Blogging

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Blogging

• A New Way to Journal . . .
• for You and Your Students

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• Outline for today
• What is blogging?
• Professional blogging
• Finding blogs
• Subscribing to blogs
• Creating your own blog
• Student blogging
• Gaggle and other blogs
• Homework for Friday
• Will continue discussion at NCCAT

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What is a blog?Web logAn online log of
thoughts, ideas, opinions, lists, links,
questions, etc.
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BlogFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is
  a website where regular entries are made (such as
  in a journal or diary) and presented in reverse
  chronological order. Blogs often offer commentary
  or news on a particular subject, such as food,
  politics, or local news some function as more
  personal online diaries. A typical blog combines
  text, images, and links to other blogs, web
  pages, and other media related to its topic. Most
  blogs are primarily textual although many focus
  on photographs, videos or audio.
• The first blogs were known as "online diaries",
  and started in 1994. The term "weblog" itself was
  coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997.

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Professional Blogging

• Finding Blogs
• Google
• Technorati
• (http//technorati.com)
• Educational Weblogs (http//educational.blogs.com)
  
• Blogroll

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Finding BlogsWhat to do when you find them!
Bookmark them

• RSS Feed Aggregator

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• RSS (file format)
• From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• RSS is a family of web feed formats, specified in
  XML and used for Web syndication. RSS is used by
  (among other things) news websites, weblogs and
  podcasting. The abbreviation is variously used to
  refer to the following standards
• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0)
• RDF Site Summary (RSS 0.9 and 1.0)
• Web feeds provide web content or summaries of web
  content together with links to the full versions
  of the content, and other metadata. RSS, in
  particular, delivers this information as an XML
  file called an RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or
  RSS channel. In addition to facilitating
  syndication, web feeds allow a website's frequent
  readers to track updates on the site using an
  aggregator.

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AggregatorFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• An aggregator or news aggregator is a type of
  software that retrieves syndicated Web content
  that is supplied in the form of a web feed (RSS,
  Atom and other XML formats), and that are
  published by weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and
  mainstream mass media websites.
• What do aggregators do?
• Aggregators reduce the time and effort needed to
  regularly check websites of interest for updates,
  creating a unique information space or "personal
  newspaper." An aggregator is able to subscribe to
  a feed, check for new content at user-determined
  intervals, and retrieve the content. The content
  is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the
  subscriber, as opposed to "pushed" with email or
  IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed"
  information, the aggregator user can easily
  unsubscribe from a feed.
• The aggregator provides a consolidated view of
  the content in a single browser display or
  desktop application. Such applications are also
  referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed
  aggregators or news readers.

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Detailed Instructions on Using Bloglines
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http//www.bloglines.com
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http//librivox.org/
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Find Your Blogs

• Search for and subscribe to blogs that interest
  you
• 10 Minutes

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Using Bloglines

• Easy to organize
• Link to website
• Shows new additions
• Can keep as new
• Easy to unsubscribe or edit subscripton
• Related feeds
• My Feeds

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Blogs of Your Own

• Blogger.com
• Gaggle.net
• Google

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Student Blogging

• But blogging is also showing up in schools,
  where teachers have known for a long time that
  students develop better communication skills when
  they are authentically communicating. A number of
  educators are helping their students developing
  their writing skills by having them publish their
  work as blogs, and then invite comments from
  people in the outside. David
  Warlick
  http//classblogmeister.com/

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Why Students Blog

• Even when they're out sick, students work on
  their blogs.Carol Barsotti
• I've got 6th graders coming in during their lunch
  and after school to add articles to their blog
  and to respond to their classmates' articlesAl
  Gonzalez
• My students are floored when, as they say, "some
  random person from Texas commented on my blog!!"
  The students are getting real world experience
  with writing.Brian McLaughlin
• Why would my students want to write on paper for
  their teacher to see, when they could write on
  their blog for the whole world to see.Kathy
  Cassidy
• In fifteen years of teaching, I have never seen
  anything come along even CLOSE to motivating
  students to write - like blogging does.Mark
  Ahlness

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Student Blogging

• BlogMeister
• Gaggle
• ePALS SchoolBlog
• Google

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Blogging Homework

• How can using devices such as the eInstruction
  classroom performance systems benefit you as a
  teacher?
• How can they benefit your students?
• How can the use of blogging impact student
  achievement?
• How do you use data to determine what you do and
  how you do it in your classroom?
• Why is knowledge of adult learning styles
  important when designing/teaching workshops for
  teachers?
• List your three favorite educational blogs.

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Our Blog

• We will all be posting to the same blog to answer
  the homework questions just to make it easier to
  view everyones comments.
• Go to http//blogger.com and log in.
• Username is gcspinnacle
• Password is pinnacle
• Click on the GCS Pinnacle Leaders XI link.
• Blogger.com

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Happy Blogging

• See ya Friday at NCCAT!!