This week’s student blogging activity is a guest post by Kathleen Morris.
This is the fourth activity in the “30 days to get your students blogging” series.
In this activity you will:
1. Learn why parent participation in blogs is important.
2. Learn about some initiatives that can encourage parents to be involved in your class blog.
3. Introduce some initiatives in your classroom to encourage parent participation in your blog.
***********************
About parents and blogs
One of the many benefits of having a class blog is the strengthening of home-school relationships.
A class blog can provide a virtual window into the classroom.
After having a class blog for a number of years, I have got the message loud and clear that parents and families love being able to keep up with the classroom events and student learning.
You can’t leave parent participation to chance. Parents needs to be educated and regularly encouraged and invited to be part of your class blog.
***********************
Educating parents
At the start of each year when I introduce my class to blogging, there are rarely any students or parents who know anything about blogs or blogging. It is nearly always a totally new concept for them.
I spend time each day helping my students learn about blogging, however I have also come up with ways to educate the parents. This is very important. Parents won’t be willing or able to get involved in blogging if they don’t know anything about it. As Linda Yollis says, everything is more powerful when parents are invovled in their child’s learning so I definitely like to encourage parent participation in blogging.
Like students, parents have different learning preferences and I like to offer my parents a range of different means in which they can learn about blogging.
how to become part of our wider blogging community
Information on the blog
I have created a “learn about blogging” set of pages on our class blog. This explains to readers (including parents) what a blog is, why we blog and how to comment. For parents who prefer a more visual description, I have created a video explaining how to comment.
Other ideas for educating parents about blogging
Hold a parent information evening and go through the blogging basics.
Invite parents in to the classroom to help students compose and edit their blog comments.
Set up an email subscription so readers can be notified when you publish new posts. Click here to find Sue Water’s instructions on adding an email subscription to your blog.
Older students could create their own parents guide or letter to family members giving them some tips to navigating the blog.
Send out regular emails to parents with blogging news and tips. Encourage them to forward the email on to family and friends.
Create a post specifically designed for parents to comment on. Here is a post I published last year and a large number of parents enjoyed commenting.
Final advice
Always reply to comments (or have your students reply). It is good blogging etiquette and provides an example to students that comments are not just one-way; they are used to generate conversation and discussion. Parents may not be encouraged to keep commenting if they don’t feel their comments are being valued or acknowledged.
Your challenges
1. Come up with a few ways to begin educating your parents about blogging. You could choose to:
Create a parent handout (remember to create your own rather than copying others’ work).
Have your students create a parent handout.
Create a page on your blog with information about navigating the blog and commenting.
Have your students write a letter to parents that includes blogging tips and an invitation to comment.
Hold a parent information evening about blogging. Students could be presenters.
Invite parents in for regular or one-off blogging sessions and have them help students compose and edit their comments.
Set up an email subscription to your blog and let parents know how to sign up. Remember to click here to find instructions on this.
Set up an email newsletter for parents with blogging news and tips.
Publish a post specifically designed for parents to comment on (eg. “What was school like for you?” or “What are your hobbies?”)
2. Choose to either:
a) Write a blog post about your parent initiatives and submit a comment on this post with the URL. We’d love to hear about it!
b) Write a post proposing three things you are going to do to encourage parent participation this year. Don’t forget to submit a comment on this post with the URL.
Here is where you find the other activities from this series:
Thanks to everyone who is participating in the 30 Days to Get Started Blogging with your students!
And if you missed out, it is never too late to work through the challenges at your own pace!
You can always form your own team with other educators and work together!
This week’s student blogging activity is a guest post by Kathleen Morris.
Kathleen teaches grade two at Leopold Primary School in Victoria, Australia. 2011 is the fourth year she has blogged with her students. Kathleen writes a blog for educators about technology integration, educational blogging and global collaboration. Find Kathleen on Twitter @kathleen_morris
***********************
This is the third activity in the “30 days to get your students blogging” series.
