Tag-Archive for ◊ blogging ◊

A VLE Alternative
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 | Author:

**This isn’t all finished yet, but I’ve been asked to post my progress so far – it also gives chance for feedback!**

This post was started because many schools in Hampshire are looking for ways in which they can remove their VLE and use an alternative. So I thought I would put together a post based on the common tools within a VLE, particularly the one used in Hampshire, and then give some ideas of alternatives. Many of these alternatives will be Google Apps-based or blog-based, but there are also others too.

The main thing to remember is that choosing a variety of tools is going to take more work than buying a VLE with all of the tools built-in. However, the obvious benefit to using other tools will be cost. Many of the tools used will be free but there is the obvious cost of time in setting up some of these tools and configuring them to meet your needs. Over the coming weeks, these pages will get updated to include how-to guides and videos.

The plan is that this post will develop into something I can share with schools if they decide to drop their VLE and are looking for alternatives.

For help with blogging or Google Apps, feel free to contact me for further advice. To setup Google Apps yourself, use the guide here or just get an overview here.

Some common tasks and VLE tools:

If you have any tools that could be added to these pages, please let me know so that I can add them on.

 

Category: Blogging, Google Apps, ICT Co-ordinator Stuff, Learning Platforms  | Tags: , ,  | One Comment
A Blogging Update
Saturday, February 16th, 2013 | Author:

Over two years ago, I wrote a blogging post giving some ideas for schools to get started and with the news that Posterous is closing, it makes sense to look at this and see if it is all still relevant. I must declare an interest in that I was a Blogger user, but moved to WordPress, so I do prefer the latter but maybe this is just because I am more used to it? But at the end of the day, just get blogging. Whether this is for you as a teacher sharing ideas or if it’s with your class, it doesn’t matter. Just do it.

When starting a blog, there are a few choices.

1) Blogger - This is free. This is very simple to use and takes seconds to setup. It’s easy to post to, manage and share your posts. An example from @shelibb is here. Simply sign-in with your Google login.

You can enable Blogger through Google Apps, but I wouldn’t suggest it because then your children can post without any input or control from the teachers. The first time a teacher would see the post or any comments, is when they are live to the world. Not great. Guy Shearer has written about a way around this. His article is here.

2) KidBlog - This is free. I’ve never used this but it comes highly recommended. This provides logins for your pupils too.
3) Primary Blogger – This is free. It uses the WordPress service, but has been tweaked with primary schools in mind. This means it comes with a stack of plugins and upgrades to improve it for school use. Takes a little bit longer than Blogger, but gives more customisation. I would avoid WordPress.com, although free, as it isn’t as good as Primary Blogger. One great option within WordPress (and I don’t know if it’s available in Blogger – I did try looking but couldn’t find anything) is the ability to have different levels and roles. So in my class, the teacher can write and post automatically, but when a child logs in, they can only write a draft post, which the teacher needs to check later.

 

This guide here says that Blogger is quicker, easier but with less options. It says:
So the choice is clear: If you want the fullest set of blogging features, you want WordPress, but if you’re looking for simplicity and streamlined blog creation and posting, Blogger is the way to go.

Now I know many people will want simplicity, but there are reasons for spending the extra time and going with WordPress.

Another way of blogging is to use a self-hosted WordPress. This is where you go to WordPress.org, download the WordPress software and install it online using a web hosting service. This will probably cost around £50 for 2gb of space and a domain name (via CS New Media). There are people that can do this for you though, such as John Sutton and Creative Blogs! It then gives you the option of having all of your blogs under one roof. Although financially this will only cost around £50, it is worth noting that there may be considerable time setting this up, learning how the software works and customising it for your school. There are many people that can help with this though, do get in touch for more information.

 

Our school blog www.stjohnsblogs.co.uk works using the self-hosted blog. I have the main, whole school blog, then there are 15 or so other blogs across the school that all follow the same rules and have the ability to have the same users. So, giving Issy in my class as an example, with her one login, she can login to my class blog, the School Council and the whole school blog. She simply logs in and chooses which one to post to. I can also then have one admin user which can manage every blog while every other teacher just has the login for their own blog. I get control, they get simplicity.

