Jun 09 2007
Blogging with Year 8s
I’m very tired, so this may be a bit hazy, but I wanted to blog today.
Took my Year 8 group into the computer room today (different group from the ones using spresent, and incidentally I’ve not seen any completed presentations yet …). Wanted to show them a couple of videos that they have produced, and which I made this morning into a Mediator presentation, but unfortunately what had worked earlier on a different computer did not work on the necessary computer in my particular room. Hmph. Anyway, I had set up four tasks for the pupils on the Year 8 Blog, and only one required them to actually watch the videos. So I asked them to log on and to try and complete the other tasks, in any order.
Unfortunately, because I was also trying to fix the video programme, I wasn’t able to explain as well as I would have liked. However, most pupils at one point or another visited the link to the internet safety website. Most pupils at one point were on the comments task as well.
However, at the end of the day, when I went to moderate all the comments, there were only six entered! (And one was empty …) So there’s still some work to be done there … most didn’t seem to have any prior knowledge of blogs, so I’ll need to bear that in mind when I’m planning my research project. I do think that there’s potential, though, so I’m going to stick with it. Next Friday is Sports’ Day, so the Friday after that, I hope to get them blogging again. Let’s hope they actually submit it this time though!
Janet was there to see what we were doing and to help out. It definitely helps having more than one person in the room, especially since the pupils ask for a lot of help to begin with. It’s great to have someone to bounce ideas off!
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Keep going with the pupil blogs.great work. it would be interesting to read some of them.
It was hugely instructive being in Susan’s blogging lesson yesterday. I had been wondering about how one could introduce blogging to one’s pupils, and doing it like this, in a classroom environment (in the ICT suite) seems ideal. The teacher had set very clear, straightforward tasks which the students enjoyed. Also extremely useful was the “Thinkuknow” link about blogging safety that she asked the students to do. It’s a shame there were only six comments but I am sure that next time the success rate will be much higher. I was quite surprised how unfamiliar most of the students were about the concept of blogging – a reality quite far from my preconceptions that most young people are extremely familiar with it. They aren’t, yet.
I shall certainly be replicating this lesson (in the context of MFL) next year – imitation being the sincerest form of flattery! With the benefit of this experience, would I do anything differently? Actually I think the lesson was very well planned and structured so I wouldn’t change much in my own lesson. Particularly nice were the clear, manageable tasks outlined on the blog. Perhaps I’d ask them to start with the web safety link because it was so useful, and perhaps before I got them working individually I would “post a comment” that they could all see, using the IWB at the front of the room, so that they all knew how to successfully submit comments.
Once again, Susan, thank you for an inspirational lesson – for your pupils and for me – which I am sure will be of benefit to my future students too.
Of course! That would have been much easier, if I had posted a comment like that! It would have saved me going round from person to person! I will try that in a fortnight if I can take them into the ICT room again!
Thanks for comments re blog re focus. Looking at the google analytics it was becoming quite clear that for some reason people from different part of the world are getting interested in my general purpose blog.It is great to read a blog that is constantly being updated.Are you using google analytics?
In the meantime I will try to plough through 1001 books to read!
Think I’ll need to look into Google Analytics … but in the meantime I can find out a bit from my Stat Counter too. Keep up the good work!
Good to see what you’re doing Sue – I’ve started using blogs with my 2 A level groups but haven’t managed to blog about the process yet! I’m writing a ‘how to’ help sheet for them, which I can email to you or upload onto Fronter – it’s aimed at older kids but might still be helpful.
Judy mentioned using DivShare which she says is part of edublogs and i’ve added it as a plugin but have no idea what i do next – what is it? Where does it live – is it a separate website? Have you used it? I want my students to link to photos and pictures and was going to use Flickr for this, but Judy said DivShare would be better. If you’ve used it and have any answers, that would be great!
Tessa, if you open my Enhanced Podcast post, you will see that there are two attachments. Click on them, and you will be taken to my DivShare page, and the attachment you have clicked on will automatically start downloading. DivShare is an application that means you can upload documents easily, to be easily downloaded – there is apparently no limit to the amount of documents you can upload, and they also claim that you will *always* be able to access them. So it sounds like a good way to store big files too. At the bottom of each post now, when you go to write one, you should find the DivShare section, where you can upload your documents and then attach them to your post.
Have fun! (What’s the address of your A Level blog? I’d be interested to see how it’s going. You could message me at Facebook if you don’t want to share it with the world yet!)