Blogaholic: bringing it into the classroom

"My name is Reid and I'm a blogaholic".

It certainly sounds right, amongst some teachers admitting that you blog, tweet, or any use any other social media for networking purpose does feel like you confessing a giant sin. They don't really understand the power yet, but they're getting there and these types of queries below help us move them along. So I hope you'll pass this blog post onto 2-3 teachers you know to help them think about blogging in the classroom. This isn't the how to guide, there's plenty of those but one of my favourites as a beginner was Linda Yollis's.

I recently got emailed by a teacher wanting some help on how to integrate blogging into the classroom, in the interest of spreading the love I'm blogging my reply. The teacher was a blogger (not uncommon) but was unsure of how to proceed and they'd used kidblog also. This teacher's pondering was prompted by their signing up to Quadblogging. Their questions were:

Do you have ipads, or lots of computers in your class that you use?

3 favourites
from Room 1

In my classroom there is 3 desktops, BYOD (currently 10 kids) and we have a pod of laptops that come to the classroom for a week every term. We use Blogspot as a platform for blogging.  I prefer the Blogpress app when on the iPads though as it has better functionality I believe plus you can manage several blogs from the one app,

Do all your students have individual blogs?
I run both a class blog and individual blogs (none active right now, given the time of year).

How do you work blogging into your classroom programme?
Blogging into my classroom forms part of the literacy programme, when it is reading time I always include blogging. Students are directed to various blogs through their favourite blogs list, or according to our Quadblogging commitments. When it is time for writing students always have the option of publishing to the blogs. I've seen that some teachers like to have students write drafts each time to their book and have these rigorously checked, I find this onerous and prefer students to write directly to the blog, editing still takes place and the children find it more engaging. Fantastic, or otherwise, pieces of writing can still go from their writing book to the blog as you see fit. I also constantly have planned lessons & other teachable moments to learn about Digital Safety as part of Health - where blogs are often the context and we can model the learning.

My class regularly use the blogs for reading, posting and commenting before school and it can be included as part of a formal homework programme although if the blog is engaging the children will be on it at home anyway. A target for blog views or comments can be motivating also, there was much excitement when we reached 10,000 hits.

Do you QB through your class blog only? 
No, classes that have individual blogs may have these accessible also, it is entirely up to you but naturally the children love having people visiting and commenting on their own personal work.

I understand the basic premise that QB is about, but on the weeks that your class is not the focus class, do you not blog? OR is it just that you are not the focus for the comments?
My classes still blog, even though they are not the focus that week. It keeps them engaged with the practice of blogging and they generally have plenty of comments to respond to also. My class also participate in Aotearoa Quadblogging which means that I always have a blogging focus.

There are heaps of blogaholics and even some recovering ones, I hope that they'll all pass this on to 2-3 people who are unsure about blogging in the classroom.

My 2013 school report

"He has a cool teaching personality"

My class receive their final reports at the end of week 8, no doubt there will be anxiety, nerves, pride and hopefully a little humility when facing their caregivers with these treasure troves of information.

Compiled on Notability

It hardly seemed fair that I would send these home without giving my students a reasonable opportunity to comment on my progress this year. I asked them if they thought this would be fun and although they were surprised they were definitely excited. Admittedly, I was definitely a little worried that some might get carried away!

Socrative was my method of delivery vehicle, as its easy to use and I knew that the report produced would be user friendly.

I'm impressed by their honesty and feel very humble at the love they have shown for our classroom. But it was reassuring to see that they also offered some constructive criticism that is quite reasonable (Te Reo, talking/fidgeting).

The criticism actually highlighted a couple of things which I will definitely take on board. It was quite a fun process and I've enjoyed the chance to let the kids have a go, we need to show them that we can take constructive criticism as we certainly dish a fair bit out as teachers.  Along the way I've also had a little play with some Notability and Sketches.  Notability gets some huge wraps from many reviewers but it doesn't have a "Save to Photo Library" option, a basic for many Apps, however its easy to take a screen shot but that's just not the same is it!


I'm aware that there are many formal tools that schools implement to give students a chance to provide feedback for their teachers, I'd love to hear from some of you who do this as I think it would be beneficial to do this again next year.

Compiled on Sketches

6 weeks & counting

My PRT time is rapidly drawing to a close, as we complete final testing and write reports I'm also trying to round out my requirements to meet my registration. I've just sent my form away but am pushing to fit all sorts of PD into a busy schedule, both school-wide and individual stuff. I'm starting to feel less like a BT these days and certainly not the one who started February 2012.

Ian, my MT, helps greatly, today after completing his own work he came and sat in on a science class. He shared a resource with me to advance the lesson and talked candidly about how to improve the lesson as well as follow the lesson up. he's done a good job, I'm no carbon copy but I was pleased, when told by someone else, my interests are rubbing off on him too.