 

We have also recently started giving children their own blogs which they have been using to share a few ideas (www.stjohnsblogs.co.uk/children) As I said, WordPress does take a little bit longer to set up, but once it’s done, you only have to update it now and again (this takes a few clicks). So even if you have 100s of options, you don’t need to use them all do you? We have six year-olds that can blog on WordPress, so it’s not that difficult is it? In Reception, we blog with an app via our PlayBooks and there are also apps for Android and Apple too. You can also enable plug-ins to turn on the feature that lets you email your posts to your blog.

Why a paid WordPress over a free one? Embedding content e.g. Animoto, Photopeach and Youtube tends to work better in a paid blog.

As I said earlier, it doesn’t matter which tool you use, just try and start blogging with your class and share their learning with the world.

Category: Blogging  | Tags: ,  | 2 Comments
Some Resources for a New Year
Sunday, September 02nd, 2012 | Author:

For many teachers, this week sees the return to the classroom and I have found that there are so many places to get great ideas and resources so I thought I would share some that I have been using lately. Some are old favourites, some are relatively new sites.

Literacy Shed - http://www.literacyshed.com (created by @redgierob)

I love this site. It is beautiful and I can’t believe how quickly it has grown. The site comprises of a range of videos covering different areas of Literacy such as Adventure, Fantasy or Mystery. There are also loads of other videos that cover other cultures or inspiration or animation and there are often ideas of how to use these videos in the classroom. One of the earlier examples was the animation from Pixar showing the birds on the telephone wire. This video could be used to discuss bullying. This can be found here. Another example is the clip from Finding Nemo that shows Nemo going to school for the first time. I will be using this tomorrow with my class to discuss feelings about the new school year and talking about any worries the children might have about joining Year 3.  (I must say that not all of the videos are from Pixar!!)

Videos are on YouTube and/or Vimeo so providing that is allowed in school, you’ll be fine.

7PuzzleBlog - http://7puzzleblog.com/ (created by @7puzzle)

This is a site that I will be using every week. Each day there are three (or four) challenges posted related to various different areas of Maths. These challenges are great for the start of a Maths lesson to get children thinking. I will be using these with my top-set Year 3/4 and although the site is only a few months old, there is a huge stack of challenges already.

An example challenge is below.

From the following list:

3   7   10   11   15   16   17   27   30   32   36   48   49   56   64   72   80   81

find the ONLY number left remaining when you eliminate:

  • square numbers
  • multiples of 8
  • factors of 60
  • prime numbers

Teaching Websites - http://www.teachingwebsites.co.uk/ (created by @markw29)

This is a collection of sites created by Mark Warner that include useful appz for tablets, great videos and also teaching news. There are loads of great tools here and it is well worth having a look.

Ideas to Inspire/Interesting Ways – www.ideastoinspire.co.uk (also Mark’s site)

I love the Interesting Ways series and these could be used for staff meetings and you’d still not be able to use everything in one year. There are tips for using tools from Wordle to Prezi and from Nintendo DSs to Visualisers. These are great crowd-sourced tips to get anyone started.

QuadBlogging - http://quadblogging.net/ (created by @deputymitchell)

We will be blogging (via www.stjohnsblogs.co.uk/class8) and one of the first things I did this Summer was to sign-up to the Quad Blogging movement started by David Mitchell. The aim is to link your class blog with 3 other classes to help promote the blogs to an audience. This project has had a massive impact to schools across the world and this term there are over 100 quads that will hopefully be blogging and commenting! Our quad consists of schools in Australia, New Zealand and the United States so it will definitely be bringing our learning to a wider audience.

100 Word Challenge / 5 Sentence Challenge - http://100wc.net (created by @theheadsoffice)

Another project that I have never really got involved in before is the 100 Word Challenge. This is a weekly challenge where Julia will set a prompt containing a few words or a picture and the children then write 100 words on that prompt. The 5 Sentence challenge is a similar concept, but for less-able writers. The children then write a blog post containing their 100 words and post the link on the 100WC page. Our aim will be to blog as many of the entries as we can but we may start by using it as a morning activity during the register.

Rethinking ICT - http://rethinkingict.wikispaces.com/ (created by @chrisleach)

There has been a lot of talk about the ICT curriculum and thinking about how we can approach this in a new way. Chris’ site has been developing a lot recently and is well worth a visit. As the year progresses, more content will be added and it will be a key tool in planning exciting ICT lessons.

