying the benefits of having a community of readers sharing about books they love virtually to complement the ways that they share about their books in person.
I will try to remember to add additional posts throughout the year as I continue reflecting and improving, but please feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions or questions you might have that I can post about in the future.
Since Google Sites was new to me, I have been experimenting right along with the students, making sure to try out everything that I request they do before hand in order to share an example and walk them through the process. As always with technology, it is so nice to have a classroom set of laptops and a SMART Board where I can walk students through the process of exactly what they should be doing.
Students created their sites, which was super easy since they already had their education edition email accounts, so it was as easy as clicking a few buttons. I had each class categorize their site by the year they will graduate from our school as eighth graders, making it easy for me to skim through sites by class and for them to look for their classmates' sites as well. On the welcome page they wrote a statement about themselves as readers and writers. This gives me as a teacher a lot of insights into them.
Next, each student created a new page, set up as an announcements page (functioning like a blog) titled 2010-2011 Book List. Every time they finish a book, they are supposed to write a post reacting to the book. I have a rubric posted on my site, as well as maintaining my own book list for them to use as examples. This has not been too much work for me because I can often copy and paste responses directly from my book blog, often with just a few adjustments to tailor it to my students as an audience instead of my wider open blog audience.
Each post is supposed to be titled with a number and title. The number reflects the amount of books they have read this year. For example, a title might be: 3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, which would mean that it was the third book the student completed since the school year started. Each month I have two deadlines. One is for students to choose one English book response, and the other is for a Spanish book response. I have them write the one that they want me to look at on the bottom of their weekly self-evaluation form. Then I skim through their selected posts.
We just completed our first round, and I was able to make note of areas in which I can scaffold them to improve. Topics range from remembering conventions to adding depth to their reader reaction to hooking their readers with their summaries without giving away too much of the book. Right now I kept the posts simple without adding book cover images or links in order to focus on the content. Later on I will layer in these aspects.
A few students have already begun to visit each other's sites and leave comments for each other, but I have not demonstrated this yet. That will be one of the next steps so that they can start enjoying the benefits of having a community of readers sharing about books they love virtually to complement the ways that they share about their books in person.
I will try to remember to add additional posts throughout the year as I continue reflecting and improving, but please feel free to leave a comment with any suggestions or questions you might have that I can post about in the future.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Kid Blogs Follow Up
In my last post I mentioned that it would be hard to integrate blogs the way I had envisioned with Kid Blogs. In his comments, Joshua asked for clarification to see if I could explain more about that statement. My desire to integrate blogs into my classroom stemmed from the concept that came up over and over as I have been reading a variety of resources to help me teach in a writing workshop setting - the importance of having students write for authentic purposes. At one point in time I realized that my new blogging hobby would be relevant for students - a form of writing that "real" writers do.
I envisioned my students blogging for a variety of reasons, such as book reviews and slice of life stories. My own blog that I set up for blog reviews was a pattern for how I would have students use them. Tagging allowed for easily indexing different types of posts, such as including author's names and/or genres. I also love being able to have the image on the side bar that people can click on linking back to a post with a running list of books by author and title that I read by year with a link to the actual review post. These were the features that I was talking about that are not possible via Kid Blogs. I quickly realized that other differences, such as only having two choices for backgrounds, which I originally thought was off-putting, were not really that big of a deal and aspects that would not keep me from utilizing the platform.
For 6th and 7th graders who I had originally not planned on blogging until their 8th grade year, Kid Blogs would be a great introduction to blogging. Once I realized that Google Sites, which is already a part of our Google Apps Education edition would probably meet our needs, I decided to go that route so that students could access all their services from one site (email, documents, and sites).
Even though I decided against Kid Blogs (for now at least), there was a lot that I thought was great about the service:
When I thought about using Kid Blogs, I imagined it would be a great location for recording books read. Since I would not be able to use tags and the side bar link to a running list like I do on my blog, I thought that I would just have students type the number before the title so that students would have an easy way to know how many books they read in a school year. It would not be as easy for them and other students to navigate among all of their posts, but it would still be functional. Students would be able to view each others' pages and leave comments. In fact, the simplicity that I was a bit disappointed in for older students is probably ideal as an introduction to blogging for younger students.
Joshua mentioned that his blogging goals are to "provide a nice hook to get my students to express their opinions more frequently and interact with each others' ideas. [...] It seems like an effective platform for book logging/reviews. Finally, I'm considering using it as a way to communicate to parents more about what we are doing in class." He wondered if Kid Blogs seemed to be a good fit for this for his 4/5 classroom. I would say that of the different platforms I have considered and am aware of, Kid Blogs probably is an ideal option for the age range of his class. By knowing the site for the teacher's page on Kid Blogs, parents could learn about what was happening in class and have access to the links to their child's blog, as well as their classmates.
