Yesterday a very nice thing happened. A group of Kansas State University students joined my PLN!
Their teacher Cyndi Danner-Kuhn was teaching her students about twitter, they all created accounts and started following people.
I would like to welcome them again and invite you to click the button below and start following them. This is the list of the students and their teacher that I created on TweetML .
Happy #followfriday!
In this article, I would like to share the 10 steps for being a blogging school. This is the way I decided to follow based on my experiences as a teacher and blogger. Maybe, before writing this kind of a blog post, I should wait until the experience proves to be successful. So please remember: These are not proven success steps to be a blogging school but my ideas might help you generate your own.
At the end of this academic year, I will write another blog post and evaluate the success of the way I followed.
1. Define your goals and the type of content you will provide.
Before you start the blogs, it’s essential that you define your goals. Your blogs have a greater chance of success if you know from the beginning what you hope to accomplish with them. Our aim is to engage our students and enhance their learning experiences by integrating blogs into our lessons.
Decide if your blogs are going to be private or public. Our blogs will be public because I think blogging is more meaningful if you have a real audience and connections from different countries.
What type of content are you planning to provide? In order to decide, you can brainstorm with a group of teachers, ask for your students’ opinions and search for other class blogs to see examples.
2. Pick the blogging tool that offers the right features for your school and create accounts.
I don’t know if there are any other alternatives but I think Edublogs offers a great service for schools. Creating free accounts is another option but it wouldn’t be easy to manage multiple accounts and track content using a free service.
After subscribing to the campus package, I read the site admin user manual which is a very comprehensive and clear guide for managing multiple accounts and then I created the blogs with a standard theme and a set of widgets.
It is very easy to create and manage multiple accounts on Edublogs Campus. When I log in the admin panel, I can view all the accounts on a single page, monitor content and make changes if necessary.
3. Introduce the system to the teachers.
Have a meeting with the teachers. Talk about blogging basics, how your school is going to manage the class blogs and what the teachers’ responsibilities are. Show as many examples as possible that will help them understand why blogging with students is good and how it will improve their language skills.
I had a 3-hour session with the teachers and here is the outline of the session:
Introduction to blogging
How to create and manage a blog
Maintaining student interest
Internet Safety and Copyright issues
Introducing the blog to students and parents
Team work in blogging
Head Office support / requirements
4. Inform the parents and request parental consent.
Write a letter to the parents or have a meeting with them. Explain the rationale of blogging with students and talk about your aims. Ask for their (written) consent for publishing student work and photos.
We decided not to publish individual student photos, surnames and e-mail addresses. There won’t be anything on the blogs that will invite dialogue between individual students and the audience. We will only publish student works and photos taken during the activities which I think is a nice way to share the lively atmosphere of our English lessons with the world and motivate the students.
5. Start the blogs & Introduce the blogs to the students.
Introduce the blogs to the students after you get written consent from the parents. Show the blog first. Tell them how you are going to use it. Make sure that they understand it is something fun and useful. You can show examples from other class blogs from different countries and tell them it is also a great way to build international connections. Tell them how important ‘leaving comments’ is and show them how to leave a comment. Remember to set clear rules and expectations at the beginning.
6. Meet the teachers again.
After the class blogs start, meet the teachers again to receive feedback and talk about the problems they have encountered. Hold the second meeting in small groups so that you can focus on the teachers’ needs.
7. Support the teachers to improve their blogging skills.
Supporting the teachers and giving regular feedback on their progress is very important. Sending regular tasks would be an effective way to improve their blogging skills. For example; you can send instructions for putting a widget on the blog or ask them to build an international connection and start a project via their class blogs. We have a Ning and there is a group for blogging teachers on the Ning. I believe it will be useful for us to have discussions and share experiences there.
8. Monitor the blogs.
Monitor the blogs throughout the year and give regular feedback to the teachers. The entries posted by the teachers should be in line with the school’s aims. The blogs should be monitored considering:
9. Hold an evaluation meeting.
Hold an evaluation meeting with the teachers and administrators at the end of the year in order to improve the system for the following year.
10. Encourage the blogging teachers to share their experiences.
Most of the teachers will become successful bloggers after a year of blogging with students. Encourage them to start their own blogs or make presentations at conferences and professional development events to share their experiences and inspire other teachers.
It was 2007 when I started blogging with my students. I was very lucky that I didn’t have any trouble with the school management, they trusted that I would do a good job and just let me blog with my students. It worked well but it was at individual level (only I and a friend who was teaching another level were blogging) and didn’t have an overall contribution to the school’s English teaching program. You can guess the reasons. Schools generally do not have policies regarding the use of technology but I feel hopeful about the future because they started to realize that it is not only the quality of equipment that makes a difference, it is the teachers who are willing to use technology in the ways that engage students, help them improve their language skills and connect them with the world.
When I had this new position at ISTEK Schools, one of my dreams came true. I would be able to have a significant influence on a kind of a policy like I mentioned above.
I decided to start a blogging project. Since we are eight schools in different places of Istanbul, I thought it wouldn’t be a smart decision to make everyone start blogging this year. I asked the department heads to choose two levels from each school. This makes sixteen class blogs. I thought of creating individual blogs first but then decided to sign up for a campus package that Edublogs offers. We have a main blog site on which I’ll give links to the class blogs and for now I just created one class blog as an example. I’m going to give a 3-hour workshop this Saturday and then create the blogs and send the blogging teachers their user names and passwords. The themes and the widgets of the blogs will be the same. I will be monitoring the content only and provide technical support if they need. This is the scenario I have in my mind at the moment. During the year, I’m planning to blog about our blogging experience and hoping that it will be successful.
I believe, in five years, more teachers will be willing and competent to use web technologies and school managements will be more responsive to teachers’ needs in this sense.
Are there any other blogging schools that you know? I would love to share ideas and learn from their experiences as well.
Happy blogging to my colleagues and students at ISTEK!
