I am happy with how my site turned out.  It is an ongoing process and I still want to improve it.  However, given that I new absolutely nothing about any social media before I started this class I think I have come a long way. I am the only person I know who doesn’t have  Facebook.

I have learned a great deal about how I can use a classroom blog as an educational tool.  I will be very excited if I get a position so I can implement some of the things I learned.  I would definitely set up a classroom blog. Essentially I taught myself about a classroom blog by creating a site that teaches about the basics of blogging.  I also found a great site for using cartooning to teach called bitstrips for schools.

After a class discussion on social networking the class will be given the URL for the class site and asked to comment on my first post. The post will be: Have you ever posted to a blog? If so when?  If not share a little bit about your social networking knowledge.

Initially the class site will be open to the public.

Internet Safety will be taught, discussed and monitored. I will review all posts before they are published. Being safe and respectful points will be discussed.

Since I currently do not have a permanent position for this school year I do not have a procedure for introducing and getting approvals from the district.

I want Blogging to be an integral part of our classwork. I have prepared the checklist below as a means to help my students stay on track with their blogging experience. The following are the requirements of the blogging lesson:

• Blog lesson:  Each week you will be introduced to a new component of blogging.
• Check in:  Comment on each lesson post
• Five comments: Respond to other students
• One well-developed Blog Post:  Create and revise a blog post. If possible, include an appropriate image or video
• Evaluation:  Create you own blog site. Select and research a topic. You must complete the research, post it to your blog.

Creating your own blog site will be used to evaluate mastery of this lesson.

As discussed in the design phase I will give a lesson and a test on each of the modules for blogging. Students earn their way to posting on the classroom blog by mastering each lesson. Mastery is considered 80% or above.

I will use the student and parent comments about the post as a measure of the quality of student posts.  I will also have discussion topics (posts) on various elements of our classroom blog for comment.

The tool I have selected is Edublog because find it simple to use for students, teachers and parents.  Another reason for this selection is that allows for teacher control over what is published.

The first page will allow access to all additional categories, folders and links. This page will also have a calendar and a highlighted video for the week.

I will have a category for lessons.  I will create a separate folder or link for each of the lesson plans on blogging for students and parents to reference ie Rules and guidelines, etiquette, safety, editing, uploading an image, etc.

Design

I want the students to visit our class blog on a weekly basis to see what has been shared on the class blog.  I would like them to leave their comments on the posts on a weekly basis.

The intent is to schedule posts about the components of blogging and have students comment on the post.  The posts will be on the various topics involved in creating a blog site.  The topics are:

• Browsing other blog sites and linking references
• 1^st comments
• creating a post

• Editing (spelling and grammar)
• Site organization and menus
• Etiquette and safety
• Create text and images

Teacher posts will include links to articles related to the topic. The students will be required to read the related articles and comment on what they read. . It is important that student’s bookmark links that they found useful for further reference.

The sidebar will include the above topics, which will be archived for future reference.

I want it to reflect an accurate snapshot of what is going on in our classroom.  All the students in my class need to take an active part in making sure that posts are timely and a true reflection.  Each student is accountable.

I would like the posts to be interesting, informative and concise so that parents will visit the sites weekly and comment on the posts.

The students will post at the very least on a weekly basis.  Students  need to share their thoughts, ideas and questions on a weekly basis in order to have my class blog be truly collaborative.

I would also like users to read the sidebars and links to find out about topics that have been read or discussed in class and any relevant links to class discussions that students have visited.

As a result of going to my classroom blog site students and parents will be able to identify, describe, list, explain and discuss what is going on in my classroom.

I would like parents to appreciate, appraise, analyze and critique the classroom work their child has shared and discuss it with their child.

EDTEC 700-3 Project

Classroom Blog:

Reading, Writing and Learning

ADDIE model

Analysis

The users of my Classroom blog are students and parents. I would like students to use my Classroom blog to practice reading, writing, editing, creating, sharing. Many classrooms blogs share the student’s work with parents.  I would like to give my students more ownership of the information that is put on the blog.

I am creating a classroom blog site to teach the tenants of blogging to my class. The students will then be able to learn components necessary to creating a blog site.. I chose to use edublog because it is easy to use and allows the teacher to control what is published on the site. I will use edublogs help and support site as a primary souce and model for my classroom site. I will also link to other usefule sites. This project involves creating and building the complete site.

Students will start out with various knowledge and skill levels. The goal at the end is to fill in any gaps in skills an knowledge at to have each students having a good foundation of the basic components of building a blog site.  Students will be motivated to learn because they will be required to create their own site at the end of the lesson.

As I stated before I found a great deal of information about classroom blogs and teachers sharing the class work.  Searching the Internet for information about classrooms where students took more ownership about the content of blog was limited.  I supposed that is because most teachers find it scary to let go of the control. However,  blogs set up with Blogger or word press allow the teacher to have the control to approve post before an publishing.  Initially students may be lacking in the skills and or knowledge required to successfully blog. I would set up lesson plans to address these areas. Students could take on various roles in the blogging process: creating, editing, uploading images, quality checks etc.  By the end of the school year there would be significant growth in reading, writing, editing, creating and technology skills and creating their own blog site. The reward of seeing their work published would give them further motivation to blog.

Objectives

The students will blog about their class work using short concise well-edited writing including appropriate pictures, video or audio by November 1.

Enabling objectives:

1. Students will access 3 teacher recommended blogs and write about what they liked and/or disliked about the blog sites by the second week of school.
2. Students will develop roles for students in to be responsible for i.e. quality of blogs, organization, format, media, editing, blogging rule check etc after lessons on each role have been completed and students show competency as demonstrated by a 80% or higher on each lesson.
3. Students will create their own blog site after mastery of basic components.
4. Students measure the success of their ownership of the class blog based on the evidence of timely, quality class content blogs and and their own blog site.

I am a substitute teacher searching for a full time position. My background is as a Middle School teacher. I taught Language Arts, History, Art and math. I have 10 years of teaching experience.  I took time off to raise my family and now am having a tough time getting back into the system.  I have been working as a RE agent for the last 7 years.

I love blue whales.

My favorite day at the beach is on a rainy day.

I bench pressed 150lbs

WELCOME