How to start blogging with students

Here’s an example of a game created using Classtools.net.  This is a great site that enables you to embed games in your blog.

Click here for full screen version

Today, we will look at:

• picking your ‘theme’ so your blog is customised (though you may have done this already)
• putting your own picture on the blog header if you want
• writing your first post
• adding pictures to your posts
• The difference between posts and pages
• adding links to your ‘blogroll’
• embedding video into your posts (see the post further down)

If we don’t get time for them all, we’ll continue next week, where I want us to look at managing and moderating comments.

Welcome to the blogging course!  Today, you will get a blog address and begin to set up your blog.

Before the end of the session, please save this blog address to your favourites:

http://apstrainingblog.edublogs.org

You also need to save your own blog address to your favourites, so you don’t forget where it is!

By the next session, everyone agreed to try to put something on the blog, either ready to use with students, or ideally actually use something directly with students.  Below are some ideas for setting work on the blog, complete with some examples where it’s been done already.  If you have more ideas, that you’ve tried or would like to try, or questions, or any other comments, please leave a comment below to add to the ideas in the post:

• Homework stage 1: Set a homework task on it – literally just write the homework up there so all students can see it – here’s an example 
• Homework stage 2: Set a homework task on it where the task involves a question and students add a comment to the post, responding to the question – here’s an example.
•  Homework stage 3: Set a homework task including a link to a document or a website, so students have to follow the link and then do something – either in their books or by responding via a comment, as above – here’s an example.
• All the homework above could also be done as classwork – either by booking an ICT suite or a laptop trolley
• Welcome them to the blog and ask them to comment on what they think and how they’d like you to use it (could be set as class or homework).  Here’s an example
• Put some good links up, either in a post or in your blogroll, and set a task using them – here’s an example
• Put some information up on the blog for students to read, then set a test in the next lesson based on it
• Post a number of pictures, or links to articles with opposing views, different news stories etc, and ask students to evaluate (e.g. which design do you like best and why?  Which view do you agree with and why?)
• Put student work up there – particularly useful for student revision presentations like these ones
• Put student work up and then get the other students to evaluate it by posting a comment – like this example
• Post a link to a tutorial – like this one.

Hopefully you’ve all now set up your blogs so they actually exist.  I know one or two of you G&T students have gone a step further and started playing around with designs and things like that…

Your blogs are all now linked to on this blog (under ‘teacher blogs being developed’ on the right) so you can spy on each other and get competitive!

Today, we will look at:

• changing your password
• picking your ‘theme’ so your blog is customised
• putting your own picture on the blog header if you want
• writing your first post

We will hopefully also get time for:

• adding pictures to your posts
• adding links to your ‘blogroll’
• embedding video into your posts (see the post below)

See you at 3.45 in room 117 again…

A couple of you asked me how to do this and I said I didn’t know but I’d find out…

So now I have…

This post here takes you step-by-step through the process.  It’s from The Edublogger, a great site for tips on using Edublogs.  I strongly recommend you subscribe to it, so you get regular emails, or at least add it to your favourites.

The only problem with the process of embedding ‘code’ so that a YouTube video plays in your blog is it seems for some reason to be a bit unstable so everything I’ve read recommends you do everything you need to do to your post and then add the link at the last minute, or it’s likely to go wrong. 

That’s what I’m going to do now and hope it works, so you can have a nice bit of gratuitous and entirely non-educational nostalgia with your CPD (and if you’re too young for it to be nostalgic, please don’t tell me.  I’ll only get upset.)

Thanks for coming to the first session today.  Just a reminder of what to do before the next session, on Thursday 29th January.

1. Wait for your confirmation email to come, with your password and a reminder of your blog address
2. Write down your password so you don’t forget it!
3. Click on the link in the email to your blog.  It should look a bit like this:

• Find the ‘log in’ link towards the bottom right and log in, using the username you entered right at the start of the setup process (probably your initial and surname) and your password.
• If you have any problems with any of the above, email me or pop up to room 204 and I can look at it with you.

Next week… making your blog look beautiful and writing your first post…

Welcome to the blogging course!  Today, you will get a blog address and begin to set up your blog.

Before the end of the session, please save this blog address to your favourites:

http://apstrainingblog.edublogs.org

You also need to save your own blog address to your favourites, so you don’t forget where it is!

I hope that you’ve all now had the email required from Edublogs to activate your blog.  Before Thursday, please do the following:

·     Click on the link in the email, which should take you to your blog.

·     At the bottom right of the page, where it says ‘Meta’, click on ‘Log in’. 

·     Use the username and password you were sent by edublogs to check you can log in.  This should take you to the ‘backstage’ area of your blog, which we will be using on Thursday.

That’s all you need to do – if you have problems with any of the above (e.g. no email received), email me with your blog address and username and I can try to fix it.  Or you can try going through the process again yourself. 

See you on Thursday!

I wish I’d seen this before Donna and I wrote all those instructions!  It’s a great introductory manual for using edublogs, with really clear instructions:

Edublogs manual