In this activity you will:
1. Learn why blog comments are important.
2. Understand one definition of quality commenting and create your own definition.
3. Discover some ideas on how to teach commenting skills to student bloggers.
4. Introduce quality commenting to students and parents.
***********************
About comments on blogs
Comments really make blogs come alive and transform your blog from a static space to an interactive community.
I have found the best way to introduce classes to blogging is for the teacher to initially write posts while students (and other readers) comment.
Students need explicit instruction and guidelines to get the most out of commenting.
From experience, I have found if commenting skills are not taught and constantly reinforced, students will limit their comments to things like “I like your blog!” or “2KM is cool!”. While enthusiasm is high with these sorts of comments, students are not developing their literacy skills or having meaningful interactions with other members of the blogging community. Conversations in the comment section of a blog are such rich and meaningful learning experiences for students. Conversations begin with high quality comments.
One of the main reasons I blog with my students in to provide an authentic avenue for developing their literacy skills. Over 2010, I documented the improvements in my students literacy skills which you can read about here. When you invest the time in teaching, modelling, revising and promoting high quality writing of comments, students can make great gains in their overall literacy development.
Set your standards high from the start and reap the rewards!
***********************
About quality comments
I teach my students how to write “quality comments” and invest a lot of time in the first part of the year to helping students to understand what this means. My team teacher partner, Kelly Jordan, published our guidelines into a poster which we display in our room and send home to families. You can view the PDF copy here – 2KM and 2KJ Commenting Poster.
Teaching commenting skills
I teach commenting skills through:
Modelling and composing comments together with students on the interactive whiteboard.
Teaching students about the “letter” format and editing process during writing lessons.
Giving examples of a poor/high quality comments and having students vote whether the comment should be accepted or rejected. Example of a Sorting blog comments activity devised for our students here.
Having students read and comment on a post on our blog as part of a literacy rotation on the computer each week.
Taking students to the ICT room once a week to work on composing a quality comment with a partner.
Emailing parents and encouraging them to write comments on the blog with their child.
Here’s where you’ll find more information on working with comments:
Watch the video below to learn how to manage comments
Your challenges
1. Watch this video by Linda Yollis’ students about leaving quality comments. Depending on your students’ age, you could watch it with your class.
2. Create your own poster to guide students on how to write a quality comment. Remember, don’t use others’ work without permission and acknowledgment.
Option 1: Create the guidelines poster and share it with students.
Option 2: Facilitate a collaborative discussion with students (perhaps after watching the video) to create the guidelines poster together.
3. Make parents aware of your expectations of quality comments. Send a copy of your poster home, have students create their own version of the poster to take home or email parents about the process.
4. Write a blog post about commenting and what you define as a quality comment. Have your students practise leaving a “quality” comment on the post. Leave a comment on this post with the URL of your blog post.
Here is where you find the other activities from this series:
Thanks to everyone who is participating in the 30 Days to Get Started Blogging with your students!
And if you missed out, it is never too late to work through the challenges at your own pace!
You can always form your own team with other educators and work together!
“A comment a day encourages bloggers to have their say!” This was a quote by one of my online colleagues on twitter three years ago. Unfortunately, I have misplaced who said this and cannot attribute the quote.
Are our students learning by conversations on facebook, forums, twitter, blogs and other networking sites?
Does effective communication through conversations empower learning?
Do comments on blogs have any impact?
My answer would be:- Yes, Yes, and Yes! What would be your answer?
Comments on student blogs are one of the highest motivational factors and drivers that I have witnessed in my classroom over many, many years of teaching! I can still remember the excitement, when our classroom blog received its first comment. Someone was actually reading our post at Our Backyard
It read:- Your “backyard” is beautiful! Thank you for sharing it with the world. (Lori, California)
and the comment was from overseas!!
However, time needs to be spent learning about comments, considering eg:-
What makes a good comment?
How can comments keep conversations going?