I envisioned my students blogging for a variety of reasons, such as book reviews and slice of life stories. My own blog that I set up for blog reviews was a pattern for how I would have students use them. Tagging allowed for easily indexing different types of posts, such as including author's names and/or genres. I also love being able to have the image on the side bar that people can click on linking back to a post with a running list of books by author and title that I read by year with a link to the actual review post. These were the features that I was talking about that are not possible via Kid Blogs. I quickly realized that other differences, such as only having two choices for backgrounds, which I originally thought was off-putting, were not really that big of a deal and aspects that would not keep me from utilizing the platform.
For 6th and 7th graders who I had originally not planned on blogging until their 8th grade year, Kid Blogs would be a great introduction to blogging. Once I realized that Google Sites, which is already a part of our Google Apps Education edition would probably meet our needs, I decided to go that route so that students could access all their services from one site (email, documents, and sites).
Even though I decided against Kid Blogs (for now at least), there was a lot that I thought was great about the service:
- As the site says, it was very easy to set-up and is free.
- It has privacy control options that are ideal providing flexibility for schools and families to decide on what would be the best fit for their children, such as access to all visitors, class members and logged-in guests (such as parents), class members only, or teacher only.
- Students do not need to have email addresses to blog.
- When I created my class' blogs it automatically created a blog directory on all of my students blogs on the right hand side bar of my site.
- I was going to be able to have a separate blog for each class, and there was a drop down menu option on the top of the screen to easily navigate among the classes.
When I thought about using Kid Blogs, I imagined it would be a great location for recording books read. Since I would not be able to use tags and the side bar link to a running list like I do on my blog, I thought that I would just have students type the number before the title so that students would have an easy way to know how many books they read in a school year. It would not be as easy for them and other students to navigate among all of their posts, but it would still be functional. Students would be able to view each others' pages and leave comments. In fact, the simplicity that I was a bit disappointed in for older students is probably ideal as an introduction to blogging for younger students.
Joshua mentioned that his blogging goals are to "provide a nice hook to get my students to express their opinions more frequently and interact with each others' ideas. [...] It seems like an effective platform for book logging/reviews. Finally, I'm considering using it as a way to communicate to parents more about what we are doing in class." He wondered if Kid Blogs seemed to be a good fit for this for his 4/5 classroom. I would say that of the different platforms I have considered and am aware of, Kid Blogs probably is an ideal option for the age range of his class. By knowing the site for the teacher's page on Kid Blogs, parents could learn about what was happening in class and have access to the links to their child's blog, as well as their classmates.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Student Blogging Saga Continues
Ever since my initial set backs with starting individual student blogs last winter, I have been thinking about different options. After our initial Blogger glitch, we signed our school up for Google Apps Education edition to at least have access to services such as email and Google Docs. I had been disappointed that Blogger was not included in that package. Yet I thought that it was okay - Blogger could wait until this year when my 8th grade students would all be thirteen. Most recently I talked about Blogger vs. Kid Blogs. I had decided that I wanted to go with Blogger. Yet, I was still going back and forth. I considered that even though Kid Blogs were not as visually appealing, maybe it was a better option to launch blogs. Then I realized that in an effort to simplify blogs for students, there were not any capabilities to put tags, labels, or widgets, which would make it hard to use them the way I wanted to. Thus, it was back to Blogger for my preferred option for 8th graders. I thought about how I could use Kid Blogs for 6th and 7th graders solely to record books read this year with a review/response post.
Today was the big day (again) to set up student blogs via Blogger. I was thrilled. I set up my own blog using my Google App Education edition email to make sure that it was going to work. It was all slick and smooth just like when I set up my personal Blogger accounts using a Gmail address. However, once the students were in the room it was not long before I started having flashbacks to last year's roadblocks. Rather than going from the initial information page to the blog set-up, it prompted students to verify their accounts either via a text message or voice call. I remained calm and told the students that they could do their independent reading while I went around to each student individually with my cell phone in hand to get their verification codes. I thought that was a pretty smart way to not panic and be a problem solver - that is until about the sixth student when an error message came up saying that the number provided had already verified the maximum number of accounts allowed per phone number. As a last ditch effort I had the other students click on a form to explain the difficulties with verifying the accounts.
As I had a little more time to reflect during the day, I was ready to go with Kid Blogs tomorrow. I did not want to go through any more hassles with Blogger. Then I remembered that a teachers in one of my summer school classes talked about a professor using Google Sites in another one of her classes. I went into my education edition account and saw that Google Sites was an option. I was able to quickly set up my own site and played around just a little bit. I realized that they did have an option to add on announcement page(s) that functions essentially like a blog.