 

And a few of my sites…

ICT Planning – www.ictplanning.co.uk

I have been trying to get this up and running for a few months now and it is coming together now. I have been adding some how-to guides, lesson plans and blog posts about different tools that we are going to use. I have also linked other ICT curricula on the site too. I hope that it will be useful for anyone that is thinking on changing their ICT curriculum this year.

Under Ten Minutes – www.undertenminutes.com

Another job in the coming weeks is to add more videos on to this tutorial site. I have added a couple lately and the idea is that there will be videos to cover a range of software and websites that we use in school.

 

What sites and resources will you be using this year?

 

Category: Useful Sites/Software  | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  | One Comment
Education Blog Awards
Saturday, June 16th, 2012 | Author:

I’d like to say thank you for all of the votes for my blog in both the ‘Teacher’s blog of the year’ and ‘Most Influential Blog of the Year’. Voting has now closed and this blog was outside of the top ten, but thank you for your votes and support anyway.

I had many tweets from people telling me they had voted and it makes me smile to think that my silly ideas, shared links and waffle help other teachers across the country.

So thank you again.

To see the full list of shortlisted blogs, visit here: http://educationblogawards.org/shortlisted-blogs-2012/

And a MASSIVE well done and thank you to Chris Ratcliffe for his hard work in organising the awards in the first place. It’s been a truly epic task and there are a lot of teachers and pupils who are thankful for his hard work.

Category: Blogging  | Tags: , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Are you ready for seconds?
Saturday, June 16th, 2012 | Author:

Are you prepared for a child blogging about your school? What if the Never Seconds blog had happened in your school. What would you have done? How would you have reacted? Would it have been able to happen at all?

For those of you that have been under a rock for the last month, Never seconds is a blog created by a 9year old girl in Scotland with the purpose of rating her school dinners. Each day, she takes a photo, uploads it to the blog and gives the meal a score. Oh and she also happens to be raising money for charity (£45,000+) at the same time. She’s quite a girl is our Martha. (As an aside…@digitalmaverick tweeted and asked what if she had been rating her lessons rather than her lunches? Would we all be so supportive?)

This week, her local council banned her from taking any more photos as the publicity was getting a bit much for them but after a huge amount of support from the public and Jamie Oliver, the council changed their mind and Martha is now allowed to post once more. I have to say that I think the council have made a brave decision in changing their mind and fair play to them.

But the question remains, what would you have done if this happened in your school?

Now it must be said in the majority of schools, I would imagine that Martha wouldn’t have even been allowed to have her own camera in school, let alone in the dining hall to take photographs! So credit should go to the school for allowing her to be proactive in the first place.

I’m not sure what I’d say if a child asked me if they could take photos to share publicly. I think I would give them my permission and blessing but would the teacher in me want to check and approve what they were doing first? It also got me thinking…Do my children have their own blogs outside of school? Should I know about them? Should I check them?

We have been thinking about providing children with their own blogs, but my aim is to use these to share learning but maybe, just maybe, it will promote the use of blogging and the children will want to setup their own too for non-learning things. I know that since I’ve used Twitter in lessons a few children have created their own accounts, so maybe their own blogs are inevitable. Maybe I should praise it because if they’re blogging about something, anything, that they are passionate about then that should be encouraged? It sure has made me think about what we currently do and what we will be doing from September.

In a time when I am looking at how I teach, assess and share ICT across my school, Martha’s story has thrown loads more questions my way and although she’ll never know it, she has inspired me to rethink some plans for my school.

So, thank you, Martha. Enjoy your lunch.

 

ps: Steve Wheeler also blogged about the Never Seconds blog here.

Category: Blogging, General Thoughts  | Tags: , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Education Blog Awards 2012
Sunday, May 20th, 2012 | Author:

It’s that time of year again when the best blogs are highlighted and celebrated. This started last year after a conversation with Chris Ratliffe (@chrisrat) amongst others and the fact that there didn’t seem to be a UK-based blogging award. So Chris and his team got to work and one was created. I was lucky enough to be shortlisted last year in the teacher blog category and my school, St John’s, were shortlisted in the whole-school category.

