Different Ways to Blog

In If they can write, they can blog by ejr, she tells about

“A primary school teacher, Brandey Addison from Tuloso Midway Primary School, said this at TCEA: "If they can write, they can blog."  She and her colleagues, Christy Solis, and Benito Portillo, provide a variety of ways for their students to practice reading, writing, critical thinking, and peer review.”

To me, blogging is a way to share ideas, beliefs, and information. It is a way to communicate with others. There are many different platforms to use. Some posts can be written but some can also be video.

I like Voicethread a lot because it is interactive. A student can have pictures and then tell about pictures. People can also respond on Voicethread. This Voicethread can be embedded in a blog post.

Videos can also be embedded in a blog post. If the purpose of the blog post is to share with others about some activity, a young child who is unable to write can still communicate. This may be a jumping board into writing later, but is a way to blog. I think this would be a great way to motivate students into learning also.
Students with learning difficulties can also use videos on a blog. They may be intimidated by the actual writing a post but may be more comfortable with recording a video. They can still read comments to the blog post and even respond to the comments in writing. But it is less overwhelming than writing a long blog post. Later on, they may be encouraged to write a small paragraph about their video and then increase their writing later on.

Students who don’t want to be seen but don’t mind being heard, can do an audio blog post. This also can be embedded into a blog.

I believe that parents would be thrilled to see or hear their child in any way. Too many times when asked how school was, their child responds in one word answers. This would be a great way for parents to hear more about their child’s school day.

Do you have your students blog? If so, which way is most successful for your students? Please share.

Image: 'cell phone, interrupted'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/73645804@N00/2384680412

Upstate Technology Conference 2009

The Upstate Technology Conference 2009 was a fantastic conference and one of my favorite events of the year. I love getting to meet with other people from around my state that I only see online but not in real life. On Wednesday night we went out to dinner at Wild Wings and got to enjoy a real life visit. You can see my pictures of the conference here: UTC2009 Pictures

On Thursday I was schedule to present The VoiceThread Venture at two different sessions. I was thrilled with the turn out for the session and the response to the presentation. I felt that at the end, many of them were really excited about trying this out in their classrooms. I tried to show examples of how it is used at different levels so that everyone could see how this tool could be adapted to any subject and at any level. You can see my presentation below:



Here is a summary of the sessions I attended and my comments about them:

It all started on Tuesday afternoon when I went to Hide and Seek 2.0 which was a preconference session. I learned about geocaching and now I’m really excited going geocaching on my own (with my hubby of course!)

On Wednesday after teaching my morning grad class, I went to the session Using Photostory3 with Audacity presented by Robert Burdette. I have never used Photostory so I was interested in seeing what it could do and how it could be used in the classroom. I am also interested in seeing how I can merge my Audacity sound files with it.

The next session was Can We Work Together? Using Collaborative Tools presented by Cathy Nelson Fran Bullington. I really liked this because I learned more about Google Apps and Google Docs. I have not used Google Docs and Forms but I can see how it can be very useful in class.

The last session for me that day was No Budget Broadcasting presented by Chris Patterson Sara Adkins. It was really exciting to see how this teacher had students produce a daily TV broadcast on a shoestring budget. I like the way certain segments could be prerecorded and then spliced together.

The next session I went to was Q&A with Chris Craft. He gave a great explanation of how he did certain things. He opened it up for people to answer questions and share ideas and concerns. I loved how this was an open session with no major focus so the audience could direct this to where they needed it to go.

The last session of the conference for me was Buying Tomorrow's Computer Today... CHEAPER! I liked this one because I learned the different features that I should be comparing when I buy another computer. I imagine I will be looking for a new computer within the next year and this helped me get a better idea of what my needs are and what features will be needed.