Planning for the rest of the term is going well: lots of hands on science, we're using the pool for more than just PE, my maths has moved outside the classroom and we have a couple of great trips scheduled.

Next week I'm off to a course at the mighty learning network! have a writing observation and am doing 3-4 observations. The writing is all as part of my role as literacy leader but serve duel purpose for a BT obviously. The learning network course crept up on me and highlights my principal's realisation that I can't read a calendar.

To try and help with my final assessments I booked a reliever for Monday so I could take a release day. I gave the form to the boss, she accepted it gladly. About 10 minutes later, she plonks the form down in front of me and suggests that I pay for the reliever seen it would be double time - Labour Day!

I guess I'm still learning but I think I have found an app to organise my life better, furthermore I'm sure someone on twitter will tell me what day it is!

Enjoy your weekend, all 3 days of it! I will.

Thinglink

My class are in the midst of ICT week and have been creating posters about biosecurity risks. As they finish these posters I have been moving them to creating a ThingLink image. Rather than explain what this is, take a look at Sara's example:
 

Sara was the first of my class to have venture onto this during the week and quickly became the class expert, both modelling what they could do as well as trouble shooting for a few students.

Previously, I had used a Thinglink image to show them some work earlier in the year, this introduced the concept and aroused some curiosity. But the following steps were used to help the children create their own.

Steps:

1. The first person who finished the poster got to be first to create on Thinglink, I would demonstrate only once to an individual and allow them to become the expert. As each child finished they were first directed to Sara's work to see what she was doing.
2. I got the class to sign in using their class twitter account to avoid further password confusion.
3. Allow them to find an image to use as the main image.
4. Explore the internet to find images, information and video to embed as tags.
5. Share to class blog/individual blog using an embed code.

I recommend that you use this tool in your class, it could be a great way to have children explore and share their understanding of many subjects especially the sciences. But I'd love to take an illustration or piece of text from a reading book and have the children use this to share their understanding. As a tool it is useful for allowing students to share their voice and it also comes as an App for the iPad/iPhone.

Quick review: 5 Apps

Pic Collage
Designed for creating montages and posters this can be used in a number of ways in the classroom. My class love using them as quick writes to demonstrate their learning after reading books, but we've used them to produce Wordwalls, drama explanations, funky text only posters while I loved the way some students made on-the-go posters while on field trips. Some cool features is the ability to search for images on the Internet, use photos on the tablets own library, use stickers (free & paid sets). Available for free on both Android & iPad.

PuppetPals
Choose your characters, backgrounds, can throw in a few props. Record your audio, playback and share. What's not to love. Haven't used this a lot in my class but as a practice run used it with the junior school age nephews in the T2 holidays, together we had heaps of fun creating a zombie attack puppet show. A good tool for publishing all forms of writing but could also be used to break the monotony of teacher instructions.

Tellagami
An app where you can design your own character, background and then either your own recorded voice or typed text to produce a Gami. Kids love the easy manipulation to build their character but its the ability to make and share the audio aspect that is the real goldmine. Another tool that can be used for writing, reading as well as classroom management.

Explain Everything
A slide based tool for presenting information through your tablet. Allows for recording of audio while you create and you can also insert movies (yours or off the Internet). A little bit of effort is required to figure out all of the functions when first using but is worth persevering with as the finished outputs will show you.

Little Story Maker
I'm writing this without having used it in class myself, but had a play over the holidays based on many recommendations from other teachers. As the name suggests its for creating stories and allows you to illustrate, write, record audio and publish your own story. I am looking forward to using this in my class and believe many other teachers will be pleased with the results they get using this in their class.

*Its worth noting that if you are considering blogging in the classroom that neither Tellagami or Little Story Maker have an embed function as part of the app.

Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

The final 2 weeks of term provided some great highlights. I had bought this book (pictured) at the end of last year and put it away for a rainy day but an idea shared through twitter got it off the shelf earlier - it has an App...

Last Friday, I read this to my class and was amazed with the level of engagement. We had predictions coming left, right & centre and they were commenting about all sorts of language & plot features. The book also contains some beautiful artwork, ranging from full colour to black & white and everything in between as the mood of the main character changes. The class had picked up on this and were getting very excited as they progressed through the book.

Once we'd finished they were uber-excited about doing some work to demonstrate their learning and this resulted in the creation of several posters including posters, a PicCollage, many pieces of writing. It was awesome to see the kids so engaged with a book but the best was yet to come...

On the last day of term I planned to show the class the Imag-N-O-tron App, we knew that it was an interactive version of the book but weren't prepared for the awesomeness that occurred. First, we visited the book's website where we saw a sample of the short movie the book inspired and then read the real book again using an iPad/projector combo to show the pages on the smart board. The App features Augmented Reality images that blew the classes mind, I'm not going to describe these images here except to say the class applauded the app at the end of the book! 

Next step is to find more books & apps of this quality for the class and I recommend that you get the app & book for yours