Tomorrow I will start the next phase of the process - setting up student Google Sites. In some ways it seems like it might end up being even better than Blogger for an educational context. It will just take me a little bit to get familiar with its different capacities. Hopefully it will be a case of "Third times a charm!" If not my students will probably get pretty skeptical any day that I tell them it is time to set up their very own blogs! I don't see any way that there will be glitches with Google Sites though since it is included with the education edition...
Today was the big day (again) to set up student blogs via Blogger. I was thrilled. I set up my own blog using my Google App Education edition email to make sure that it was going to work. It was all slick and smooth just like when I set up my personal Blogger accounts using a Gmail address. However, once the students were in the room it was not long before I started having flashbacks to last year's roadblocks. Rather than going from the initial information page to the blog set-up, it prompted students to verify their accounts either via a text message or voice call. I remained calm and told the students that they could do their independent reading while I went around to each student individually with my cell phone in hand to get their verification codes. I thought that was a pretty smart way to not panic and be a problem solver - that is until about the sixth student when an error message came up saying that the number provided had already verified the maximum number of accounts allowed per phone number. As a last ditch effort I had the other students click on a form to explain the difficulties with verifying the accounts.
As I had a little more time to reflect during the day, I was ready to go with Kid Blogs tomorrow. I did not want to go through any more hassles with Blogger. Then I remembered that a teachers in one of my summer school classes talked about a professor using Google Sites in another one of her classes. I went into my education edition account and saw that Google Sites was an option. I was able to quickly set up my own site and played around just a little bit. I realized that they did have an option to add on announcement page(s) that functions essentially like a blog.
Tomorrow I will start the next phase of the process - setting up student Google Sites. In some ways it seems like it might end up being even better than Blogger for an educational context. It will just take me a little bit to get familiar with its different capacities. Hopefully it will be a case of "Third times a charm!" If not my students will probably get pretty skeptical any day that I tell them it is time to set up their very own blogs! I don't see any way that there will be glitches with Google Sites though since it is included with the education edition...
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Decisions, Decisions - Technology Integrations
Among my goals for this summer was to decide which platform to use for student blogs and to explore wikis. During the school year I posted about how my attempt to begin blogging with my 6th and 7th graders did not work out because not all of my students were 13, the requirement for Blogger. Later in the spring I heard about Kid Blogs via Sara Kajder's discussion of her book. I had briefly looked at the site at the beginning of the summer, but hearing her mention it again at the Boothbay Literacy Retreat was a good reminder to look into it more seriously. I figured the best way to find out would be to sign up, so this morning I took the plunge. My initial thoughts are: I love the easy set up for classes, the privacy/safety settings with school integrations in mind, and it is free. However, they look pretty blah. When looking at the design templates, it looks like there are only two. One of the other participants at Boothbay had also mentioned her concern that students might think that a name like Kid Blogs could put a quencher on their motivation for blogging. Creativity with design is one of my favorite components of blogging, and I would hate for my students to miss out on this.
With Blogger, on the other hand, there are many positives. It is where I have always blogged, so I am very familiar with it. It would save me a lot of time because I have already figured out a lot of the tricks and stay up to date on new changes via the Blogger in Draft blog. It also has privacy settings available for free, which is what originally shifted me toward Blogger instead of Edublogs. It is also my hope that some students will want to continue their blogs after they leave our school. Even if their parents decide that they would like them to keep their blogs private initially, it would be as easy as clicking a button on the control panel and their blog could be live if they wish. Having it on Blogger would be a little bit easier to network with other bloggers that share similar interests, as compared to Kid Blogs.
The one downside that I can think of right now is that there has been an increase in spam comments on my blogs. That is the reason why I ended up switching my setting to having all comments approved by me before posting. Yet, I do not know that this is really that big of an issue because before any student makes the shift to go live, I would use it as a teachable moment to be cautious with this transition. It they prepare to make the shift when they are already leaving my classroom, then a potential scenario would be to have a parent meeting to discuss blogging safe guards with the students and parents.
I feel confident with the decision to follow through with Blogger for my 8th graders. If I decide to start blogging with my younger students at some point in the year, I am glad that I know about the Kid Blogs option.
On the wiki front, I have been grateful to get some hands on experience - the best way to learn. One of my classmates in my YA class set up a wiki for the course, and Sara Kajder set up a wiki for Boothbay. Wikis seem very easy to navigate, especially coming in with a blogging background. The one drawback that I was not previously aware of was that if a couple people want to write on the same page at the same time some people lose their input, as only one person can edit at a time. When we would be in a setting where all students would be on at the same time in any given class, this could be a nightmare. For now I am planning on focusing on getting the blogs up and running. The main reason that I wanted to explore the wikis was for on-line book club discussions. I will keep wikis in mind as I approach the first book club. However, I might decide that blogging meets our on-line discussions well enough. If Blogger had threaded comments, it would be an even easier decision for me to just go with the blogs.
