Six weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to win the Victorian Teachers Mutual Bank Outstanding Primary Teacher Award. This award has partially allowed me to attend the ISTE conference in San Diego, California and meet some of my international blogging buddies face to face. Meeting Mrs Yollis! When I arrived in the USA, my long term blogging […]
blogging
Quality Student Blogs Part Two – Post Topics
Last week I wrote about how students with their own blogs can be guided to create quality posts. After I published my post, I showed my class the less ideal post example I used about dogs. It was so interesting to get their opinions on the fictional post. Seeing their “shock” at the lack of […]
Quality Student Blogs Part One – Posts
As I have written about before, I have a system in my classroom where students can earn their own blog. Adapted from Linda Yollis’ idea, I have found the system to work well in both my grade two and grade four classes. Recently, six 4KM and 4KJ students were the first to earn their own […]
Student Centred Blogging
Student centred learning is an theory that seems to have gained popularity in education communities over the years. Wikipedia defines this type of learning as “putting students first … focused on the student’s needs, abilities, interests, and learning styles with the teacher as a facilitator of learning. Teacher-centred learning has the teacher at its centre […]
Students Learning From Their Blogging Buddies
I seem to be continually uncovering more and more benefits to educational blogging. Aside from the advantages that I’ve shared here and here, having your class involved in the educational blogging community allows students to learn from and with their peers from all around the world. In my class we often use our blogging buddies’ posts as inspiration for classroom activities, […]
Quality over Quantity
I’ve been thinking about how important quality over quantity often is when it comes to effective teaching and learning with blogging, global collaboration and technology. Here are some thoughts… It’s not about how many blogging buddies your class has but about having deep and ongoing connections with classes that you can learn with and from. It’s […]
Fun and Games
So many rewards can come out of connections made through blogging and global collaboration. I love watching my students learn about literacy, maths, geography, technology, history and all sorts of things about life around the world with their blogging buddies. It is such an authentic and memorable way to learn. Last November when we were […]
Our New Class Blog
After spending the last three years in grade two, I have moved to grade four this year. The first two weeks of the school year has already presented many new challenges and rewards. I’m looking forward to extending my students further with technology this year. I am continuing to team teach with Kelly Jordan. This […]
Parents Shining in the Blogging Community
Educational blogging is so much more meaningful and rewarding when it occurs within a blogging community. It takes time and persistence to establish your own blogging community. When I first started blogging with my class in 2008, we received the odd comment from a student or parent but there was no other audience or interaction. […]
Five Steps to Starting a Class Blog in 2012
I revised this post in August 2012 to create a nine page, five step guide to beginning a class blog. Feel free to view, print or download the document to help you get started on your blogging journey. Five Steps to Starting a Class Blog If you’re having trouble with the Scribd document, you can […]
Learning to Type: Student Bloggers’ Progress
In March 2018 I wrote a comprehensive post about teaching typing. I also compared four free online tools for learning keyboarding. Find that post here. On 21st July, 2011, all of my students participated in a typing test using 10fastfingers. They had to test themselves three times and then I recorded their best words-per-minute score. […]
Setting up Student Blogs
I’ve been asked a few questions lately about setting up student blogs so I thought it would be timely to update my post from 2010 about the process I use. 2012 will be the fifth year that I have been blogging with my class and the fourth year that I have had some student blogs. […]
Quality Blogging and Commenting Meme
If you are interested in educational blogging, Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano has written an outstanding series of posts on her Langwitches Blog. It is called Learning About Blogs FOR Your Students and covers seven areas: Part I: Reading Part II A: Writing Part II B: Student Writing Part III: Commenting Part IV: Connecting Part V: Reciprocating […]
Reflection on Our World, Our Stories
The Our World, Our Stories project has come to an end this week. It has been one of the most rewarding experiences of 2011 for my class. My grade two students worked with classes in the USA, Canada, Belize, New Zealand and Ghana to share their stories and learn about how others live. We used […]
- Blogging
- ...
The Edublog Awards – Vote for us!
The Edublog Awards have been running since 2004 and showcase some of the most popular blogs in education around the world. The purpose of the Edublog Awards is to promote and demonstrate the educational values of blogging. This is something I really believe in! There were many cheers of delight in 2KM and 2KJ today […]