This Is An Example Of How A Blog Could Be Used In Education
I created this blog (and the others) to show teachers how they could use blogs in their courses. I have setup numerous blogs for teachers and have been thinkning about blogging in the classroom for the past several months. All of this time and energy has come to this, where I have (I hope...) created a template that teachers can freely use, and these examples showing how they could be used.
There are three examples. This one, where there would be one author (the teacher) and the students would reply to the teachers posts via "comments." Another example where each student would be given an author account, and a final example where the students would share a "student author" account. Each configuration has it's pluses and minuses, which I hope to display in these three example blogs. If you have any questions, please email me or feel free to comment on these three blogs.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 22, 2003 at 02:17 PM in Romeo & Juliet | Permalink | Comments (0)
One Author (teacher), Numerous Comments (students) - READ THE COMMENTS IN THIS POST
This particular blog was configured for one author (the teacher). Author accounts were not created for the students. Under this configuration, the teacher (or teachers if a class was taught by two teachers) would make all the posts and students would be required to comment on the posts. A teacher in this example would post questions, assignments, or the like and students would be required to comment on the post in order to interact with the blog.
Another options would be to create author accounts for each student that was going to post to the blog. While this allows the students to have more power (attaching files to their posts, creating post (topics) of their own, etc.) it also takes more time to manage and setup.
A third option is to create a shared account for all the students to use (example login - "student" / example password - "student". Students would then have the power associated with being an author, however it would not take as much time to setup or manage all the student accounts.
Blog Example #1 - One Author (teacher)
Blog Example #2 - Numerous Authors (teacher and students)
Blog Example #3 - Two Authors (teacher and shared student account)
I would recommend taking a good look at all three blogs so that you can see the differences in how setting up your blog (how many authors, etc.) can affect what sorts of interactions your students can and will have on the blog.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 22, 2003 at 11:01 AM in Hamlet | Permalink | Comments (5)
More About The Blog Templates
I made this blog template with teachers in mind, but it is not by any means 100% perfect. I would like (and suggest) a few additions to it, however it is a template and a good place to start. I wanted to create something that I thought would work out of the box for all teachers and I think I have done that.
If you like this template set, you can download the files here: Zip Archive of Templates or, Stuffed Archive of Templates. Don't forget you have to 1) create the Left Sidebar Include as a "Template Module" called "left"; 2) create the "Teacher Announcements" category; and 3) make sure you have enabled both "Daily" and "Category" archiving, for everything to load properly. All the other template files not included in the archive I left as is.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 22, 2003 at 10:50 AM in Taming of the Shrew | Permalink | Comments (0)
Worrying About Inappropriate Visitors To Your Blog?
As much as we wish it wasn't the case, we all do need to worry about inappropriate visitors to your blog. Unless you close a post to comments, anyone can leave a comment on your blog. Spammers have been known to leave comments pointing readers to websites, students from other classes might leave messages distracting your students from their work, students from rival schools might take the opportunity to tease your students, or misguided individuals might visit your blog looking for email addresses to gather.
For the most part, course blogs are individual communities that only the teacher and student would care about. Without outside links to your blog, search engines and other visitors would have trouble finding your blog in the first place so you might never have to actually deal with these sorts of issues.
The easiest step to take is to make all comments moderated where you (the teacher) has to sign off on each comment before it gets posted to the blog. This of course requires more work out of the teacher and also will slow down the speed at which the students can communicate with eachother.
Another easy step is to turn off comments on old posts that are no longer being actively being commented on. You can do this on a post-by-post basis, or you can use a CGI script to en mass turn off comments for all posts made before a specific date. This however will only limit the number of posts that can be commented on and will not completely stop the problem.
In regards to visitors obtaining your students email addresses, you can either simply tell students not to post their email addresses (and configure the blog to accept anonymous comments (no email addresses necessary to comment)) or you can edit the template so that the email addresses will not be displayed.
The last step I would recomend is to password protect the blog with a shared login/password so that only you, your students, and those who you gave the password to would be able to view the blog. This of course would limit your ability to use RSS feed syndication.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 21, 2003 at 01:36 PM in Hamlet | Permalink | Comments (0)
Searching Your Blog
See that search field over in the left sidebar? Users can use that to search the entire blog (posts and comments) for old posts. The only limitation that teachers need to know about is that it automatically searches all blogs associated with the installation of Movable Type (MT). If you have more that on blog powered by the same installation, your users will be able to find results for their searches outside of the blog they started in.
This is only an issue if you have more than one blog and don't want your students to search the blogs they are not associated with. If this is an issue for you, the only solution (to guard against cross-blog searching) is to install MT once for each blog. This is not necessary for most users, and I would recommend it unless this search issue is a big problem for you.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 20, 2003 at 03:40 PM in MacBeth | Permalink | Comments (0)
Take A Look At The Archives
This blog was configured so that each post was archived automatically by individual post, by specific date (all posts on that date), by month (all posts in that month), and by category. Click on the "Archives" link near the bottom of the left sidebar to see the archives page. Archive pages like these are useful for students and the teacher to find old post from earlier in the course.
