Breakout1

Bloggin Safari Vickie Beck, vbeck@esu7.org - Media Specialist at Fullerton and Karen Benner, kbenner@esu7.org - Middle School English and Reading at High Plains Community [|Book Blog] - bookbloginfo.edublogs.org

Typical blog, journalism and adding posts. For school purpose and philosophy is a way to use instead of journalism for classroom assignment.

May need to review English grammar before posting

[|Out of the Dust]- outofthedusk.edublogs.org (can link from Book Blog page)

Teacher posted questions for a regular journaling assignment. Students posted comments or answers to questions on blog. This blog is set up as teacher monitored, so any responses are not posted until teacher approves first.

Students had an opportunity to respond to other student's answers to questions. Students looked forward to reading others responses.

Criteria was identified giving students direction for expectations.

In edublogs, it is set up by the teachers, students are asked only to use first names and required to add an email address, but school philosophy did not want to set up email for each student. Set up ficticious email for each student that worked to add students. Example: josh@hps.yahoo.com or sam@fhs.yahoo.com.

[|TuckEverlasting] - vbeck.edublogs.org (can link from Book Blog page) -- First experience in blogging.

edublogs.com has tools To set privacy preferences. Settings > Privacy > check Blog Visibility Can add Plug in, example Delicious, so a user can add the RSS feed to a "Reader". Can nest blogs Can add links to the blog. A number of themes are available (large number!). Once selected the theme, will change on the blog.

Widgets can be added. (Design > Widgets) Things like a calendar, Search, Tags, Categories, etc. Add Meta in Widgets to access the Administration easily.

Student blogs can be edited and returned to the student. Student will then "fix" and resubmit. Student has two opportunities to have comments posted. If by second comment, then the student would not get the comment posted

Sent letter to parent to list privacy concerns and the project.

To set up the blog for the URL, can set up with the title of the book, example: outofthedust.edublogs.org Administrators of the blog are the teachers and media person