With Blogger, on the other hand, there are many positives. It is where I have always blogged, so I am very familiar with it. It would save me a lot of time because I have already figured out a lot of the tricks and stay up to date on new changes via the Blogger in Draft blog. It also has privacy settings available for free, which is what originally shifted me toward Blogger instead of Edublogs. It is also my hope that some students will want to continue their blogs after they leave our school. Even if their parents decide that they would like them to keep their blogs private initially, it would be as easy as clicking a button on the control panel and their blog could be live if they wish. Having it on Blogger would be a little bit easier to network with other bloggers that share similar interests, as compared to Kid Blogs.
The one downside that I can think of right now is that there has been an increase in spam comments on my blogs. That is the reason why I ended up switching my setting to having all comments approved by me before posting. Yet, I do not know that this is really that big of an issue because before any student makes the shift to go live, I would use it as a teachable moment to be cautious with this transition. It they prepare to make the shift when they are already leaving my classroom, then a potential scenario would be to have a parent meeting to discuss blogging safe guards with the students and parents.
I feel confident with the decision to follow through with Blogger for my 8th graders. If I decide to start blogging with my younger students at some point in the year, I am glad that I know about the Kid Blogs option.
On the wiki front, I have been grateful to get some hands on experience - the best way to learn. One of my classmates in my YA class set up a wiki for the course, and Sara Kajder set up a wiki for Boothbay. Wikis seem very easy to navigate, especially coming in with a blogging background. The one drawback that I was not previously aware of was that if a couple people want to write on the same page at the same time some people lose their input, as only one person can edit at a time. When we would be in a setting where all students would be on at the same time in any given class, this could be a nightmare. For now I am planning on focusing on getting the blogs up and running. The main reason that I wanted to explore the wikis was for on-line book club discussions. I will keep wikis in mind as I approach the first book club. However, I might decide that blogging meets our on-line discussions well enough. If Blogger had threaded comments, it would be an even easier decision for me to just go with the blogs.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
I'm in Awe
I always love it when I stumble across pure genius! This evening I was going back to see the rest of the comments on a discussion that Stacey Shubitz started on Two Writing Teachers about technology. John Spencer, one of the teachers who left a comment, mentioned the blog that his students contribute to. Because of the title, Social Voice, I just had to check it out.
What I found was a plethora of mentor texts for my students' blogs for next year. Not only are the students writing about multiple real issues that hold importance in their lives, they are also posting in a wide variety of formats. I love the mixture of art and text, as well as the podcasting and Google Docs presentations.
It is evident that these students are aware of current social issues. They are from Arizona, and many of their posts mention the current immigration conflicts. Here are a couple of posts that captured my attention, although there were many, many more that I could have listed: Education is the Answer and A Letter to America.
Seeing sites like these make me excited to be an educator. Even though I still have a little over a month and a half of summer vacation, it makes me wish for the school year to be here so that I can share their work.
I applaud John Spencer and his students for their great work, and I thank them for the way that I just know they will be inspiring my 6th through 8th graders in the fall.
What I found was a plethora of mentor texts for my students' blogs for next year. Not only are the students writing about multiple real issues that hold importance in their lives, they are also posting in a wide variety of formats. I love the mixture of art and text, as well as the podcasting and Google Docs presentations.
It is evident that these students are aware of current social issues. They are from Arizona, and many of their posts mention the current immigration conflicts. Here are a couple of posts that captured my attention, although there were many, many more that I could have listed: Education is the Answer and A Letter to America.
Seeing sites like these make me excited to be an educator. Even though I still have a little over a month and a half of summer vacation, it makes me wish for the school year to be here so that I can share their work.
I applaud John Spencer and his students for their great work, and I thank them for the way that I just know they will be inspiring my 6th through 8th graders in the fall.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Blogging at 8!
Usually when I receive a comment from someone on a blog that I do not recognize, I click on their profile to see what they are blogging about. This morning by doing this I realized that a mom from my state has her own blog, as well as a blog for her 8 year old son. It looks like they have not been able to do any new posts since the summer, but I am still really impressed. Next quarter I am going to start blogging with a group of my middle school students. It is exciting to see that a parent (and I am sure there are more out there) is exposing her son to digital literacies from a young age. This might be something fun to start with my daughter, even if it was digital pictures of her writing, that usually goes along with a drawing.
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