blagging blogging
DESCRIPTION
A guide to creating blogs for use in a school department/faculty, with classes and to showcase and develop your own teaching resources.TRANSCRIPT
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BLAGGING BLOGGINGJenny Turner - @msmfl - msmfl.wordpress.com Blogging 101
How to make and curate blogs for
use in MFL lessons
IF YOU CAN SEND AN EMAIL, YOU CAN BLOG!
Amongst the many free blogging sites, posterous.com is probably the most suitable for school use as it allows unlimited sub-blogs,
each of which can be password protected with a different password, thereby ensuring a level of online security suitable for
school.
(It’s also dead simple to use and looks pretty too!)
Blogs are great. They really are. And they’re free, easy and student-proof (most of the time. This guide will show you how to make the best of blogging to enhance your teaching and quite probably a l so the p rofi le o f you r department/faculty. All you will need to do is to keep up with the posting to ensure the content is up-to-date, relevant and in te rest ing to make s tudents , parents , o ther teachers and your millions of wor ldwide fans keep on coming back for more.
The main types of blogs considered here are:
1. Department/Faculty
blogs (open access to all
and sundry)
2. Class blogs (password
protected to allow access
to certain classes/groups/
clubs only)
3. Personal teacher blogs (putting yourself out into
cyberspace!)
Best Posterous/school blogging links -
★Joe Dale: http://tinyurl.com/joedale-posterous★Setting up a moderated class blog with
Posterous: http://tinyurl.com/brr58bn ★Primary Pete: http://tinyurl.com/cvzts4m ★Richard Byrne: http://tinyurl.com/cvzts4m
Easy Start Guide:
1. www.posterous.com2. Create username, name of blog
and a password (for your use)3. Posterous Spaces > Space
Settings > Privacy > Edit > Password protect
4. Look and Feel > Edit Theme
Ready to go!
Post to your blog by sending an email from your registered email address to: [email protected]
Attach files (images, pdfs, word, audio, video etc) onto your email and they automatically appear on your post.
Autopost to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and many others to create an instant online social presence.
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Making a Departmental / Faculty Blog Static webpages are fairly cumbersome to update, which is why a departmental
blogsite which can be updated instantly and by email and by several people at any time
is likely to be a more interesting option for departments/faculties.
You could include up-to-date news on events in the faculty, trips, photos of
lessons, activities or projects, videos of recent things going on, lots and lots of lovely
links, course resources, letters home, revision literature...the list is endless.
Ideally, a Faculty blog should be open access so that anyone can view it, so you
would need to take into account child protection issues, such as not naming children or
publishing work from students without specific permission from parents, but you
should be guided by your school’s e-safety / child protection policy.
Separate pages can be created which could include contact details for staff
members, course/exam board information, trip information, project information,
calendars and so on
Only the main blog page is the one which is updated through normal blogging: any
other page remains static and has to be updated through the posterous website, but
you can add documents and photos etc to be shown on those pages too.
Make sure that there is a link to the Faculty blog from the main school website
and/or main MFL page on the school website and publicise the blogsite to students
and parents.
If you are feeling brave and your e-safety etc policies allow, you could also create a
Twitter account, Facebook Fan Page (no need to befriend students!) a Flickr
(photosharing) site and a YouTube site for your Faculty. If you set the posterous to
autopost to each of these, then each time you post onto the blog, it will automatically
update the others, therefore students (and parents) who are are more likely to be on
Facebook than anything else will get instant updates into their feeds of what is going
on in the department.
Main things to consider: ★staff to be contributors
★open access★autopost to other social networking sites
★check your e-safety policy (or write one yourself!)
★check permissions from parents ★get yourself linked to other MFL blogs
★list of useful links★clear and easy to read theme - ensure it is accessible to all.
FACULTY BLOGGING
Just one example of a Dept blog….(still a work in progress!)
http://stowmarketmfl.posterous.com
PDFs, Word docs, PPTs...pretty any type of file shows up in full and can easily be downloaded or printed out.
Create a calendar page by embedding a Google calendar with important Faculty and school dates into a separate Calendar page.
Create links to other sites of use to your readers and other blog sites. Interlink the blogs in this way so there is no excuse for students not being able to find the blog(s)!
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Class blogging This is perhaps the most exciting (and
troublesome!) part of blogging at school: getting the students involved. They can develop their ICT and
online awareness through posting to the private blog and sharing and communicating with each other
through it. You can create an unlimited number of sub-
blogs linked to your same email account for classes,
groups or clubs. These should ideally be password -protected to enable a degree of online security for the
students and their work. I learned fast to provide a slip/sticker to
students with the blog address, their email address
and the blog password which they could then put into their planners/exercise books.
