This post contains most of the content from a workshop session on getting started with blogging and its potential with students that I presented at the WA Adult Literacy Council Conference on 17/4/15. Apologies for the length of the post – I just wanted to put all the content in one place! The slides are now uploaded to Slideshare.
Writing for the world out there
Blogging for you & your students – writing for an authentic audience. In today’s session we will look at:
- What is a blog/blogging?
- Why should we and our students blog?
- Why comment on posts?
- Ground rules.
- The mechanics of blogging – getting started.
What is a blog/blogging
- personal place
- work/professional space
- online journal/diary – ideas, PD, reflecting/sharing
- self-publishing online for a global or specific audience
- place to share media, resources etc
- networking – commenting
- online portfolio – developmental, evidential
- submit tasks & get feedback
A look at some educator and student blogs:
- Why & how to blog
- A course blog
- Blog as professional learning e-portfolio
- Blog as professional practice e-portfolio
- Class blog
- Student blog 1
- Student blog 2
- Student blog 3
The following images are from student blogs created during completion of Certificates in General Education for Adults. They show some of the evidence gathering activities for which the blogs were used.
Why we blog
The “mechanics” of blogging
There are many blogging platforms, personally I use Edublogs for a number of reasons:
- educator/student focus
- can create and manage student blogs
- good personalisation options
- mobile friendly
- excellent privacy/security options
- outstanding support/help
Getting your blog
Go to the Edublogs signup page
Complete the details and submit the information. Once your blog has been created you will get a “Congratulations” message. This will contain your:
- Blog URL
- Username
- Password
Make sure you write these down!
Then you can “Login to your new blog” and start customising it. Here are a couple of posts that might help:
When you are looking for a theme to change the appearance, be sure that you use a “Mobile friendly” one.
Creating Posts
Blogs are very individual so what and how you post is very much your own decision, however you might find the following posts helpful in getting started.
- Writing your first post
- Writing a post – the “techie” bit
- Writing a post – the “writing” bit (this one was written for my CGEA students)
Blogging is not just about writing/text,you can embed a variety of media and other tools including:
- Slideshare
- Prezi
- Voki
- Padlet
- Polling (lots of different online polls exist)
- Glogster
- Video (lots of different video sites exist)
- ToonDoo
- Wordle
as described in this post on embedding media
You can also upload various file types including:
- Word
- Powerpoint
- Images
These can be linked to from posts for:
- Assignment submission
- Evidencing competence
- Drafting and feedback
If you have questions or need help then please comment on this post.