How can blogging be empowered using conversations via comments?
Here are your challenges:-
1. Write a post on one of the following:-
10 things you need to know about blog comments.
The power of comments – (Discuss and illustrate, if possible, with real examples from your classroom or personal blog.)
5 ways to get more comments on blogs
Switch off blog commenting! Discuss potential impact(s).
2. Share your blog post in a comment to this post.
3. Check out the beginner’s challenge
4. Find another two blogs in this challenge and comment back on their post.
5. Become involved in the discussion question for this challenge.
Advanced Challenge
Put together a presentation with some sample comments both good and bad, for students to assess and discuss. Add to a post and share or
Create a cartoon strip to show an aspect of commenting on blogs.
A fairly intense week when setting up your blog, choosing themes, leaving comments and writing posts.
If you are going to blog with students, you might enjoy this video created by the grade 3 students from Mrs Yollis’ class in California. They talk about why they enjoy blogging.
An important aspect of blogging ischecking your settings.
Your blog can be totally private where only you can see the blog through to open to the world. Often school districts or departments of education specify how open school blogs can be. You might need to check this out before blogging with students.
I am lucky that my students have blogs open to the world as long as I moderate posts and comments. I do this after the students, who are grade 6/7 or 11-13 years old, have approved and published them first. I use it as a chance to teach being internet savvy by leaving a comment about where they might need to change their post – too much personal information- or the fact that they have approved a spam comment.
When my students first set up their blog in Edublogs, here is the post where I talk about their blog settings. As an adult blogger, you might make some changes to these settings. I also include certain widgets they need to have visible to make it easier for the reader and myself as moderator.
If using blogspot then here is a link to changing and adding to your blog.
Another important aspect is commenting.
In Edublogs, one of the boxes under Settings> Discussion talks about threaded comments. This makes the conversations work more easily. You answer to the person who asked the question rather than your comment going to the bottom of the list. Here is an example from Grace, one of my students. We are also using threaded comments on the discussion questions. Check out the responses Jessica got from her comment.
If you are using a blogspot blog, you might need to check the profile settings you have for visitors trying to leave comments. I have noticed in the challenge conversation a couple of people couldn’t leave a comment as they didn’t have a Google, WordPress, Typepad, Livejournal account etc. Please change the settings to allow Name/URL as an option for readers wanting to leave comments.
If using an Edublogs blog, before leaving comments on other blogs, sign in at Edublogs. If you do this, then you won’t have to fill in details when leaving a comment – you will just need to fill in your comment – no anti-spam word. This applies only when commenting on Edublogs blogs.
There are two ways to find blogs to comment on – one is the ‘Visit these blogs’ posts which has links to many of our participants; the other is the mentors page (link in the header) which has a spreadsheet of those people who have requested a mentor. I am sure they would appreciate other bloggers leaving them comments as they begin their blogging journey.
Mrs Yollis, who was recently awarded Life Time Achievement in the Edublogs awards, has written a great post and created more videos with her students about commenting.
Do you want a mentor to help you with your blogging during this challenge?
If the answer is yes, then please fill in the google form here on this post. Once you have signed up, visit the mentors page in the header of this blog and find out who will be mentoring you. You can then check out a bit about them by looking at the comments where they have given a short bio of their Web 2.0 life. You mentor will have been given your email and should contact you to find out where you need help.
Check out the widget ‘Recent posts’ on the left sidebar
I occasionally add new posts to this blog that relate to the challenge but are not the formal beginner and advanced activities.
Check out the ‘Get Help’ on the right sidebar
If using Edublogs, here is a quick link to the user guide which is where we are often sending you when learning how to blog.
If using Blogger, then there is also a link to a page created by Allanah King in New Zealand. She has lots of helpful hints when adding things to a blogger blog.
How did you cope with your first week blogging? Leave a comment like a PMI – plus, minus and interesting.
Some more great posts this week especially about rules, etiquette, commenting in classes and involving parents.