Keyword tags are very helpful in organising a large number of posts (see the sidebar for examples) and when students post, they should include tags in
their email. In the subject line after the blog title, simply type: ((tag1; tag2)) e.g. ((resources; grammar))
and posterous should do the rest. Watch out for the double brackets and the semi colon. You need not limited yourself to just two tags, as long as you use a
semi-colon after each! Embedding code from other online providers
can prove to be very worthwhile. Most online tools have an embed code which is usually found under ‘share’ options. There are zillions of web games,
tools, functions and gizmos which have an embed code. Copy and paste the code into the HTML part of
the web posting interface. The content will work directly from the final post, so it’s great for games.
Try embedding a game from www.zondle.net
into your class blog: it also keeps track of class scores for you and emails you at the end of a
specified time period a leaderboard! You will need to sign up for it first - it’s free.
Setting homework and
embedding content
CLASS BLOGGING
Train students to tag their work with their names, and make sure you tags your posts with keywords. This makes hunting for homework and posts about specific topics much easier!
Mark and provide feedback online - but don’t forget that it will be visible to all who has access to the blog.
Encourage students to collaborate and feedback to each other by using the blog comment functions. They should be logged in (with their registered email address) to do this so that no comments are anonymous.
Add students in a class using their school email address as ‘contributors’ and ensure they get daily email updates, otherwise they will be inundated with emails. .
1. Copy the html/embed code
3. The code becomes a game which can be played directly through the blog page!
2. Create a post on your blog on the webpage, click the small blue HTML square and paste the code into the box. Go back to the ‘normal’ post.
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Your own teaching blog: ideas, resources, links,
thoughts, projects, connections…..
So you have your Faculty blogging and your classes
blogging. You may even have convinced other colleagues in other
faculties to blog as well. You might be blogging with schools and
classes around the world, or you might be blogging about trips
and projects with parents. What’s left? You! By making a blog,
linking with other teachers on twitter (#mfltwitterati) and sharing
your ideas, resources and projects, you will find so much to enrich
your own teaching.
Yo may prefer to use other blog providers for your own
personal blog: I found that the gizmos that I wanted on my blog
were very fiddly to get into posterous. It’s possible, but they need
an advanced knowledge of HTML programming and this is quite
time consuming if, like me, you had to start from the beginning!
Suggested providers with no preference intended or specified
are:
★ edublogs.com
★ wordpress.com
★ blogger.com
★ tumblr.com
★ typepad.com
1.On trips, projects, days out etc, get students to email photos/text
from their phones to the blog to provide a running commentary of
events.
2. Blog with primary schools to help improve transition and give an
idea of what MFL teaching at big school is like. Older students could
blog videos teaching younger ones some language.
3. Create project blogs. We have separate ones for Languages
Challenge and Languages Leaders Award programmes.
4.Create speaking/video diaries: students record/film themselves on
their mobiles and blog the audio /video files on a regular basis as
homework to track speaking progress.
5.Your MFLAs could put together a series on online resources about
their region, together with audio/video of them speaking.
6. Revision / lesson resources - simply attach the relevant files to
your email. Great if you can train the students to access the blog if they
are absent from your lesson and saves a lot of running around with
photocopied sheets.
7. Create a free embeddable forum for FAQs, discussions and
parental contact with www.nabble.com. Also, get instant student/
parental responses to letters etc by embedding Google Forms or
another survey tool into a blog post.
8. Collaborate with another class in another country on the same
project - work together and communicate through the blog.
9. Film and music reviews - together with a link to the film, trailer,
clips, music and online research.
10. Create QR codes which link to your blog posts; put posters of the
QR code square (and no other info) around school and watch the interest
they generate.
BEST OF CLASS BLOGGING: QUADBLOGGING.NET VOKI.COM IPADIO.COM YOUTUBE.COM
Sign your blog up to be ‘twinned’ with three other school blogs: share experiences, comment on each other’s work, learn about the world... We are twinned with Manchester, Virginia (USA) and Bangkok, Thailand. It need not be MFL related.
Create an avatar and make it speak with your voice or with it’s automatic voices! Embed the code into your post. Great for a bit of fun and creativity. Students can comment and feedback on each other.
Register for free and download an app to record audio. You can set files to automatically upload or you can embed them. Great for instant sharing of audio made in the classroom and for listening exercise homework.
Paste a youtube link into your email or web post and posterous will automatically convert it to play on your blog. Great for sharing class work with parents!
msmfl.wordpress.com OK, so I’m cheating a bit by not using posterous, but wordpress is a lot more versatile for my own blogsite as it allows me to add widgets and gizmos to my blog much more easily than posterous.
What next?
10 ideas to kick start your blog