Once a blog is nominated (by anyone), the top ten then get passed on to a selection of judges that then choose the outright winners.

Another great thing is that this highlights the amazing work that is going on in so many classrooms up and down the country and will hopefully get more schools blogging as a result. I know of at least two teachers that got curious about the awards and have since setup their own class blogs as a result. Which is great news for the children involved!

So why not vote for your favourite blogs here: http://educationblogawards.org/

Or look through all of the shortlisted blogs from last year here: http://educationblogawards.org/shortlisted-blogs/

Category: Blogging  | Tags: , , ,  | Leave a Comment
Child Blogs
Monday, March 26th, 2012 | Author:

Today seems to be a day for thinking towards the future…

We’ve been blogging now for 18months and some children have asked about setting their own blogs up. Now we have class blogs and some children have access to write on these. We also have the children’s blog which everyone has access to, but the main problem with this is that after 10 posts, the previous ones are on page 2 and lost into the ether. After-all, no-one clicks on page 2 do they?

I could give them all access to their class blog and then when they blog they put their name in the tag to differentiate it, but each yeah I’d be moving them al around as they move class. I don’t fancy that!

So I want to use WordPress to setup the blogs instead. Now I don’t want to force a blog on every child as the thought of writing more than they need to would scare some children. So I want to do it as a sign-up system. So my initial thought was a google form where the children fill in some options, I look at the answers and then manually setup a blog for them. They could agree to a set of rules before they get the blog turned on and we could decide them with the children of course.

There is probably a plug-in or something that I could use, but here are some things to think about…

  • Do I set the children up as contributors so that they can write on the blog – and then I’d have potentially hundreds of blog posts and comments to approve…or do I set them up as a higher level so that they post and manage it themselves – with possible e-safety issues when comments come in
  • Is there an automatic way for new blogs to be listed somewhere? There’s no point making new blogs if no-one can find them. I could have a page called ‘Blogs by children’ but would I have to manually make a list of the blogs or could it be done automatically?
  • What happens if a child adds photos of themselves to the blog? If the blog was called ‘Amy’s blog’ then photos would have to be banned
  • Should the children be allowed to choose their own themes and widgets?
  • Should the children’s blogs auto-tweet as well?

Of course I might be thinking of all of this and then it turns out that only two children want their own blog, but still, if two children want it then I should be providing some way for it to happen. I wouldn’t want to be the person forcing them to use non-school systems or worse still, blocking it entirely.

So, if you are a WordPress expert, tips are welcome! If you are a teacher, what do you think? Should children have their own blogs or am I just giving myself more work?

Category: Blogging  | Tags:  | 8 Comments
Anti(cyber)-bullying week
Monday, November 14th, 2011 | Author:

During a discussion with Year 3/4 teachers last week, we were talking about anti-bullying week which happens every year. Now we are lucky enough not to have a bullying problem in our school and whether this is down to our children, our staff or our policies, I don’t know, but it doesn’t really happen. So how could we cover anti-bullying week with a new slant?

I thought about our blogs. these are our portal to the world and we discussed cyber bullying. We came up with a plan.

Using a fake name and email address, I clicked on a blog post from each of the year 3/4 classes and left a comment. The comments were either about their line-dancing lesson or the ‘Dress up and Battle as a Roman’ morning. The comments were rude but not too offensive.

For example I said: ” I think you look silly in your shields and hats, I think the Celts would have beaten you”. I wanted it to be enough to get them angry and to question it, but not enough that they would cry or be too upset!!

Now this won’t get picked up by spam filters as I used a real-enough looking email address and name so that it would appear in the moderation queue.

I hadn’t thought of this as being risky until I shared the idea on Twitter so I wonder. What are the risks?

Children could get VERY upset – Hopefully not, we’ll only be displaying the message for a short time before we delete it or spam it as a class.

Parents could get involved – Again, I hope not! But if they do, we will discuss why we are doing it. I believe it is a serious message and the children are old enough and mature enough to deal with it. We are not asking parents permission before we do this and we will not even discuss it with them afterwards.

The messages will never go live and will only be seen by 30 children per class.

How do you cover cyber-bullying or online safety?  Is this a good idea? Or a risky one?

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , , , , , ,  | One Comment
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