In this instance, the categories were selected as subjects for a course. A teacher, however could have different categories for different periods of the same course, or different courses altogether (one blog for all thier classes.)
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 20, 2003 at 12:12 PM in Hamlet | Permalink | Comments (0)
Your First Assignment
This area of the blog displays the most recent post in the "Teacher Announcements" category. You can put whatever you would like here. Most likely it would pertain to what the students were blogging about currently. While a post made after this post would appear above it in the main blog body to the right, this post will not be overwritten or covered up until there is another post made by the teacher in this same category. You can even put links to homework assignements or the like here. In addition to the most recent post appering in the sidebar, older posts will also show up on the main blog area (to the right) and as archived (see "archive link below.)
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 19, 2003 at 06:10 PM in Teacher Announcements | Permalink | Comments (0)
What Are Categories?
This blog was setup with seven categories. You could have more, you could have less, you don't even need any if you don't want to utilize that feature. Under this configuration, all posts are made by the teacher. When a post is made, the teacher can select the category. All the categories (that have a post associated with them) are listed in the left sidebar. If you click on the category name, you will be taken to the Category Archive page for that category listing all the posts under that category.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 19, 2003 at 11:04 AM in King Lear | Permalink | Comments (0)
Order Of The Posts
This blog, like most blogs, display the most recent post at the top of the page and as you scroll down the page you see older and older posts. If you would rather, you can have the posts listed with the oldest at the top. Additionally, you can configure your blog to only show the most recent few posts (by number of posts) on the main index page, or show only the most recent posts (by date since posted regardless of how many posts were made.) This blog isn't a good example as I want the main page to look like this forever, most blogs only show the most recent posts for the last 30 days or so.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 18, 2003 at 12:15 PM in King Lear | Permalink | Comments (0)
More About Posting To The Blog
This is the "Entry Body" of the post. Up there above was the title of the post. If you want to write a really long post but worry that it will take up too much of the available "real estate" of the screen you can just write the introduction to the post like I've done here...
Continue reading "More About Posting To The Blog"
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 18, 2003 at 11:36 AM in MacBeth | Permalink | Comments (0)
What Is That, "Syndicate This Site" Link Down There?
Click on that link down there near the bottom of the left sidebar, go ahead it wont break anything. See that? Looks pretty ugly doesn't it. To most web browsers that should look pretty garbled, but to an RSS Aggragator that can read that document properly, it looks like a list of the most recent posts to your blog with excerpts for each one. Users (in this case, students, other teachers, parents, school administrators, etc.) can "subscribe" to your RSS "feed" by bookmarking your RSS ("syndication") URL in a RSS Aggragator and having in turn being notified whenever you make a new post to your blog. Using the Aggragator, they can read the first few lines of your most recent posts and if they are interested they can visit your blog to read all of the post and see the comments, or comment on it themselves.
Looking for an RSS Aggragator, I would recommend these:
Mac - NetNewsWire
Windows - NewzCrawler
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 17, 2003 at 12:04 PM in MacBeth | Permalink | Comments (0)
What Blog Application Do You Use?
This blog is powered by Movable Type (MT). There are many different blogging applications that you can use, each have their pluses and minuses. We looked at numerous blogging options for teachers and came to the conclusion that MT was the best option. Installing MT can be a little daunting, and might not work with the infrastucture you have. If MT is not an option for you, you should also take a look at these:
pMachine
iBlog
Manila
Userland Radio
Grey Matter
Geeklog
Blogger
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 16, 2003 at 10:59 AM in Romeo & Juliet | Permalink | Comments (0)
Old Teacher Announcement
As you can see this post can be viewed at the Category Archive page for the "Teacher Announcements" category. All posts with this category will be archived here but only the most recently posted one will be displayed at the top of the left sidebar.
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 16, 2003 at 01:28 AM in Teacher Announcements | Permalink | Comments (1)
Additions To This Blog Template
I spent many hours on this template, trying to make it work for everyone. I think it would work just fine for any teacher however I left out a few additions that I would have liked to include but couldn't have as they would require more work than I felt comfortable requiring of teachers. If you are interested and inclined, here are some extras that I think you might like:
* Script to turn comments off on old posts after a period of time
* Script to block spammers from posting inappropriate comments to your blog
* Script to allow you to see all the posts by a author - main script and connection file - not very useful for a blog with only one author but very useful for a blog where each student is an author
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 15, 2003 at 10:48 AM in Taming of the Shrew | Permalink | Comments (0)
Where Should You Host Your Blog
TeacherHosting, thats where! Of course, we'd love for you to signup for a $5 a month "blogging account" with TeacherHosting but we know that some of you might want to do this on your school's infrastucture. Please keep us in mind however if/when your district starts putting up too much red tape or if your system administrator will not let you install a CGI script you want for your blog. We specialize in helping teachers just like you. For more information about TeacherHosting, read below...
Continue reading "Where Should You Host Your Blog"
Posted by Mr. Bradley on December 15, 2003 at 10:45 AM in Taming of the Shrew | Permalink | Comments (0)